It is here in Oz and the US that the art of gambling on an artwork has taken off most…..or an artist….and the market tends to favour the ‘new’ or the ‘young’ as there is an obvious tendency for those works to increase in value especially in the short term……

However, in Europe, the values you mention are the strong indicators for investment purposes and they are not so prone to gamble…..

In Russia at the hermitage, indeed they are trying to make some sense of being able to set guidelines for value but are hampered by the various ways we ‘see’ art.

The Australian Tax Office seems to have a grip on what an artist is though surprisingly…….

but that’s for another day!

nJoy

Art is always valued by the perceptions of the viewer. It is good advice indeed to only buy what you can live with as you may have to!

There is no yardstick by which one can assess the value of an artist or their work as even within the artist’s life, they can produce from the banal to the confident, from the simple to the deeply philosophical. And there are many of the old master’s works that lay around and when ‘found’ are still considered to be far less worthy than other pieces that have say been picked up by major museums.

The fact that we can’t price art by the square inch is both it’s saving grace and it’s blight! Each work needs to be taken on it’s own merit and in the circumstances that it has been produced. And sometimes, it’s relevance to the world at large grows and often, over time it loses relevance.

Heaven help us all when we can objectively walk up to a piece of art and pull out the rule book and confidently make it’s price! All the fun (and mystery) and challenge of art would disappear in a flash!

A sculptor once said to me that he couldn’t for the life of him understand ‘flat art’! As a flat art maker, I know what he is alluding to….

Often collectors ( and speculators alike) get caught up in the glamour of the artist, or of the moment, get attracted to the entertainment of art, the allure of the artwork or artist and do not make ‘good’ decisions about investment…..but is art really about investment at the end of the day.

Whilst I think it’s great that people want to jump on the bandwagon and be seen to ‘know’ about art by collecting (or investing) in it, is that really what art is about?

For me as an artist, the art is always about that moment when standing before the canvas, one realises that they have achieved what they have truly set out to achieve, a piece of work that truly expresses the truth of their life, their vision…….in that moment one has created an art work…….whether it goes on to adorn someone’s walls, or sit in their vault waiting to be resold at a higher price is inconsequential to the act of making art. They are the voyeurs! They are the watchers to that sensual moment when an artist is complete in themselves with their work…however fleeting…….

Thanks to the ‘outsiders’ to my world, I can make some money to help me with this disease called ‘being an artist’…but beyond the creation of the work, what happens to the artwork is for the most part inconsequential. Whilst one hopes that an artwork goes on to achieve some life of it’s own, it’s far more important to get on with the next expression and creation……

Thank you for your great blogspot. I really enjoy it as it gives me a valuable insight as to how others see art……how they devalue it by making it a commodity or worse a speculative asset……how they often miss what the artwork is about.

it is sad that in this contemporary world, there is more talk of an artwork’s monetary value than of it’s content and what it conveys…..the meaning of the work……

nJoy

Thanks for the comment. History has shown that people tend to favour the more familiar and more stable work of old masters and the blue chip modern masters during times of economic crisis. This trend should progress as the difficult financial times continue. There has, however, been less of a move away from contemporary art than I would have thought which I believe is a positive indication that the art market has survived the economic crisis better than one would have expected.

Nick