As I have stated in my comments lately, people may be buying art for all the wrong reasons, such as prestige and to flash their deep pockets. Coincidently, as I was searching for an article in Today’s New York Times, I found one displaying exactly that. The article states that people with extreme wealth such as hedge fund owners and business moguls are attending auctions solely for sport, and are paying over the top prices for historic pieces strictly because they can.
The article speaks particularly about a piece by Francis Bacon called “Three Studies Of Lucian Freud”, that recently sold for 142 million dollars! That amount of money on a single piece of art is unimaginable, but it is happening. That sale was a new single sale record, but two records were broken that day. The auction house also broke the record for most money brought in at a single auction. That figure was 692 million dollars. Do these people really appreciate the art for its intrinsic value, or do they just want to show off? I believe it is the latter, and it must be heartbreaking for people who truly appreciate art for what it really is.
(“Three Studies of Lucian Freud”)
These auction are getting absurd and out-of-control. I guess people really feel the need to impress others in the auction house and around the world because they have the means to do so. However they don’t realize what they are doing to the art world! They are turning it into a game of flaunting wealth, and that is what is so disappointing!
Let’s go back to that figure of $142 million. The article states that that figure would’ve paid for the renovation of the Queens Museum more than twice, but I want to look at it in terms of people. The average income per capita in 2012 was $42,693. That means it would take the average American 3326 years to make that amount of money! These super wealthy people feel the need to spend that amount of money in one day, and then go throw the piece of art in a vault somewhere? I absolutely dislike the thought of that.
Granted the historic piece is worth a ton of money, but it has more intrinsic value. However due to the purchase of the piece for 142 million dollars, people will not see it in that way anymore. Now the piece will be looked at in terms of money, and not as an beautiful piece of art that an artist spent many hours making. In my opinion this huge price devalues the true worth of the piece. My question to you is, do you agree that this may be getting way out of hand?
If you would like to check out the article, here is the link:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/14/arts/design/art-is-hard-to-see-through-the-clutter-of-dollar-signs.html?_r=0
Marc, you bring up some great points and the topic I am actually researching for my feature article. My article is about hedge fund involvement in the market of artwork. Actually according to my research, the market has its own name: The Mei Moses® Family of Fine Art. More info can be found here: http://www.artasanasset.com/main/ I totally agree with you that this inequality in wealth is very unfair with the rich spending millions on art while the lower classes struggle to get by. I also feel that the value of art has inflated to an exorbitant amount, to the point where only the super wealthy can have a stake in the piece. Great article and great points brought up.
While I think that art and artists deserve places of esteem and honor in our cultural awareness, I agree that these auctions seem more about flaunting wealth than appreciating art. Of course someone with the money to purchase a historic piece of art would understandably spend a huge sum to acquire it, but the question of whether they appreciate it or not is answered in what they do with it. Someone who displays the art and is active in the arts strikes me as someone who truly appreciates their purchase. But someone who buys it just to hang up in their house without any regard as to the historical meaning? Or even worse, someone who locks a piece away for any reason other than preserving it, if it’s in a delicate state? These people just wanted to show off how rich they are and how much money they can spend on luxuries.
This is sad. Art is a record of culture, made for people to enjoy, yet only these extremely wealthy few are able to enjoy it fully. There are so many people who would truly value and take care of these pieces, while others are only hanging them up to impress others. These record-breaking prices take the focus off the art and put the spotlight onto these people, which is exactly what they want.
In English my class was watching a documentary about Banksy, whose art is now being purchased and hung up next to Picasso’s in extravagant homes. But in an interview he related that it was never about the money. I guess it speaks something of our culture that the money is what it’s all about for consumers. At least the artists benefit from this, probably the only positive. I find it sad that this is where some people get their self-worth from, rather than taking the time to truly appreciate and learn about the intrinsic value of things.
Art has become a playing field for the wealthy to flaunt their assets. Forget the newest technology, forget clothes, that’s child play to these folks. Art is now the equivalent of a poor man’s iPhone and his daughter’s Tiffany necklace.
It’s absolutely disgusting that priceless works of art are being vaulted in personal homes. In my opinion these works belong in museums but museums don’t have the budgets to compete with these wealthy individuals. Many of these individuals (in my opinion) most likely don’t even care about these pieces. It’s a game to them, it’s something to brag about at the next socialite gathering, it’s a reminder every time they visit the basement of just how wealthy they are.
This article (http://www.pbs.org/newshour/art/blog/2013/11/record-shattering-auctions-begs-the-question-what-does-this-all-mean.html) notes that auction houses now resemble sporting events or a casino with all these folks betting on art.
Apparently Marc and I have similar gripes with the high-end art world. I am also upset with not only how egregious some pieces of artwork are sold for, but how people willing to spend so much on art should match their payments with charitable donations. This article got me thinking about the world’s biggest art collectors. One name I came across was Francois Pinault, the French business man who has amassed a fortune of around $15 billion, with around $1 billion worth of art. When I looked at his resume, he had accumulated over 2,000 pieces including works by Picasso and Jeff Koons. When I googled “Francois Pinault charity”, not one article or link came up! This only made me more infuriated at the entire process of shelling hundreds of millions of dollars on art, without giving to others in need. Here is Francois Pinault’s profile on Forbes, notice that nothing about charity is stated:
http://www.forbes.com/profile/francois-pinault/
That’s a really good point, there is a high demand for ridiculously high priced paintings just because they are so expensive. The people buying these painting however, donate the paintings to museums which I think is awesome, but more times than not it ends up in a stuffy collection. I think art, especially the ‘game changers’ in the art world should be open to public domain. We need to study this art and have the world view it and be inspired by it, not horde it so we can show off how rich we are. I noticed scrolling through the NYtimes there is a huge emphasis in the arts sections about how expensive art is purchased for. I think that is reinforcing a negative aspect of the art world and should be ignored. Here is just one of the many articles I noticed that spoke about these famous auctions.Although this auction was cancelled it is just an example of the art world of today.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/13/arts/design/dias-auction-of-artworks-is-to-proceed.html?ref=design
You make a great point that paying an over-the-top price for a painting or piece changes the way you see that piece. Instead of seeing it as a work by a beloved artist, paying a ridiculous price for it, in many ways turns it into another flashy item to show your wealth. On an unrelated note, your writing is really fluid, I enjoyed your style.
I dont know if these people are really just buying the pieces of art to hang them in a vault, but I do think that they could do as they please with their money and buy a piece of art at however much a price that they want. I think that even though art can be devalued by the money spent on it, I also think that we cant be disgusted at someone because they spent nearly the total GDP of a poor country on one painting. There is always going to be rich and poor and that is natural, what we have now isnt so natural, but that doesnt mean that we should take away their rights or make those who buy such paintings feel bad about how they spent the money they made. I dont hear random people asking us what we should do with our money, so why should we tell the rich what to do? Instead we should make these auctions force people to give a percentage of what they pay for art and give it to charity or museums in order to fix up anything that they need. This way the rich are happy and the general public should also be happy.
In this art business website it teaches art owners how they should be auctioning or donating their art piece, but what I think it should also show is that they should donate their art only as long as some of the money obtained from the auction can be passed on to any charity of the auction’s desire.
http://www.artbusiness.com/auctips.html
I definitely agree that the people with the money have a great influence on art, because many people want to appeal to the wealthy, knowing they will pay an unusual amount for their work. Yes on the one hand it is nice to see art is being appreciated and valued so highly, but on the other 142 million dollars is ridiculous. It is actually unheard of that so much money is going toward a single collection. In addition, think about all the artists struggling to make every little cent, and this doesn’t exclude artists. It just makes me wonder how one painting can be worth so much when there are millions of talented artists working their ass off to pay the bills. The distribution just seems extreme to me. In the article, “Right Stuff? The Library Thinks So” by Jennifer Shuessler talks about how the New York City Library just bought a collection of Tom Wolfe’s archives for $2.15 million. Although that’s a huge amount of money, it is a big difference from $142 million and maybe a more reasonable price to being paying for art.
I feel as though this has been a long-standing issue, although it is being voiced now in this article. Art can be more of a show of social standing rather then a truly appreciated piece. When I think of art collectors, I usually think of a room of snobby rich people, gallivanting about, pointing to the pieces of art they own and sharing the prices they paid while there friends sip on fine champagne. I do not approve of such high selling prices for art because while I’m sure the Bacon’s piece is highly regarded by many, I’m sure more complex and time consuming pieces of art have been created and sold for less. I never fully understood how people assess the worth of art visually. I searched it up and found this link: http://www.artnet.com/auctions/Pages/Common/Help/HowToValueArt.aspx. Some of the features considered are subject matter, rarity and condition.
I think that while I agree that today art has become more of a business than it should be, I still think that there is something else there that is more important. Art has been around since the time of cavemen drawing on walls. It has become a symbol and a way for people to express feelings for both themselves and the general public of that time. That said, it is important that art is continually maintained and the timeless pieces are not forgotten. Even though some may have let their greed transform the art world, at least this shows that their is still activity in the world of art. (for example my article from 2 weeks ago: http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/seminar1baruch13/2013/11/01/billionaire-steven-a-cohen-to-auction-off-part-of-art-collection/)
I loved this article because I completely agree with everything. First of all, 142 million dollars for a painting is ridiculous. If people are so willingly to spend so much on a painting, why cant they also help out by donating to a museum or other causes to help improve art? This also makes auctions very exclusive because only upper-class people can afford that. Art would be more accessible to middle-class people if there was a limit on how much a painting could be sold for. The fact is that people that are buying paintings for millions of dollars are most likely just storing them somewhere in their house. They might not even know the meaning behind the painting.
I found an article talking about the same painting mentioned in your blog. The painting was only one of 12 that were each estimated to auction off for over 20 million dollars. The article mentioned that if the paintings don’t sell for a lot of money, it means that the market doesn’t know how to make a masterpiece. This shows that people are willing to spend so much money just to prove the value of old art. I don’t agree with this because I can money doesn’t show the true appreciation for a painting.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/12/arts/design/with-hard-sell-big-ticket-art-comes-to-auction.html
I agree with you 100%. Reading the first sentence of this captivated me because it’s a notion that I feel the exact same way about. I do feel that there are certainly people out there who just like to buy art because of it’s cost, being indifferent about the actual art itself. I also agree with Michael Mamiye, however. While there may be people out there who are greedy or whatever, I still think there’s a reason why art can become so expensive and it’s still important to focus on this aspect of the importance of art.
Here is an interesting article from last month about some specific prices of certain types of art: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/27/arts/artsspecial/prices-that-fly-under-the-headlines.html