Herb and Dorothy

Megumi Sasaki's documentary about New York art collectors Herb and Dorothy Vogel is included in this year's World Cinema Showcase. It's showing in Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin between late March and early May.

Web Muster

Another awesome post about museums and the benefits of transparency (IMA blog)

Koons's train project for LACMA stalled (Bloomberg)

A round-up of (financially) 'ethically-dubious' exhibitions (Financial Times)

Paul McCarthy takes on fairytales (NYTimes)

Making exhibitions for men - condescension or irony? (NYTimes)

Matthew Collings on beauty in art (Telegraph)

Staff in French cultural institutions strike over potential cuts (Guardian)

Also a touch condescending: interest-free scheme encourages "the ordinary man" to buy art (Telegraph)

Special report on the art market (The Economist)

Zing

My Name is Charles Saatchi and I Am an Artoholic, by Charles Saatchi & published by Phaidon, is released on 8 September. The book records his answers to questions from critics, journalists and the public, to whit:

Do you think you have messed up anybody's life by flogging off all their work?

I don't buy art just to make artists happy any more than I want to make them sad if I sell their work. Don't you think you're being a bit melodramatic?

More extracts are available on the Guardian site

Sweetart

The story of New York art collectors Dorothy and Herbert Vogel has to be one of the most endearing in 20th-century art history. Dorothy, a librarian, and Herbert, a postal clerk, have acquired over 4,000 works together since marrying in 1962 (they marked their engagement with a Picasso ceramic).

The couple made the decision to live off Dorothy's income and devote Herb's income to buying art. Their story reflects that of several other collector-couples I know; the enduring relationships of mutual support and enjoyment with artists, the early adoption of new artists and trends, and the utter lack of regard for the question "where the hell it go?".

In 1992 the Vogels entered an agreement with the National Gallery of Art, and since then over 1000 works from their collection have either been donated or promised as gifts to the NGA. In 2008 an even bigger scheme was announced: The Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection: Fifty Works for Fifty States. 2,500 works from the Vogel's collection are being distributed through the programme.

The 50x50 website is one of the most enjoyable art sites I've seen. Only 350-ish artworks have made it up there, but the way the Vogels' story is told through text, image, video and audio is lovely, and interlinking between artworks, artists, and institutions is nicely handled.

I spent quite a lot of time clicking around - more than I spend on the average gallery site, digitised collection or exhibition website. I think this was because the scope is broad - nearly 50 years' of art - but the narrative is tight, and you can take one without the other. The search by date feature I found particularly appealing, perhaps because it's tied to people's lives. (I buy a bit of art every now and then, and when I look around the house, each piece is tied to a person, event or milestone - that roadtrip, that birthday, that job change) . The site obviously has a lot of content to add, but there's something delightful about it, without being the least bit hokey - kinda like I imagine the Vogels to be.

Advice for collectors

"If shaky finances mean you've put the freeze on your art collection, leave an empty space on the wall and tell guests you've lent your Cy Twombly / Ed Ruscha / Bridget Riley to MoMA for a year"

-- Vogue's advice for thrifty chic, April 2009.

On private collectors and their public displays

I like the stories behind the creation and growth of art collections.

One of the things I've noticed is that the stories of private collectors are usually less self-recriminating than those of institutions ("we got mugged by the local arts society" "we let some lady in Britain make all the calls on international purchases for two decades" "we're underfunded" "we just didn't understand X artist at the time").

This is not to say that public collecting institutions are not sometimes brave, or even inspired, in what they buy (or emotionally charged about what they don't buy: there's a great telegram in the Auckland Art Gallery Library where Peter Tomory vents his annoyance to a colleague after missing out on some old master: "Nuts repeat nuts lose this bargain"*).

But I think it's interesting that when a private collector puts their accumulated works out on display, it's the personality as much as the art that goes on public trial. Would a journalist writing about a collection show at MoMA, for example, query whether it was essentially a self-promotional activity to show how great the curator is, as Agnes Poirer suggests about Francois Pinault's newly opened gallery in Venice?. Or, likewise, charge the curator with being "a bit cavalier with the works he buys and shows" as Adrian Searle does in this this review of the latest Saatchi Gallery show?

Personally, as a visitor to both public and private collections, it's the story about why a collector chose to throw in their lot with these particular works that fascinates me. I'd love to see more presence of the curator-as-collector in public galleries. It's all about making me care.


*Inexact mental transcription of a record not seen in 6 years

Advice to collectors

Just noticed Over the net's latest A2C post, and remembered this gem from the New York Magazine that caught my eye last week ....

Erica Orden writes: "Let’s be clear: Buying art is always a luxury, and especially right now. That said, if you’re sitting on a little money and craving a little beauty, now may in fact be a good time to buy."

Ooh, I have a little money Erica. What should I go for?

Erica recommends:

An under-valued Frank Stella (est. $1.2-1.8 million) (yes - American $)

A lesser Bridget Riley (est. $50,000-70,000)

An Eric Fischl (est. $800,000-$1.2 million) ("if you take a mid- to long-term perspective, his market price has to be adjusted as going up,” says Simon de Pury)

An under-performing Donald Judd (estimates starting at $300,00 and topping out at $800,000)

So, Erica, turns out I missed those vital words bedded in the midst of that one long para; my idea of "a little money" differs from yours ("several hundred thousand") by a factor of of a couple of zeroes. Maybe next time.

Also in this series:

Relative bargains you can't afford

Predicting the art stars of the future

What you can get with $10,000

Not in it for the money ....

Our own Venice 09 rep Francis Upritchard is one of eight artists (along with the likes of Gavin Turk and Anya Gallaccio) talking about art and the market in the Guardian today.

Twitter post for my blog

Today I am pondering: what does 'value for money' mean when you're talking about art?

Opportunities (for the PSBs)

The economy is flailing - but will art prices come down?

One of the interesting points I picked up in The $12 Million Stuffed Shark was that it's very hard for dealers to put the prices of their artists' work down. Whether the work's getting better or worse, prices have to go up - or at least remain stable. However, dealers can give clients a quiet discount - and not-so-quiet clients can ask for them outright.

All questions of the connections between the art market and financial markets (and doing the dirty on your dealer) aside, by taking new work straight to the market via auction Damien Hirst got what people were prepared at that exact moment to pay for it. (BTW, some of the best commentary on this whole hoo-ha is here and here on Art Market Monitor)

The idea of people going to auctions to "pick up deals" makes me deeply uncomfortable. I hate seeing a great work going for a song - mostly because I find that somehow disrespectful to the artist. Sure, it's not the auction house's job to look out for individual artists' reputations by guarding the prices, and sure, fashion plays a strong part in the vagaries of the secondary market, but I still don't like it.

Anyway - what got me thinking about this today was Judd Tully's Art + Auction article Wrangling Over Resales which includes this quote:

Although the wording varies, these clauses basically require or request the buyer to agree, in writing or otherwise, to give the gallery or artist the right of first refusal, usually for a limited time, when the work is about to be resold. A typical clause appears in the invoices of the Chelsea dealer Friederich Petzel: “If the purchaser decides to sell this work within five years of purchase, the gallery will have the right of first refusal to buy back the work at fair market value. Fair market value shall be determined by the gallery’s retail price for works of similar scale and significance at the time of resale and/or auction house estimates, if applicable.”

In this case, resale agreement work two ways: they stop speculators (or speculating collectors) from flipping a work in 6 months for a big profit, but they also protect an artist if the market for their work slumps. Their dealer can quietly buy it back rather than see it achieve a bad price - which could create disparities in the pricing of work in the primary market and the resale market. As noted on Art Market Monitor:

What the article doesn’t say is that the art market may finally be moving to a greater acceptance of transactions as part of the life of a work of art–not unlike a museum show or a retrospective. Of course, that would require dealers to be more accepting of the idea that an artist’s value might fluctuate over time.

All of this is a bit heavy, of course, so to leaven today's post - a cartoon from ArtWorldSalon about arty Facebook status updates (click to enlarge):

Now reading

If, like me, you're fascinated by tales of art collectors and semi-fascinated by the machinations of dealers and auction houses, Art Market Monitor is must-add to your feedreader.

I'd put it up there with Arts Journal and Tim Paul's Museum Hours as one of my favourite clearing-house sites.

I recently finished reading Don Thompson's The $12 Million Stuffed Shark: The Curious Economics of Art and Auction Houses.

Like the art widow book, it had me alternatively engrossed (especially the bit about art institutions deaccessioning via sealed bid auctions) and squeaking with frustration (maybe - just maybe - some of these artists are actually amazing, not just mega-well-branded).

I almost quit at the introductory chapter though, when Thompson ruled out writing about photography because he's not that sure it's art. He doesn't really get it, he says, so he'll stick to paintings and sculpture.

I can't quite believe that people who obviously care about and are interested in art still stick at photography. So I'm throwing the question open here:

poll by twiigs.com

Is it really still okay to call people "spinsters"?

That's the unmarried women spinster, not the media type.

Art: What motivates big collectors to do what they do? - Edward Sozanski

Kernels

A wee while ago I was musing about collection policies. Today I read this extract from an interview with Ron Radford (director of the National Gallery of Australia) in the winter Art & Australia, where Radford talks about the shift in direction for the NGA's collecting activities since his appointment in 2004, and (echoing Nicolas Penny) the waning appeal of the blockbuster.

Reading the extract reminded me of how impressed I was when I read Radford's 2005 vision document (warning: 1MB PDF) for the NGA. Don't get me wrong here - I don't spend my weekends reading mission statements and director's forewords (well - not often). But I did thrill to Radford's proud emphasis on the importance of the collection. Call me old-fashioned, but how can you not admire statements like this?

The collections are the core of the National Gallery of Australia — they must remain the kernel of the building and the central focus of the institution. No blockbuster exhibition can ever be as large, as valuable, as wide-ranging and as consistently high in quality as the collection displays.

Three links for Tuesday

Busy busy day, so it's a link round-up, I'm afraid ....

The Otago University Art History and Theory blog is written largely by (post-grad?) students. Posting is a little erratic, but definitely worth subscribing to the feed so you catch the occasional gem, like this assessment of Hamish Keith's 'The Big Picture'.

For type-freaks - The Ampersand, a blog devoted to the elegant &.

And Jerry Saltz's latest column on Louise Lawler, who photographs artworks in collectors homes, in galleries, in auction houses and in museum storage. The review contain's this week's best sentence:

To see a Delaunay crowded behind a TV, a Warhol “Green Stamps” painting on a hideous red wall, or an extraordinary Mondrian behind an armchair is like seeing how meat is processed.

A little sugar in my bowl

I've been pondering recently what it must be like to be a curator in charge of buying for a contemporary art collection. How do you spend your budget?

Do you collect horizontally (as widely as possible across the spectrum of art being made at any given time) or vertically (collecting in depth a few artists who you believe to be of greatest importance)? Do you try to represent an artist's oeuvre with a single outstanding (probably expensive) piece, or do you buy around the fringes - a small painting, a set of prints, a couple of drawings instead of the epic canvas?

Do you focus your acquisitions on works to appear in/which have appeared in your exhibitions? I s'pose this is particularly significant when you're commissioning new work for a show - but what do you do if the commission produces a dud work?

How much of a personal take is desirable? And what about staff turnover: are 5 different personal takes in the span of 20 years going to create an invigorated or a haphazard collection? Might buying by committee result in a well-rounded collection, or will the usual death-by-committee rule apply?

To try to answer some of my mulling, I went to some websites. Auckland Art Gallery told me that they were NZ's oldest and biggest arts institution, but didn't give me a collections policy to look at, or an outline of the areas they're actively collecting in. Te Papa has a collections policy page, but it didn't give me any specific information about how works are selected for the art collection (although I did find out that they have a responsibility to "collect works of art and items relating to history and the natural environment" a sentence which puzzled me until I inserted a mental comma after the word 'art'). Christchurch confirmed that they focus on significant Cantabrians, but the link to their Collections Policy brought up a quite terrifying Community Artworks Process Diagram (warning: PDF. second warning: I think this illustrates my 'death-by-committee' point). Dunedin is focusing on contemporary work.

The gallery that gave me the most information was the Govett-Brewster. Even if the recent acquisitions page doesn't appear to have been updated for a while, they give interesting detail, including acknowledging their deaccessioning policy. Normally I find the GBAG site frustrating, but today they win the rosette.

Money and criticism

Adrian Searle asks in the Guardian: Has big money displaced the role of the critic?

Searle says:

At almost every international art fair over the past few years, there has been a panel discussion about the crisis in art criticism. I have found myself talking about the topic in London, Madrid, Berlin and Miami. ...

... There is indeed something faintly ludicrous in sitting around at an art fair talking about criticism. Never has the art market been stronger. Never has money been so powerful. Never have so many artists got so rich, and never has there been such alarming stuff on sale. Never have critics felt so out of the loop.

Searle also cites Jerry Saltz:

"At no time in the last 50 years has what an art critic writes had less effect on the market than now."

My first reaction was "Huh? You think criticism is there to influence collectors?". I mean, statistically, that's not the case. These statements are a bit of a red herring though - for Searle, criticism seems to boil down to the need to "[meet] art with more than silence". Critics' writing becomes part of the meaning that accrues around an art work over time.

There was a semi-diverting thread on Artbash a wee while ago about art criticism - and a comment that there's a difference between art reviewing and art journalism. The Listener seems to have opted for the latter, with none of last year's art reviewers appearing to have made the move over with new arts editor Guy Somerset.

I might start asking more people why they write criticism - or if that's even what they think they're writing....

Thoroughly decent

The net is awash this morning with the news that London dealer and collector Anthony d'Offay is semi-gifting his huge collection to the nation.

I say semi-gifting, because d'Offay is selling the collection, valued at around £125m, for £28m: the original purchase price of the works, plus a fee to cover the administration of the acquisition. The British and Scottish governments are each putting up £10m; the Art Fund is stumping up £1m and National Heritage Memorial Fund £7m. Work on the deal apparently began in 2006.

The collection - to be known as 'Artist Rooms' - will be administered by the Tate and the National Galleries of Scotland, but is intended to be shown throughout Britain.

Read more about it at the Guardian site, Adrian Searle's view on the Guardian blog, Ed Winkleman on his blog.

A lump of coal in your stocking

The announcement that influential LA collector Eli Broad will create an independent foundation to maintain control of his collection, rather than gifting it to a museum (or museums) is creating chatter on the American blogs. The foundation will loan the works to museums.

The announcement is seen as a particular slap in the face for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), which is due to open the Renzo Piano-designed, Eli Broad-financed Broad Contemporary Art Museum next month. One of Broad's reasons for his decision is his concern no museum has space to place a large portion of his 2000+ piece collection on permanent display.

The most interesting quote for me in the article was this:

Mr. Broad ... said he did not view his decision as a vote of no confidence in the museum. Rather, he said, it represents no less than a new paradigm for the way museums in general collect art and interact with one another.

“I think it’s a new model that makes sense for other collections,” he said. “If it was up to me, I believe that museums ought to own works jointly.” Mr. Broad encouraged that practice last year with his purchase of a work by the artist Chris Burden, which he then gave jointly to the county museum and another Los Angeles institution, the Museum of Contemporary Art, where he was a founding trustee.

Image: The Broad Contemporary Art Museum under contruction, photo from the New York Times.

Beware the gallerinas

An article of tips for beginner collectors on artinfo.com concludes:

In the end, though, [collector W.M.] Hunt told ARTINFO the most important thing to do when buying art is to "commit, commit, commit! Look at the hair on the back of your hands, listen to your heart, figure out if you can afford it, and then commit!"

Is this a guy thing? I don't get a lot of guidance from my hand hair. What does your hand hair say to you?