|Reſlections| Andy
|Reſlections| Andy Warhol’s Self Portrait (1986) on view at Sotheby’s Macklowe Collection auction in May 2022; below right: Maddox Gallery CEO John Russo poses in front of Invader’s Ohh...Alright (2011), left, and Sunset (Blue and White) (1994) Then again, it’s a hyper-discreet world, so art advisers aren’t always easy to find. (Nilani Trent’s Trent Fine Art Advisory, for example, has nothing so vulgar as a website.) In the US, there is an Association of Professional Art Advisors, which has more than 170 members – you have to be invited to join – pledged to adhere to a code of ethics and never to accept a commission for vendors or maintain their own inventory of works for sale. Elsewhere, finding one is a question of asking around and trusting your instinct. If the role of an adviser is, in Paulson’s words, to know “what has staying power and what defines those artists” who have it and whose work has remained “fresh and interesting over the years”, it is also about giving their clients the confidence to trust their instincts. “There are so many people who really want to collect but are afraid of making mistakes. Well, that’s why we’re here, to demystify it all.” Given the scale of the subject, the most obvious consideration when looking for an adviser is to find one whose expertise chimes with whatever it is you are planning to collect. In London, Clore Wyndham Fine Art was incorporated in 2016 by Melanie Clore and Henry Wyndham, both former chairs of Sotheby’s Europe, the former a specialist in Imps and Mods (as the auction houses dub Impressionist and Modern), the latter an expert on Old Masters. While Art Intelligence Global, which has offices in New York and Hong Kong, was co-founded by two more ex- Sotheby’s “rainmakers”, Amy Cappellazzo, a specialist in Post-War and Contemporary (PWC as it’s known in the trade) and formerly global head of fine art at the auction house, and Yuki Terase, a former head of contemporary art, Asia, in order to capitalise on what Terase calls “the start of a new chapter for the art market in Asia, which has taken extraordinary strides in the past few years. Our aim is to bring top-tier Western art to Asia and vice versa.” Of course, advice at this level comes at a price. No one I spoke to would divulge a one-size-fits-all fee, but most require a commitment to a certain level of spending and make their money by levying a commission of five to 10 per cent on whatever they acquire on your behalf. Others charge a retainer of ,000 to ,000 a year, plus commission. To be a client of The Fine Art Group, which has headquarters in New York and London and partnerships in Hong Kong (with Patti Wong, another Sotheby’s ex-chair), Belgium, Dubai and Australia, you must undertake to spend at least million on art, says its founder Philip Hoffman (a former CFO and deputy chief executive, Europe, of Christie’s). “It doesn’t have to be over a year, though typically it will be,” he says. “And some of our clients spend astronomical sums.” PHOTO 34 CENTURION-MAGAZINE.COM
PHOTO © MADDOX GALLERY, © VG BILD-KUNST, BONN 2023; OPPOSITE PAGE: TRISTAN FEWINGS / GETTY IMAGES FOR SOTHEBY’S But in the long run, he is confident their advice will both save his clients money and potentially generate significant returns for them. A lot of new collectors “don’t have a clue what they’re doing and have wasted huge amounts of money before they come to us. We stop them buying 90 per cent of the art they look at because it’s overpriced, wrong, fake, forged or damaged,” he says. And by “buying privately and selling at auction”, they minimise what their clients pay in fees. “We transact between 0 million and a couple of billion of art every year, so we get access to huge numbers of deals. But the majority of people can’t access the opportunity to buy privately. And unless you know your way around the art market, the fees” – from galleries’ commission to auction-house premiums – “can ruin your returns.” Hoffman’s Fine Art Group sees art very much as an asset and in addition to its advisory role, it operates funds its clients can invest in. “In general, we’ve made money on 84 per cent of every artwork we’ve bought for a fund. We’re probably the only company in the world with an audited track record. KPMG are our auditors. We were buying art in the sort of 0,000 to million bracket, mainly contemporary and modern, from the top 1,000 artists in the world.” (He has, he says, bought Old Masters, “but we don’t any more, and I wouldn’t recommend it.”) He is not the only art-world insider to talk up art as a tradable asset. “Art makes an extremely strong case to be in everyone’s investment portfolio,” says John Russo, CEO of Maddox Gallery, which lists among the artists in whose work it deals bankers like Warhol, Basquiat and Haring, as well as living artists such as George Condo, Art makes an extremely strong case to be in everyone’s investment portfolio – John Russo, Maddox Gallery CEO Kaws, Jeff Koons, Yayoi Kusama, Takashi Murakami, Harland Miller, Yoshitomo Nara, Ed Ruscha, Jonas Wood and Christopher Wool – blue-chip names all. His business is essentially a gallery with an “advisory service [that] starts with works at around £10,000”. It sells a lot of prints. “But we’ve sold pieces in excess of £2 million.” And over the past six years, his clients have, he says, seen “an average annual return of 26.4 per cent. “Art has consistently outperformed the FTSE 100,” he insists (not that the two are directly comparable). “It’s a much more sensible investment than leaving it in your bank account earning bugger all interest.” But it’s really not about making a fast buck, he insists. “We actively discourage flipping. We say, look, minimum two to three years, and we actively encourage a threeto-five-year hold for the most profitable and likeliest success.” And then, if you “want to upgrade to another work, the sale of an older work will allow you to do that”. There is no ongoing charge for its advice, though its advisers “get a small commission”. And if, in time, you decide to consign a work you’ve bought from them, “we simply take a 20 per cent fee based on the profit that we’ve achieved for the client”. Which, compared with the premiums levied by auction houses, is not a bad deal. Still, as Paulson points out, trends that turn speculative don’t always turn out well. “Looking back, you feel wistful, almost sad, because there were some very good artists who, for whatever reason, were never able to carry the momentum they [once] had,” she says. Hence her definition of a good adviser as someone who gives informed advice “and doesn’t just follow a trend”. So perhaps there is wisdom in the bromide that, ultimately, the best advice is to buy what you love and are confident you’ll always find pleasure in looking at. Just as long, that is, as you’re confident it’s a prime example of the artist’s oeuvre, in excellent condition and you’re not paying over the odds. To be certain of that, it’s probably just as well to seek expert opinion. CENTURION-MAGAZINE.COM 35
