Thursday

Thoughts

Art simply will not die

Commonly, people say Visual Arts and Visual Art sales since 1980 is similar to the flicker of a flame, waning and then strong, at best. This is because, statistically, yes, the arts are down, but this is only relative to multi-million dollar art sales taking place day after day. Like art itself, the market is dependent on the opinion (or confidence) people have in it. When their confidence is weary, that is, when their perception is distorted, they buy less, and the market is then regurgitated back to them over and over again, consistently recreating our fears by reminding us that the market is “down.” Down? According to whom? They’ve been trying to say the arts are down, but I know that it’s not.

A smaller, more recent, example of this entire scenario taking place happened in late 2007, when people’s imaginary fears of a weak market allowed 20 of Jeff Koons’ lots and a painting by Van Gogh to go unsold causing a 28% drop in Bid shares the following day. After a week of wallet-weariness people decided, on the advice of some economist perhaps, to go ahead and purchase $23.6 million of Jeff’s work, setting 16 price records. Other artists were also involved in the record-setting.

Another example of this happened on Friday, March 28th 2008, when in the midst of a nationwide recession and pandemic monetary fears, the Armory show, in New York, performed massively well. The only thing first-time presenter Simon Lee could remark about ‘evident’ market woes was that, “a client put a [piece of art] on reserve, at $480,000 … then came back and said ‘no, that’s too much at the present time’.”
The rest of his paintings were sold at familiar prices. Furthermore, because this problem emanates in America, European art collectors travel here for bargain art deals, making America somewhat of a Costco for art connoisseurs. A weary market is definitely a false perception.

Perception must be an art in itself because buyers who are incapable of perceiving the reality of art in life are like deer frozen in headlights, or sheep petrified by fear; they jam-up the flow of the market, instill fear in the people behind them, and create unnecessary fluctuations in the sales and shares of art. Moreover, it also becomes like a monster looming over the economy as if art had bad credit debt; when in reality more artists are making money and gaining status from the direct, and subsequent, sales of their art now then ever. This is true to the effect that on the beaches of California you’ll see waves upon waves of artists with their stands and flip-flops, painting and selling their art for a living, seeming simply naive to the times.

An example of that happened on April 8th 2008, when an art show inspired by the nation’s economic recession opened in Washington DC. The art being sold there was made as a direct measure to stimulate spending for the economy. So not only are potential-buyer fears irrational because there is no art-depression, but they are also irrational because art consumption seems to be the potential antithesis of economic recession as a whole anyway.

The economy of art is, statistically, down, but only because of our false perceptions. Visual arts, however, will never be down as long as there are more and more buyers for all forms of it. As long as any demand for art to showcase in our homes exists, arts will not be down. As long as lavishly rich art collectors are using their hoards of money to pay significant sums to artists and art foundations, art simply will not die.