Questioning the Art Market artmarketblog.com Questioning the Art Market artmarketblog.com
I was recently asked some questions about the art market for a magazine article and thought I would share my answers. Hope you enjoy !!!
News-Antique.com - Jul 18,2011 - Questioning the Art Market artmarketblog.com
I was recently asked some questions about the art market for a magazine article and thought I would share my answers. Hope you enjoy !!!
1. Last year there was a trend for portrait pieces, why do you think this is?
Although portraiture fell out of fashion, as it has done on several occasions, the fact that there is so much scholarly, academic and art historical support for the genre means that there will always be a market for portraits a market that can only continue to get stronger each time the genre comes back into fashion. The long term value of a work of art is linked to a certain degree to the extent to which one can disassociate the work of art from the artist, and the extent to which one can assign value to the actual characteristics of the art object as an independent entity. Because portraits require a high level of technical skill to get right, and because the face is universally recognisable and has universal characteristics, the portrait is able to be more easily assessed using a more objective approach. This makes the portrait a more attractive option to art investors and collectors during times of financial crisis, such as we experienced last year, when long term safety and justifiability become important factors.
The value that can be placed on portraits because of their status as historical documents is the sort of future proof intrinsic value that will always remain with the portrait and cannot be disassociated from the portrait. Regardless of what happens to the art market or to the reputation of the artist in question, classical figurative works of art (portraits in particular) will always have significant technical, historical and documentary value. The fact that the physical characteristics of figurative portraits are so comparable across the whole genre, and so easy to rank, also means that they are also easier to value when compared to other genres.
2. Can auction houses or art market analysts predict trends in the market?
Predicting art market trends is becoming more and more difficult as fine art becomes a more globally recognised and accessible status symbol, and a more widely accepted alternative investment. As a much wider range of people from different cultural and socio-economic backgrounds become active in the art market, a situation has arisen where there are so many different groups of art market participants with different agendas, that trying to foretell the buying behaviour of each group is extremely hard. To predict trends these days requires a very deep knowledge and understanding of the behaviour of art buyers as well as an extremely well developed trend sensing radar.
3. Do social, political or cultural issues affect market trends?
Social, political and cultural issues all have a profound effect on art market trends. Fine art is often used as a tool for making statements regarding social, political and cultural issues. A consequence of this is that peoples perception
