prestige trophy brands in a hyper-expensive extension of the luxury industry, detached from traditional notions of connoisseurial and historical value. “Arnault and Pinault helped the art world rise to the top of the luxury-market pyramid for today’s new global consumers,” says Neal Meltzer, a New Yorkbased art adviser and a former head of contemporary art at Christie’s. “What used to be more intuitive and predictable now feels seasonal or fashionable.” But then, how can he advise clients on what art might be a good long-term investment? “If I could advise on the next five years, I’d be doing well,” says Meltzer. “Fashion is not quite the same as history. The gamble is, what is going to stick. Maybe we’ll revert back to the classics. We just don’t know.” None of this would surprise a college sociology department. In 2013, the German scholar Hartmut Rosa published Social Acceleration: A New Theory of Modernity, which posits that the dizzying pace of technological change has made time seem to flow ever faster. The accelerated tempo of our lives “shrinks” the present, making our brains concentrate more than ever on “the now”, marginalising both past and future. And then there is the great takeaway from Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter’s 2006 study, The Rebel Sell: How the Counterculture Became Consumer Culture, that “cool” has usurped class as the predominant status symbol in the United States. Little wonder, then, that the “exemplary passion, the passion for perfection at any price” that for Henry James characterised art collecting in his 1904 novel, The Golden Bowl, has given way to what sociologists now call the “consumption experience”. Add to this the growing recognition that the art historical canon is disproportionately dominated by dead white males, then it’s hardly surprising that traditional blue-chip artists aren’t quite as reliable an investment as they used to be. Take the example of the 1967 white single-cut painting Concetto Spaziale, Attese by the Italian conceptual artist Lucio Fontana, which was offered with a low estimate of US million at Christie’s in London during Frieze Week in October. Fontana’s monochromatic slash paintings have been a successful staple of the European art market for decades, and this trademark example had been in the same private collection since 2007. Yet it failed to sell, leaving the owner with an illiquid asset that has in all probability dropped a digit in financial value. “The notion of blue-chip art is completely misunderstood,” says the influential New York adviser Josh Baer, whose Baer Faxt online newsletter is compulsory reading for industry insiders. “For me, there are probably only three or four contemporary artists in the world that I would describe as blue-chip – Calder, Picasso and Richter. Maybe a few others,” adds Baer. “To be a blue-chip artist, there always has to be a buyer. When you sell a blue-chip stock like IBM there is always a buyer. If you want to sell a Cy Twombly, there isn’t necessarily one.” That said, although 37 per cent of respondents to Art Basel and UBS’s 2023 Survey of Global Collecting said that “self-identity or self-esteem” was the most important motivation for their buying art, 28 per cent opted for financial investment as their primary consideration. “As soon as you buy a work of art, it’s generally worth less. Apart from a few in-demand artists, it’s like buying a new car. You drive it a mile down the road and it’s worth 20 per cent less,” cautions Baer. “Most big collectors made their financial gains from just a few works. In the case of 80-90 per cent of their collection, they didn’t get their money back,” he adds. “Generally, it’s easier to buy art than sell it.” So if ultra-contemporary art is an unpredictable gamble and many blue-chip names aren’t as safe a bet as they used to be, where can the investment-minded collector find long-term value? With traditional art history no longer much of a guide and an increasing equivalence in buyers’ minds between value and price, those with plenty of money to spend on art increasingly back market-proven brands. JMW Turner, or at least the later, impressionistic JMW Turner, is pretty much the only pre-20th-century British artist that international collectors consistently regard as a trophy brand. Earlier this year, a spontaneous Turner watercolour sketch, Coastal Sunset near Margate, thought to date from the 1830s, was sold by the London dealer Guy Peppiatt for about US0,000. In July, the similarly dated, but larger and even more vivid Turner sketch, Sunrise over the Sea, fetched US.3 million at Christie’s. Both works date from the time when, later in life, the artist stayed with his companion, Mrs Booth, on the north Kent coast. 94
“Turner is the only English watercolourist bought by other types of collectors, and they all want later Turner,” says Peppiatt. “These Margate sketches are quite rare. But they’re often resold within five years. The buyers either get bored with them or want to try to make money,” Peppiatt adds. Later in July in London, Phillips hosted the selling exhibition, Where the Land meets the Sea, of some 100 new Damien Hirst oils-on-canvas in three series and various sizes inspired by the artist’s “lifelong connection with the sea” and “influenced by Abstract Expressionism”. Following the recent runaway commercial success of Hirst’s highly decorative Cherry Blossom series, these similarly splodgy, but more sombre paintings were priced between US0,000 and US.3 million, the same range as those two Turners. Hirst’s agent, HENI Primary, and his dealers, Gagosian and White Cube, declined to comment on sales. While watercolours and oils are two very different media with different market dynamics, the presence in the London trade of these late seascapes by two of Britain’s most famous “brand” artists, separated by 200 years, invited perplexing comparisons of both aesthetic and financial value. Of course, if you have enough funds, and not enough time to research artists and cultivate gallerists, one way of better navigating these perplexities is to hire a professional art adviser. “We help our clients avoid mistakes,” said the highly regarded New York art adviser Kimberly Gould, shortly before her tragically premature death, aged 50, in Paris in October. “We start by asking what the client’s goals are, and generally focus on one wall or one residence. We typically put together a presentation outlining many different price points, genres and mediums. Collectors tend to start developing an aesthetic and direction quickly,” added Gould, whose company has a reputation for enabling its clients, even newer clients, to acquire works by the most sought-after emerging names from taste-making contemporary dealerships. “We stick with a formula of buying the best works, from the best series, from the best artists, from the best galleries,” said Gould, explaining how she helped clients avoid making mistakes. But in an era of social acceleration ever more focussed on “the now”, the “best” art almost always means art less than 100 years old, or, more likely, less than 10 months old. This leaves huge quantities of good, often superb art from different eras and cultures overlooked by the fashion-consciousness of today’s market. For the gallery price of a new painting by an on-trend young artist that may or may not be worth more in 10 years, it is possible to buy a really fine Old Master drawing, or a Durer or Goya print, or an exceptional piece of Chinese Song-dynasty ceramic, or an 18th-century Mughal miniature painting, or a piece of French medieval sculpture, or a 500BC ancient Greek black-figure vase … The list is as long as human history. A century ago, pretty well every self-respecting robber baron collector used to buy such things. Hardly any wealthy collectors have such eclectic taste now. The London-based private dealer and collector Ivor Braka is one of the few who does. “It’s a wonderful time for connoisseurs. They can buy tremendous things. There’s value in many, many sections of the art market,” says Braka, whose London home is decorated with English neogothic furniture, Italian Futurist sculpture, Arts and Crafts movement silver, as well as canvases by Cecily Brown, currently one of the art world’s most coveted abstract painters. “There is no downside to collecting this stuff. I buy it because I love it,” adds Braka. “This is a good store of value for posterity.” So there you have it. Buy what you like, let it give you pleasure and don’t worry about the money. That, it seems, continues to be the true long-term value of art, whatever the price. As soon as you buy a work of art, it’s generally worth less. Apart from a few indemand artists, it’s like buying a new car. You drive it a mile down the road and it’s worth 20 per cent less — Josh Baer, art adviser 95
