In Terms Of

Tag: Auctions

  • Pawns in the Game

    Sarah Thornton in Conversation with David Kratz and Peter Drake
    Thursday, May 14, 2015
    Spring Lecture Series
    New York Academy of Art, New York

    The cover of Sarah Thornton’s book, 33 Artists in 3 Acts (2014)

    The journalist and sociologist Sarah Thornton was interviewed about her latest book, 33 Artists in 3 Acts (New York: W. W. Norton, 2014), at the New York Academy of Art, where she was also the school’s commencement speaker for this year’s graduating class of MFA students. The book chronicles the upper crust of the contemporary art world—the kind you read about in the Scene and Herd section of Artforum.com—from 2009 to 2013. Benchmarks in conversations and studio visits with the dozens of artists that Thornton interviewed were Jeff Koons, whom she considers to be conservative, and the high-risk Damien Hirst. Other recurring characters include Maurizio Cattelan, Ai Weiwei, and Andrea Fraser, as well as the artist couple Carroll Dunham and Laurie Simmons and their daughters, Grace and Lena Dunham. The people profiled in 33 Artists in 3 Acts, mostly midcareer professionals who were born in the fifties and sixties, are “all the real deal,” she said, with no authenticity and credibility issues. (She would need to write a separate book for emerging artists.)

    Wearing white jeans, a black blazer, and athletic sandals, Thornton was interviewed by David Kratz, a silver-fox painter and the president of the New York Academy of Art—a small graduate school that specializes in representational and figurative work—and the painter Peter Drake, who is also dean of academic affairs. Kratz inquired about the image of Gabriel Orozco’s chessboard work, Horses Running Endlessly (1995), which illustrates the book’s introduction. “Is that the art world?” he asked. Calling Orozco a “strategic player” (but not explaining what that meant), Thornton disclosed that the art world isn’t as egalitarian as a chessboard occupied only by knights—the punch line of Orozco’s work.1 Instead, the art world has “kings, queens, and pawns,” though I’d argue that the art world has more sacrificial pieces than power players in its own chess game. Success acculturates artists into the art world, she said, and they must figure out their position. Thornton believes that the art market should be part of an art school’s curriculum and warned against early career burnout from success—a future problem that I imagine many wish they would have.

    Gabriel Orozco, Horses Running Endlessly, 1995, wood, 3 3/8 x 34 3/8 x 34 3/8 in. (artwork © Gabriel Orozco; photograph probably by Yugen)

    Kratz asked about artists whose “crazy” works for them, and whose “crazy” doesn’t. In the former category Thornton placed Grayson Perry, famous in Great Britain but not so much here, who is a happily married transvestite potter with a daughter in college. The aging Young British Artists grumbled, she continued, at his winning the 2003 Turner Prize not because he dresses in women’s clothing but because he produces ceramics. Regarding bad crazy, Thornton said that Yayoi Kusama is the only artist whose craziness is acceptable. Yet if Kusama (b. 1929) were in her thirties today, Thornton said, nobody would accept her kooky behavior.

    High art and functional objects apparently have strong class divisions, at least in England. As a writer, Thornton identifies with craft, though it’s not wrong if an artist employs the labor of others to complete a project. She identified Christian Marclay’s breakout video The Clock (2010) as the example: Marclay had teams watching films but edited much of the footage himself. What is the different between art and craft, Thornton was asked. The concept makes it art, she replied, though the lines can blur. It is possible, Thornton continued, for artists to become craftsmen of their own work, if it becomes slickly produced. Perry, she said, claimed to be able to teach others to make his work, but they cannot make the art he is about to make.

    Drake directed attention back to 33 Artists in 3 Acts, asking Thornton if artists have their own view of success. She recounted how one thread in the book follows Laurie Simmons and Cindy Sherman, two photographers from the Pictures Generation, whom Thornton called “artist soul mates.” While Sherman’s career has certainly been larger than Simmons’s, the disparity hasn’t affected either their creativity or their friendship.

    Damien Hirst, The Crow, 2009, oil on canvas, 90 x 60 in. each (photographed by Prudence Cuming Associates; artwork © Damien Hirst and Science Ltd.)

    Thornton reiterated the importance of Hirst in her narrative, which makes sense for a journalist covering the economic side of the art world. Her profile on the bad-boy artist in the Sunday Times Magazine in 2009 was positive. She changed her tune in a 2010 article in the Economist, for which she researched Hirst’s direct-to-auction sale of his work in fall 2008. Bypassing the traditional dealer/gallery system and heading straight to the deep-pocketed collectors was a move that netted him $200 million. Thornton’s personal access to Hirst ended there, at least until 2013, when she cornered him in Qatar during a press preview for his retrospective Relics. “I don’t know how he feels about the book,” Thornton remarked, “and I don’t know if he reads.” The snark didn’t stop there. Thornton finds Hirst’s recent paintings to be “diabolical,” especially considering that he gave up painting at age 16 and took it up again in his forties. His spot paintings, which were shown in every Gagosian Gallery worldwide in 2012, are the “diffusion line of brand name.” “He lost faith in his practice,” she added, calling him an “interesting sculptor and an opportunistic painter.”

    An audience member asked if any of the artists she wrote about have overcome adversity. They all have, she said, emphasizing that the Chinese Ai and the Chilean artist Eugenio Dittborn have been challenged on political and governmental levels. Another person inquired about the art-world game, which Thornton described as soccer, because it’s always changing. She advised the audience member to “choose your game, be good at it, and make others play it.” She also advised artists to understand social dynamics and etiquette and to not get duped. Some well-established dealers are notorious for not paying artists, Thornton revealed, and advocated banning them from art fairs.

    Someone asked if it is true that the most successful artists have great self-doubt. Yes, she replied, and artists such as Cattelan embrace it. She also implied that Hirst is insecure. The final question from the audience addressed artists and suffering. Thornton’s unexpected, thoughtful response concerned motherhood: artists such as Sherman and Marina Abramović sacrificed having children for their careers. Yet having children, Thornton appended, is not the credibility killer for women artists under 55 that it once was.

    I sensed that Thornton presented herself as outsider to the art world. In her writing, she said, she watches the dynamics of opinion rather than passes judgment. I also sensed disconnect between her and the audience, which routinely failed to respond—with laughter or applause—to her stories at the right moments. A few times Thornton was the only person laughing at her remarks. The setting at the New York Academy of Art was informal, and the attendees seemed to be made up of young artists—the pawns of the art world. This made Thornton’s jet-setting glamor something of a mismatch, but not glaringly so. I was left to wonder what she offered to the school’s graduate students.

    In Terms Of count: 3.

    1 More positively, Thornton interpreted Horses Running Endlessly as a “dance floor in a multicultural club.”

  • Residual Rights for the Visual Artist—Are They Desirable?

    This text is the first of three that reviews a series of panels on residual rights for visual artists, held in 1974. Read the second and third reports.

    Residual Rights for the Visual Artist—Are They Desirable?
    Monday, October 28, 1974
    New York University, Loeb Student Center, New York

    An array of worthies in and about the art world met at Loeb Student Center for three panels on the question of “rights” for the visual artist. The principal topic, the controversial 15 percent residual payment to the artist on resale of his or her work, is nothing new. However, last year’s historic Sotheby Parke Bernet auction dramatized the issue.

    That was when a Rauschenberg painting, originally bought by collector Robert Scull for $900, was resold by him for $95,000 [actually $85,000]. Rauschenberg was enraged, publicly scrapped with Scull [legend has it fisticuffs were exchanged], and, with his accountant Rubin Gorewitz (“the artist’s accountant”), formed a foundation and went to Washington to lobby for an artists’ rights bill.

    The public had been invited to hear the pros and cons discussed. According to a show of hands, the audience consisted of perhaps 85 percent artists; they came and went in large numbers during the marathon event.

    Moderator: S. Spencer Grin, publisher of the Saturday Review

    Panelists: Paula Cooper, Paula Cooper Gallery; Lawrence Fleischman, director, Kennedy Gallery; Robert Scull, collector; and Ron Gorchov, Nathaniel Katz, Jacob Landau, Peter Max, and Robert Rauschenberg, artists

    jasperjohns0through9drawing
    Robert Scull offered two works by Jasper Johns in the 1973 auction. Pictured here is Jasper Johns, 0 through 9, 1961, charcoal and pastel on paper,  54¼ x 41⅝ in. (artwork © Jasper Johns)

    The panel got off to a late start because Robert Rauschenberg and Robert Scull were still out to dinner—together.

    Then Lawrence Fleischman opened by objecting to the residual agreement, a not-unexpected position for a dealer. Artists would be more hurt than helped, he said; anyway, “90 percent of artworks go down in value.” Paula Cooper was in favor of the 15 percent, but pessimistic about implementation. She has one artist who uses the voluntary contract, but says she meets buyer opposition.

    Jacob Landau thought the only artists to benefit would be the ones who have already benefited from the art boom, the elite few. Rauschenberg was succinct. He was in favor, “and I don’t want to argue about it.” Scull, charming and soft-spoken, had apparently had a change of heart. He now favors some sort of royalty for the artist and said he doesn’t believe it will slow the art market.

    Landau felt it would. He sees a world depression coming [in] which little art will be sold. Rauschenberg countered, “No artist can afford that kind of pessimism.” As for size of the royalty, panelists either agreed on 15 percent or hedged, except Ron Gorchov, who insisted on 50 percent. “Fifteen percent is like a tip!”

    In Terms Of count: unknown.

    Source

    Written by Donna Marxer, this review appeared in Artworkers News 4, no. 8 (November 1974); and was reprinted in Judy Seigel, ed., Mutiny and the Mainstream: Talk That Changed Art, 1975–1990 (New York: Midmarch Arts Press, 1992), 2–3. In Terms Of thanks Midmarch Arts Press for permission to republish this review.

     

  • What Price Art? A Market of Mirrors

    The paper [by Alexandra Anderson-Spivy] excerpted below, an explanation of how to “make a market in a living artist’s work,” was a highlight of the [“What Price Art?”] conference. Further details appear in Ronald Feldman’s truth-in-jest advice later in the year.

    “What Price Art? A Market of Mirrors”
    Friday, April 26, 1985
    What Price Art? The Economics of Art: An Agenda for the Future
    New York University, Graduate School of Business Administration, New York

    The art world in the 1980s at Mr. Chow (photograph by Michael Halsband)
    The art world in 1985 at Mr. Chow (photograph by Michael Halsband)

    Art is a conveyer of status, a vocabulary of power. Men and women of wealth and influence, after they have acquired their money and power, need signs and symbols of their importance. Collecting art is often a way to gain entry into a desired social stratum….

    How do dealers “make a market” in a living artist’s work? With virtually any new painting commanding an entry gallery price of $1,200 to $2,550 (sculpture begins a bit higher), there are price thresholds that a new or unrecognized artist must break through as he or she goes up the ladder. Assuming the dealer truly believes in the quality of the work, he [sic] must publicize this belief through exhibitions, critical reviews, word-of-mouth….

    Dealers try to get their artists’ work seen by museum curators [and get] well-known, serious collectors to buy. Many galleries will only release works by certain artists to certain collectors, recognizing the Doppler effect of those collections. These collectors are also likely to be on museum boards and to encourage recognition of artists they favor at those institutions. Ten percent or 20 percent discounts [or more] off quoted prices to valued customers are common. (I have heard it rumored that some sales are made at up to 80 percent off quoted gallery prices.) Sales to museums at far-below-market prices will permit the dealer to jack up subsequent prices. The aura of market activity can also enhance an artist’s reputation and build market interest. There is a high risk-high reward factor…. Collectors respond to the idea of buying a hot young artist’s work at prices which will escalate rapidly. The idea of investing in contemporary art is rather new, and one which reputable dealers claim they do not use as a sales tool. But the media attention given such artists makes that kind of hard sell almost unnecessary, since speculation becomes a tacit factor in everyone’s mind.

    About three years ago, I noticed a brand new painting by Jean-Michel Basquiat hung in the loft of a famous artist. He said, “This time I wanted to get in at the beginning. I’m tired of seeing the collectors make all the profits.” In three years, Basquiat’s prices have risen precipitously. Sales to major collectors also build an artist’s image and thus allow his prices to rise. Once an artist’s reputation is established, the auction house may play a part. Sales at auction are not only important exposure … they publicly ratify prices. Dealers have been known to put up a work at auction and buy it back themselves simply to establish a price…. If works are “bought in” (i.e., do not reach their reserve price), a certain superficial credibility of price still remains to the public at large. However, savvy collectors who follow auctions closely may then consider a picture “burned,” thus making it harder to sell subsequently….

    Because the “value” of a new work is in fact so much a matter of opinion, those who wish to participate in the game soon discover that becoming an insider, i.e., having access to the informal as well as the formal network of information about the art, is crucial…. In the oddest way, works of art achieve value because certain individuals in certain sectors of the system decide they are valuable, but much of what goes on goes on behind the scenes…. An artist whose production is very small or who shuns the publicity machine [may not achieve] “brand name” status. [Yet] in the long run … mediocre pieces bring mediocre prices and great works bring ever-greater prices.

    warholbasquiatboxing
    Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat (photograph by Michael Halsband)

    Another market factor is the “auction ring.” A group of dealers interested in the same material agree not to bid against one another, assigning one to bid unopposed. After the sale they reauction the things among themselves. [This] is strictly illegal. But, when done skillfully, it is almost impossible to uncover. Auctions have also been manipulated in another way. Dealers bid up prices of their own artists even if they themselves have to buy the work. Then they call claim the auction price as ratifier of prices in the gallery. Or it may be arranged in advance to have people (assigned to go up to a certain price) bid on a work, thus pushing up the price.

    In recent years, auction houses have attracted a much wider public, often competing with the dealer for the collector’s dollars, so that antagonisms between the two have surfaced. Large advertising budgets, increasing media publicity, glossy catalogues, and an aura of theatrical glamour attract high rollers to the auction rooms (recently refurbished) of Sotheby’s and Christie’s. [R]ecord-breaking prices are touted widely, while heavily bought-in sales are played down whenever possible. Auction houses have learned how to use the tools of modern marketing. Michael Thomas, a former investment banker, in a column about the forthcoming Sotheby’s sale of pictures owned by the late Florence Gould, [wrote that] “advance publicity would have us believe that the equivalent of the Jeu de Paume or the Phillips Collection are being disgorged at auction, but by and large … the pictures are pretty and accessible, just the kind of thing with which rich Arabs like to decorate their Home County mansions.”

    The combination of hype to create demand that takes advantage of ignorant, cash-heavy, status-hungry consumers of art is hardly a new one, though it may operate more widely and efficiently than in the days of Joseph Duveen and Bernard Berenson. Policies of full disclosure for critics, scholars, and curators (to reveal any vested interest in art they write about or curate) and for dealers and auction houses might go a long way towards correcting the abuses of the art market as we know it. Meanwhile, caveat emptor remains sound advice.

    In Terms Of count: 0.

    Source

    Written by Alexandra Anderson-Spivy, “What Price Art? A Market of Mirrors” was originally published within Cynthia Navaretta’s “Conference: What Price Art?” in Women Artists News 10, no. 4 (June 1985): 5; and reprinted in Judy Seigel, ed., Mutiny and the Mainstream: Talk That Changed Art, 1975–1990 (New York: Midmarch Arts Press, 1992), 237–38. In Terms Of thanks Midmarch Arts Press for permission to republish this review.

  • The Art Talk That Ate New York

    What Price Art? The Economics of Art: An Agenda for the Future
    Friday, April 26, 1985
    New York University, Graduate School of Business Administration, New York

    Another ’80s workshop on spinning art into gold—and as motley a collection of speakers as one could imagine, even on such a fey topic. As it happens, my community and I recently had dealings with one of them—the representative from the Port Authority—only instead of “Arts as an Industry,” she detailed why our historic district should be trashed for the benefit of the Port Authority. That report, with figures and measurements and citations, was, as we proved in court, a complete fiction, but it served the purposes of those receiving it and became fact. Such diddling is of course hardly news in city politics—or in business and real estate either, as we see increasingly in the papers these days. But in art? Let’s just say the figures here sound official, for what that’s worth, but don’t bet the farm.

    On the other hand, at least from my limited experience, Alexandra Anderson-Spivy’s rundown on the workings of the art market can be taken as a marvel of acute reporting. That is, you’ll love it—and relish the hindsight.

    Cochairs: Kenneth Friedman, publisher of The Art Economist; and Oscar Ornati, professor of management, New York University

    Speakers: Noel Steinberger, Rosemary Scanlon, William Baumol, Michael Montias, A. D. Coleman, Dick Higgins, Ed McGuire, Martin Ackerman, Marshall Kogan, Alexandra Anderson-Spivy, and John Czepiel

    Cynthia Navaretta, “Conference: What Price Art?” Women Artists News 10, no. 4 (June 1985): 4.

    Titled “What Price Art,” and provocatively subtitled “The Economics of Art: An Agenda for the Future,” the conference promised to explore the economics of the visual arts market, with practical details on costs and price structure provided by “national experts in economics, finance, law, public policy, art and journalism.”

    Noel Steinberger, vice president of marketing at Sotheby’s, the world’s oldest auction firm, identified key players in the art game as the media, banks, auction houses, and galleries (notice omission of the artist).

    Rosemary Scanlon, a discussant and chief economist of the New York–New Jersey Port Authority, described her recent study, The Arts as an Industry, made to determine value and economic impact of cultural industries (including theater, dance, music, film, television, and visitors to New York City, but not the city’s art sales or art inventory) on the metropolitan area. Her “conservative” estimate was $5.6 billion. Although hard data is lacking, worldwide transactions in the visual art market are estimated at over $25 billion annually.

    Scanlon’s presentation was followed by floor discussion of the art customer. The important role of the press was briefly touched on as “shaping tastes and spending habits.” Recent studies estimate the number of US art critics at over 2,500; Art in America has counted more than 2,600 critics among its own subscribers. Assuming an equal number might not read AiA could bring the total number of art critics to more than 5,000.

    Dr. William Baumol, professor of economics at Princeton University, and a collector himself, described the art market as an “imperfect market,” i.e., not behaving in a predictable manner, as financial markets sometimes do not. Therefore, he said, “there is no rational way to assign value or to invest” (except, of course, on an aesthetic level). Price information, he said, is beside the point. An unidentified speaker contradicted him on that claim, asserting that price information is “needed for literacy and curiosity.” Baumol added that “the elasticity of supply” is zero for deceased artists and “the holder of a single piece of art has a monopoly on that item,” so the supply of art is fixed.

    Michael Montias, professor of economics at Yale University, rejected the inelasticity theory, claiming existence of a “large supply of paintings on walls, in attics, and museum basements.” New interests (and rising prices) in specific periods cause hitherto unknown works to surface.

    Cynthia Navaretta, “Conference: What Price Art?” Women Artists News 10, no. 4 (June 1985): 5.

    A. D. Coleman, photography critic, added that values change, using as example that van Gogh’s painting (auctioned the previous evening for $9.9 million) was no longer what van Gogh had painted; it has since been certified as a work of art.

    Dick Higgins, writer and artist, noted that “art is one of the only commodities routinely produced at a loss.”

    Ed McGuire added, “The artist does not profit by art, galleries do, museums do, and the collector who uses it as a tax shelter does.”

    Then the topic of whether or not art business and art galleries are profitable, or doing better than in previous years, was tossed around for a while. The editor of City Business quoted a dealer as saying, “A good dealer is one who breaks even and puts in his basement what he thinks will increase in value.” The director of the Berry-Hill Gallery dismissed this as nonsense, saying “any serious gallery” does very well financially.

    Martin Ackerman, attorney, addressed tax policies and changes in tax law by which the Internal Revenue Code says, in effect, that “in death the work of an artist is valued at appreciated retail value, but in life it is valued at the cost of material. This, obviously, has caused artists and their estates to liquidate or even destroy large portions of their work to avoid these unwarranted and unfair tax burdens.”

    With allowable tax deductions for donations of art restricted to “adjusted costs,” museums report drastic reductions in gifts from artists. The Whitney received 142 works in 1969 and 17 (of which 13 were prints) in 1970; MoMA received 47 in 1969, none in 1970. Although art collectors have not yet lost the privilege of this contribution, they frequently encounter hostile questioning by the IRS as to “fair market value.” (Ackerman believes this stems from a probably well-founded IRS belief that all contributions are overvalued.)

    Marshall Cogan, chief executive officer of GFI/Knoll Industries and noted collector, mentioned the amazing growth in museum attendance since the ’70s. He also pointed out that 875,000 people earned over one million dollars in 1985, suggesting that, as income rises, the value of art rises too. Cogan’s recommendation to collectors was to buy “the most extraordinary piece of work available.” He saw a decline in good works of art, attributing current “extreme increases in price” to this scarcity.

    John Czepiel, associate professor of marketing at New York University, quoted something he had read: “It ain’t art unless you have the urge to possess it.”

    Kenneth Friedman, cochair of the conference, summed up: “The art market is poised on the edge of profound change. This is a market moving from its cottage industry phase into something radically different. All other factors in the economy being equal, I predict that the dollar volume of the art market will increase at a rate far better than inflation during the next decade. If this is so, we’re going to need—and we’re going to see—studies in everything from client service by art dealers to credit financing for consumers, from information services, to investment opportunities in the art industry.”

    Perhaps, however, the clearest indicator of art’s new financial status is simply this conference itself. New York University’s School of Business hosted a conference on “art.” Footing all bills, it invited press, dealers, consultants, lawyers, collectors, and bankers to attend as its guests—but no artists.

    In Terms Of count: unknown.

    Source

    Written by Cynthia Navaretta, “The Art Talk That Ate New York” was originally published as “Conference: What Price Art?” in Women Artists News 10, no. 4 (June 1985): 4–5; and reprinted in Judy Seigel, ed., Mutiny and the Mainstream: Talk That Changed Art, 1975–1990 (New York: Midmarch Arts Press, 1992), 236–37. In Terms Of thanks Midmarch Arts Press for permission to republish this review.