EXCUSE ME WHILE I HAVE A MODERN ART ATTACK
Expensive art
Change is inevitable in all walks of life. Provided it is for the better, all well and good. Sadly, changes in the art world have been for the worse, not just in tastes but partly because of the antics of the two largest auctioneers, Sotheby’s and Christie’s, who between them control some 90 per cent of the market with a combined annual turnover of over $14 billion.
A dealer’s lot is no longer a happy one; most live a hand-to-mouth existence – even major players. What worries traditional collectors and dealers most, however, are two things: firstly, the depths to which a lot of modern/abstract/ contemporar y/surrealist/post-war/hyperreal/ neo-classical art has sunk; secondly, the absurd prices that seriously rich billionaire buyers – mainly Middle Eastern, Chinese, Asian, American and Russian oligarchs (before the oil price slump anyway) – are prepared to be conned into paying for many items which can hardly be called ‘works of art’ as connoisseurs know them.
Such as? Here are examples of some of the most expensive pictures sold in recent years:
Edvard Munch (Norwegian) – The Scream (1893), of which there are four versions. The subject represents ‘the cry from the age of anxiety that still echoes to our nerves’. Hardly a thing of beauty, but a pastel version made £125million at auction in 2012.
Francis Bacon (British) – The $127million paid for a figurative triptych, Three Studies of Lucian Freud, was at the time the top price paid for any lot at auction. The similarly hideous Three Studies for Portrait of George Dyer [Bacon’s Lover], a ‘ 14x12’ oil on canvas (illustrated), made a mere £23.75million.
Andy Warhol (American) – His Triple Elvis silkscreen was bought for $83,000 in 1977 but recently made $82million, bringing the grand haul brought in under the late Warhol’s name to a total of no less than $653million last year.
‘ Few of those rich collectors can say that what they are being advised to purchase is beautiful’
Mark Rothko (American) – Red, Brown, Black and Orange, is the sort of painting one remembers from school days when students were pushing their luck with their art master – but it made $40million.
Joan Miro (Spanish) – Women, Moon, Birds recently sold at Christie’s for £15.5million. Well executed, perfect for a classroom drawingboard but not really for a private collection, especially at that price.
Paul Gaugain (French) – Two Tahitian Girls set a new world-record price for any work of art after being sold privately in February by a Swiss collector to Qatar Museum for $300million (£197million).
Not long before that, in May 2014, Christie’s Contemporary Impressionist and Modern Sale in New York turned over an eye-boggling $2.66billion (£1.446billion).
Are these modern picture telephone-number figures sustainable? Almost certainly not, and a good thing too. Sanity will return. The top end of the modern picture market is not about good taste, appreciation and art but about money, greed, hype and an elaborate con. Auctioneers push the rules to their limits but their meagre single-figure net profit margin may well not be enough if markets collapsed.
As a former dealer for 30 years, now retired but still dabbling in slightly lower-priced items, I admit to a certain feeling of Schadenfreude when things don’t always go right for larger auction houses. Some make up their own rules as they go along and as corporate entities they have few dealer friends. They often follow each other as if in a cartel and can act as dealers themselves, also as bankers, giving pre-sale guarantees in booming market conditions and entering private treaty deals and online offers.
In marked contrast to these absurd, stratospheric sums paid for contemporary works, the best traditional British landscape and sporting artists have seen a period of deflation with lower prices being fetched than before the crash.
Quality paintings by the likes of England’s Constable, Landseer, Ferneley Gainsborough and Munnings and Scotland’s Nasmyth, Raeburn, Ramsay, Bough and t he Glasgow School, struggle to exceed £10million, with plenty good examples being sold for as little as £10,000. It is probably the right time to buy but the golden rule must be to buy because you like it rather than for an investment. Beware the words ‘Fine Art’ after a dealer’s name; they don’t always mean what they say, except perhaps in The Fine Art Society!
Other pictures to hit the headlines of late have been Claude Monet’s View of the Grand Canal, Venice (£23.7million at Sotheby’s), a Paul Cezanne (£12million at Christie’s) and a superb Turner, Rome from Mount Aventine, sold for one of the most common but wrong three reasons – death, divorce and debt – which made £27million. It was back in 2002 that the highest-ever price was paid for an Old Master, £45million for Reubens’ The Massacre of the Innocents.
Are we really to believe that these remarkable artists, whose work has stood test of time and very seldom comes to market, were less talented than Warhol?
How can such artists be valued at a fraction of the so-called ‘ modern masters’? Many art schools now concentrate on teaching ideas, not skills. Beauty was once in the beholder’s eye but few high-net-worth collectors can seriously say what they are being advised to purchase is beautiful. Money, celebrity and self-reverence play too large a part among modern artists. Most are over-promoted and vastly over-priced. One critic has written: ‘The price of art is the price of imagination.’ Galleries, museums, auctioneers, consultants and dealers can collude to maintain the value and status of an artist.
It’s worth hearing what other artists and critics say about modern art. Damien Hirst, himself a genius for drawing and painting, states that ‘art is about life and the art world is about money’. He adds that ‘you can’t effing see the paintings because of effing money.’
People don’t look anymore. Whatever we think of Hirst and his language, this is a profound truth. The top of the market has become a vulgar show-off place. Just think what could be done with $100million. It would build a dozen hospitals or feed tens of thousands of children in Africa. It could certainly help with the much-needed sports facility being built for Perth College...
The poor Queen was given 100 works by Royal Academicians to mark her Diamond Jubilee, some of them acrylics, inkjets and varnish-embossed screen prints. Harry Mount, the respected Daily Telegraph critic, refers to the collection as the ‘disastrous collapse in artistic skills since her accession’. Tracey Emin in particular is told she cannot draw and certainly cannot produce a likeness of ‘ HRH Royal Britania’ (her spelling). Her winning exhibit for a Turner Prize, My Bed, recently sold for £2.5million, showing just how low tastes for modern ‘art’ and the Turner Prize have sunk. Freud’s earlier painting of the Queen was a plain insult to a much-loved monarch.
I wish I could put my hand on my heart and say that I understood what’s going on in today’s bipolar art world. I can’t. Luckily I don’t have to – I’ll consult a consultant.