people can overthink the institutional connections,” says Ratibor. “The choice of what ends up in a museum must ultimately be the museum’s.” As Glenn Scott Wright, co-director of Victoria Miro, explains, “If it’s a museum trustee who’s forging ahead with these discussions, then that can put the institution in a difficult position.” Call it due diligence, but it also pays to have done your homework. Take the collector Valeria Napoleone. She may, over the past quarter-century, have amassed more than 450 works by female artists, but before she bought her first work (a photograph by Carol Shadford), she spent, she says, “two years visiting galleries and studios and learning to navigate the art world”. The fact that she also has a philanthropic initiative, the Valeria Napoleone XX Contemporary Art Society, an umbrella platform for projects dedicated to increasing the representation of female artists in public institutions, and sits on numerous boards makes her an ideal collector in the eyes of most galleries. Alternatively, you can engage an adviser. “You would logically get external expertise on tax planning or investments,” says Scott Wright. “So a good art consultant is a way to get access to highly sought-after work. If we have a track record with them, we’ll [be reassured] their clients are good too.” “Or you can always buy at auction,” suggests Ratibor. That way you can buy whatever you like without the need to impress anyone. “You just go in and raise your hand. There’s no control.” Money-laundering checks aside, “You don’t need to be vetted or approved of by anybody, and good for them. It’s very important to have a vibrant auction market. Personally, I prefer to sell to people who are not evidently speculative, but it’s not a crime to turn a profit.” It can, however, be damaging to an artist to have prices for their work bid up to unsustainable levels. The painter Peter Doig has spoken of feeling physically sick on hearing that his painting Friday 13th realised £5.7m at Sotheby’s in 2007. “Not so much disgusted, but nauseous. That someone should have spent that much on a painting of mine […] I was struck by the pressure it put me under – to make paintings that are going to make a million dollars,” he said afterwards. Compared with what the consignor, Charles Saatchi, stood to gain, his recompense was meagre. Even today, the Artist’s Resale Right royalty, which is only payable on purchases made in the EU and UK, is capped at €12,500. No wonder galleries are protective of their artists. “The market is incredibly hot at the moment,” says Hayward, “with a lot of very young artists, whose works have been bought for US,000, US,000, Anthea Hamilton’s Transposed Lime Butterfly (2019) adorns a wall in collector Valeria Napoleone’s London home PHOTO MICHAEL SINCLAIR 58 CENTURION-MAGAZINE.COM
PHOTO TOM COCKRAM now selling for over a million. And it can be very troubling for an artist at the beginning of their career to have all this speculation going on” and for their work to be reduced to the status of a commodity to be traded at will. Last October, for example, the secondary market went wild for Flora Yukhnovich’s glorious splashy paintings that are at once contemporary yet also rococo in their references to Fragonard, Boucher and Tiepolo. In 2021, the presciently titled I’ll Have What She’s Having sold at Sotheby’s for £2.235m, against an estimate of £60,000-£80,000. (The consignor had bought it from Parafin, a gallery with an impressive record of identifying emerging talents, barely a year earlier, when her paintings had been priced at around £30,000.) Then, earlier this year, Christie’s sold another (an earlier work, You’re Going to Make Me Blush from 2017) for £1.9m. “Flora’s market came almost out of nowhere with its escalated auction prices,” says Scott Wright, who represents her. “So we have to guard quite carefully against selling to people who might be buying speculatively, who know they can buy something on the primary market for US0,000 and put it up for auction after two months and sell it for USm.” Hence the need, as he puts it, to “choose” the buyer. “She’d done a couple of shows before we took her on, and we don’t have control over what happens to those earlier paintings. But now, if we have 100 people who want to buy one, we aim to make a placement that will enhance her standing and reputation.” In other words, they’ll aim to sell to a museum “whether that’s a public or a private one”. Not least “because that way the work is highly unlikely to come back on the market”. Take Njideka Akunyili Crosby, whose large-scale fusions of paint, acrylic transfer and collage Scott Wright first encountered in 2012. “Almost everything she’s produced in the last 10 years has gone to a museum,” he says. (Her work can now be found in more than a dozen important institutional collections across the US, the Metropolitan and Whitney among them, as well as Tate and Zeitz MOCAA in Cape Town.) “I think only two have gone to private collectors,” he says, wise to the fact that five or six years ago, what few works of hers were in private hands were selling for millions when, exceptionally, they came to market. (Since 2018 only a single significant one has been consigned.) With a handful of obvious exceptions – let’s not forget Jeff Koons began his career as a commodities broker on Wall Street – making big money is less of a motivation for an artist than having their work seen and leaving a legacy. So whatever anyone says about the venality of the art market, a blue-chip gallery will Victoria Miro‘s co-director Glenn Scott Wright A good art consultant is a way to get access to highly sought-after work. If we have a track record with them, we’ll [be reassured] their clients are good too – Glenn Scott Wright always be protective of its primary assets. Hauser & Wirth’s global CEO Ewan Venters may have had a career that’s taken him from citrus buying for one of the UK’s largest supermarket chains to head of the venerable grocer Fortnum & Mason, but even for him, it’s all about the artists now. “We are extraordinarily artist-centric,” he says. “Everything we do is about them. Because without them and their work, there is nothing.” CENTURION-MAGAZINE.COM 59
