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the culture briefi ng Creative Accountancy
04
like the Armory show in New York are more
to do with a style of living where wealthy people
have to show themselves. At Art Basel
Miami they organise $ 1000-a-head private
dinners. I don’t blame people for earning
money like this, but where’s the art?”
As the contemporary art market stays
steamy, ownership of the hot stuff is a ticket
into an exclusive club, albeit one with its own
world of complications. The commitment of
serious funds can give you a passport to studio
visits and art school shows, the right to
get smug(er) and rich(er) speculating on new
talent and perhaps a mantelpiece lined with
stiff invitations to jet-set art events.
There is of course a catch; with no shortage
of buyers for the best pieces, money
alone is no longer enough. Gallerists have
become wary of fl ashy purchasers. With
their eye on the long term, anyone who provides
artists with good representation will
keep them away from collectors with a reputation
for speculation. Respected galleries
don’t want their clients’ work to be sold off
at a massive profi t at auction, only to crash
down in price a few years later when the glitter
crowd moves on to a hot new talent.
Gallerists like Frank Demaegd of Antwerp's
Zeno-X can now afford to pick the
purchasers rather than the other way round,
and certainly in the early years of an artist’s
career, they want to make sure that the work
goes into collections with a good reputation.
“At this point galleries won’t just sell to anyone,”
agrees Augustin Dusfrane. “It doesn’t
depend on the money it depends on who
50 — THE THIRD WORD
you are. They only want the best for the best
artists. It’s a bit elitist, but that’s how it is.”
Having a fat wallet is not enough; for the opportunity
to buy art, you need to provide evidence
of a proper motive, and guarantee that
your new purchase will only hang out with
respectable company.
" The rather
unmentionable truth
is that most companies’
art collections start life
as a means to cheer up
drab offi ce space. "
The rather unmentionable truth is that
most companies’ art collections start life as a
means to cheer up drab offi ce space. But these
days anyone who uses the phrase ‘decorative’
in the same sentence as the word ‘art’ receives
an automatic life ban from the big boys' serious
art world club, which means that you
are no longer allowed to refer to the Sol Le-
Witt that you just picked up for € 175,000
as ‘a little something that you brought in to
cheer up the lobby’. Major collections (and
who would wish to have a minor one?) need
not only a niche but a raison d’etre; one of
the founding principles of the Paribas (now
Dexia) collection was to stop important Belgian
works from leaving the country, that of
05
Cera (the mother holding of KBC) is in part
dedicated to re-assessing the careers of overlooked
artists of the last century.
Taking to heart the idea that custodianship
of creative works is meant to be important
rather than fun, many curators of
corporate collections abide by a rather stern
vision of art as somehow rather improving,
to be taken like doses of cultural cod-liver
oil. Their employers, they reason, occupy
something of a parallel universe, scuttling
© SABAM