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The Great Contemporary Art Bubble
Last week saw a slump in prices at the New York contemporary sales. Christie’s took the lead from its competitors, Sotheby’s and Phillips de Pury, taking $93.7 million, but it was a far cry from the $348.2 million they pulled in this time last year. And on Monday, TV art critic and Evening Standard journalist Ben Lewis aired his latest documentary The Great Contemporary Art Bubble, in which he gives the same auction houses a thorough riding.
In it he alleged that they were guilty, along with collectors, dealers and even artists, of creating a bubble that forced the prices of artworks ever skyward. But with the exception of a few choice nuggets (it was Lewis, for example, who leaked a document from White Cube detailing their massive store of Damien Hirsts to the Art Newspaper last autumn), this was all stuff we already knew: dealers underbid on their artists’ work to protect their prices; auction houses lend money to their buyers; and the art market in the last few years has been awash with credit and empty hype. Lewis wasn’t granted access to the auction houses but he did snag some interviews with a few key collectors, notably Aby Rosen and Alberto Mugrabi (both of which have appeared on past ArtReview Power 100 lists). Initially happy to talk, Mugrabi discussed his large holdings of Andy Warhols and didn’t flinch when Lewis asked some difficult questions: Why did he buy up so much of Warhol’s work? Why should it be OK for a private individual to own most of the world’s Warhols when it was illegal in other industries to have a monopoly? It was only later, after Lehman Brothers tanked and prices started to fall, that Lewis encountered difficulty getting his subjects to open up. Lewis attempts to talk to Rosen outside Phillips after the discouraging autumn 2008 sale but with barely a patrician flick of the collector’s silver mullet, gets the heave-ho.
But when has the art world not been peopled with morally ambiguous types? When have the workings of the art market been fully transparent? As well as being a filter of experience and a means of looking at the world anew, art is also a commodity, and a handy one at that. You can sink a lot of money into a small painting and move it around much more easily than you could with, say, a store of copper. It’s an attractive proposition to the moneyed modern man. (Incidentally, no female collectors made the final cut in The Great Contemporary Art Bubble.) And why is it so problematic when prices for art sky rocket? As a friend working in the public sector quipped as we watched the program, “It isn’t public money, so why should we care?” Well, perhaps – as Lewis points out – because donating an expensive piece of art to a public institution provides the donor with a nice tax break. And because our museums are forced to compete with these prices when they purchase a work of art. But in a recession, as the current row over MPs’ expenses shows, public institutions have to be very careful about how they choose to spend their money.
Lewis rounds up the program saying the recent epoch in art will be regarded in years to come as one of great folly. He may well be right. But just as the wealthy will continue to buy works of art, so artists will continue to create invigorating works of art that challenge and engage. And that, at least, is a cheering thought. Laura Allsop
In it he alleged that they were guilty, along with collectors, dealers and even artists, of creating a bubble that forced the prices of artworks ever skyward. But with the exception of a few choice nuggets (it was Lewis, for example, who leaked a document from White Cube detailing their massive store of Damien Hirsts to the Art Newspaper last autumn), this was all stuff we already knew: dealers underbid on their artists’ work to protect their prices; auction houses lend money to their buyers; and the art market in the last few years has been awash with credit and empty hype. Lewis wasn’t granted access to the auction houses but he did snag some interviews with a few key collectors, notably Aby Rosen and Alberto Mugrabi (both of which have appeared on past ArtReview Power 100 lists). Initially happy to talk, Mugrabi discussed his large holdings of Andy Warhols and didn’t flinch when Lewis asked some difficult questions: Why did he buy up so much of Warhol’s work? Why should it be OK for a private individual to own most of the world’s Warhols when it was illegal in other industries to have a monopoly? It was only later, after Lehman Brothers tanked and prices started to fall, that Lewis encountered difficulty getting his subjects to open up. Lewis attempts to talk to Rosen outside Phillips after the discouraging autumn 2008 sale but with barely a patrician flick of the collector’s silver mullet, gets the heave-ho.
But when has the art world not been peopled with morally ambiguous types? When have the workings of the art market been fully transparent? As well as being a filter of experience and a means of looking at the world anew, art is also a commodity, and a handy one at that. You can sink a lot of money into a small painting and move it around much more easily than you could with, say, a store of copper. It’s an attractive proposition to the moneyed modern man. (Incidentally, no female collectors made the final cut in The Great Contemporary Art Bubble.) And why is it so problematic when prices for art sky rocket? As a friend working in the public sector quipped as we watched the program, “It isn’t public money, so why should we care?” Well, perhaps – as Lewis points out – because donating an expensive piece of art to a public institution provides the donor with a nice tax break. And because our museums are forced to compete with these prices when they purchase a work of art. But in a recession, as the current row over MPs’ expenses shows, public institutions have to be very careful about how they choose to spend their money.
Lewis rounds up the program saying the recent epoch in art will be regarded in years to come as one of great folly. He may well be right. But just as the wealthy will continue to buy works of art, so artists will continue to create invigorating works of art that challenge and engage. And that, at least, is a cheering thought. Laura Allsop
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Tags: Alberto Mugrabi, ArtReview, Ben Lewis
Add a Comment
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Comment by Reuben Daniels on July 22, 2009 at 2:28pm -
I was looking for an example of vacuous writing as an illustration for a class - I may now have found the ideal piece of copy, vacuous bland and removed from reality almost a perfect example of art work in late capitalism.
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Comment by Reuben Daniels on July 22, 2009 at 2:24pm
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I
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Comment by Laura Allsop on July 20, 2009 at 11:32am -
To CAP: I agree that it's unhelpful to moan about the times. Nevertheless, it's fair to say that in the last few years, the art market has approached a state of frenzy unseen previously and so its demise (though again it might be too soon to say) has been all the more pronounced. How it might continue to affect the power structures at work in the artworld is certainly going to be interesting.
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Comment by mike hinc on June 25, 2009 at 6:04pm -
Groovin’… Reuben – some shrewd analysis and sound sense here - but also some questions ………
Re: your May 30th blog:
These are perhaps quibbles but are you suggesting that there can be no such thing as “crap art”? Just because Mr Esdale’s aesthetic is (apparently) founded on blind prejudice and bland assertion - on “his opinion”- do you infer there can there be no objective appraisal of art? No valid aesthetic? Or are we to say that anything that poses as art is of equal value? My point is that one flawed aesthetic does not make all aesthetics equally flawed – or would you suggest otherwise?
And on commodification, you say, “You can buy and sell a slave but that slave is merely the relationship of a human being to the market - the slaveness of the slave does not reduce the humanness of the being does it?” Well yes, to all practical intents and purposes it does actually. Human or not – the slave can no longer function as other humans do, as he once did in his pre-slave state. His slaveness limits his freedom to act as a human and diminishes the quality of his existence - just as commodification limits and diminishes art. Or am I missing something here?
It is “the artness of the art” that worries me. Where does it come from? You say - “If art is anything it is the disclosure of the truth of what is true” – so what is true? What does art disclose that is true? And how do we know when it does this? Do tell.
Re: your June 7th blog:
William's assertions apart, may I ask what sort of “contextual reasons” could be used to persuade me that Van Gogh is a good or bad painter? To which end I am indifferent, but these “contextual reasons” sound to me like the basis of an objective aesthetic – I am ready to be persuaded and I’d like to know more.
OK I agree, already I’m persuaded that …“Neither is it acceptable to take the view that each of us is right and that art is in the eye of the beholder because that would mean that everything is art and there is nothing that is non art”. And thank you for saying so, as this echoes my concern with an absence of any acceptable aesthetic. If art is in the eye of the beholder, pluck it out. But if art is not in the eye of the beholder, just where is it and why is it there?
I’d suggest your “Art explains itself” and “art discloses something” might help sort the wheat from the chaff and distinguish the art from the non art. Although as much as I like “Art is the thing whereas words are about the thing”, this might preclude much of what passes for contemporary Art today. Perhaps if words are the thing itself and not an explanation of the thing, then that thing is also art. But I digress…I’d push your argument further and suggest that Art embodies thought - and that which poses as Art but does not do so, is also “merely decoration”. Art is conceptually and visually integrated – and that which isn’t, isn’t Art. How clean and clear is that?
You say that you “stumble with great difficulty towards what art is” and I don’t believe you. With these shrewd and rational musings, are you not in fact outlining an effective and workable aesthetic? So spit it out and spell it out.
Or is that word “aesthetic” so full middle class stupidities and Kantian notions of the beautiful that we dare not speak its name? What do you think?
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Comment by Germán Britch on June 23, 2009 at 4:31pm -
Hey!!!!! who is william????
An another one, sorry but to all of you,
ONLY
I
HAVE
THE
TRUTH.......
TWAT????
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Comment by mike hinc on June 23, 2009 at 8:34am
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What? you mean....."William, william it was really nothing
It was your life ..." ?????
Hmmm.........................
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Comment by Michael Bowdidge on June 23, 2009 at 8:28am -
.... And cue that Smiths song: "William, William..."
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Comment by mike hinc on June 23, 2009 at 6:16am
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What? Where's William? What a disappointment....!!
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Comment by mike hinc on June 8, 2009 at 1:14pm
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Reuben - fearless and forensic as your critique has been to date and given your free and generous use of this particular epithet, may I ask why you have yet to define the term "TWAT"??? Has not your analysis of William's vague if somewhat spiky musings shown that we all need to define our terms?
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Comment by Reuben Daniels on June 8, 2009 at 9:46am
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William
I am searching for the right word here and the word that springs to mind is 'twat'. Do you think it might adequately describe your contributions?
If I see something that does not make it art. If I see something does that help or prevent me from defining what art might be? No it does not. I need to be able to define art if I am to describe something as art. Of course I might see something and say it is art but what am I saying that the thing corresponds to a category of being something I should therefore be able to define.
Your error is in castigating something as fucked up art and not being able to say what art is and/or why this particular example is fucked up.
Your arrogance is breathtaking how can you know what I have seen or not seen? Twat is certainly the right word for that sort of arrogance is it not?
Againt the resort to assertion 'art is making you ill or art is your illness'. How pathetic, assertion is the refuge of the ill informed the ignorant and the arrogant, is it not?
I have finished with you, you are a poseur of the worst sort, people like you give modern art a bad name, I leave you to the dregs of middle class mediocrity and decoration - long may you continue to decorate the cakes of the middle class reunion of art school failures and poseurs.
TWAT and I say that with the upmost sincerity
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