> The question is how to “get people to understand that art isn’t an asset class,” Schwartzmann added. “That’s not how you should be collecting,”
> Valentine said ... "Asking $20,000 for a work in an artist’s first show is unsustainable"
none of the separate participants in this article are willing to acknowledge that these are related problems.
there is no price discovery in the art world, and it was only just beginning to happen in the pandemic era flush with cash
when you question the price or try to find any rational trend, the gallery director gaslights you into the prior quote "you should just love the piece!" okay but why should I love it at this price "because it will be another price in the future!" but why will it be another price who sets that price "we the gallery do! it moves up over time!" how does that work "you should just love the piece!"
This is really the art as speculation fad coming home to roost. The people actually interested in art as art are now on things like Instagram buying direct from the artists with very little gatekeeping either by art schools or galleries.
It would be tempting to see if there is a correlation in when the “legit” art world price going off a cliff and the NFT bubble, because that suckered in a lot of the idiot end of the speculator crowd.
The vanity of owning rare things is all too much... NFTs are really the culmination of the phenomenon. I'm all for owning beautiful things and paying if it's something handmade. But once it becomes such an extreme out of wack status symbol kept alive by a global elite it's just feeding the monster. The worst is when it's an expensive status symbol and still mass produced I suppose
How much of this is due to anti-money laundering regulations enacted in the early 2020s [0], which much better vet the identities of the buyers/sellers?
> Another revealing indicator: Soho Art Materials, a popular art-supplies company in New York that works with artists and galleries, traces the sector’s decline to the summer of 2022. The firm’s sales began falling gradually and then in June 2023 dropped 20 percent from the previous month, according to Jonathan Siegel, a co-owner. The company was stretching 700 to 1,000 canvases annually for three years, starting in 2020; it now does about 200 a year, he said.
It might be a stretch, but Dall-E 2 came out in April 2022.
I've purchased plenty of art over the past couple years, mostly original paintings with a few prints. Very few of those came from galleries and when I walked in the galleries, I already knew what I wanted to buy.
Etsy and reddit are easy ways to find rather good art for what I can tell is a consistent price based on the size of the piece.
The only time I 'browse' art offline is during special events, which have all been wander from house to house or small art studio to studio. I love the experience, it's much more personal as you know the artist will be there and you can discuss the piece with them.
The best evidence that art was going to crash is when Masterworks ads were everywhere. You know the bubble is stretched to its limit when they start hawking it to retail.
"I've got an exciting bag-holding opportunity that you don't want to miss."
My sister started an independent artist career from 2022, and overall trends were fairly brutal to her (unemployment due to Russian-Ukrainian war, raise of AIs, tariff war), however the only solution in this circumstances is to climb up, raise the quality of one's art and aim for the higher price range.
Anything worthy of the concept of art isn't likely to be found in these places.
If you like making shit that looks cool and you want to sell it, have at it. Just please drop the intellectual pretence that anything other than "it looks cool" is going on.
> Now that the bubble has burst, the speculators are out of the picture, off flipping meme coins, where no one makes them feel inadequate or insists that they buy three things they don’t want to get the one thing they do.
> “The juice has got to be worth the squeeze,” one collector-trader said. “And there’s no juice in the art market. It’s just squeeze, squeeze, squeeze. Rude, rude, rude.”
From what little I know of the NY art scene, by osmosis (by having an SO who previously was accomplished in it, and could mingle well at gallery openings and cocktail parties, infinitely better than I could ever learn to)...
I wonder whether the "rude, rude, rude" means that the market had come to depend on nouveau riche speculators (who'd typically have neither the intellectual and artistic background, nor old-money social graces/conventions).
If you didn't respect your customers, and didn't make them feel valued, then the ones who only cared about money or status games have other options.
Just go to the smaller/community art shows and you can usually find a couple or five really excellent artists who put their life into their work and will talk to you one on one vs these high priced pompous ego exhibitions like Art Basel.
I make an unusual kind of art, but I haven't tried selling it, as you need a stable of interested people, and I can only post it in one place at the moment (a Facebook interest group on tiling, Instagram is overrun with AI, you can't start a new profile without lots of existing supporters). I've considered opening a gallery in my local area just to sell my art (5 million people in the metro, and barely a real commercial art gallery). My overhead would be just me and a location. The idea of selling art for tens or hundreds of thousands seems nuts.
I do see that there are too many galleries in places, selling too many artists, to too many people, with massive overhead (in the story, the gallery had $100k+ a month in expenses). Also, it's hard to make something new that is still saleable, almost every kind of art is basically something people did 50 or even 100 years ago; I look at art people are selling all the time, and most is not anything different. The best stuff is from people that hardly anyone knows, who like me just make something different because they want to.
I'd love to sell it online, but without an audience, no one will visit. I could sell it at https://www.saatchiart.com, but they don't really market most of what they have. You have to drag people there. Plus they take 30% or 40% (50% is normal for galleries). Locally, in the right location, people see your art, and stop by. It's just the pain of setting it up, and then sitting there while you wait!
The art world is just fine. Pretentious art speculation maybe not so much.
In a way, we are actually in a golden age. I lurk on social media accounts of amateur art enthusiasts around the globe with (IMHO) good taste who seek out interesting little known artists and post it on their feeds. I am introduced to so much great art that I probably would have never known about otherwise. If I see something I like, I search for the artist online and see if they have something available in their portfolio for sale that I love.
I’ve bought amazing art from talented artists around the globe that speak no common language with me. We get it done (Google Translate to the rescue). I don’t filter on price but virtually everything I’ve bought is always in a couple hundred dollars to a couple thousand dollars range. The fact that you can talk to the artist just adds to the story.
Forget the “tastemakers” in art. I can give my money to excellent artists directly, including many that never attracted the attention of tastemakers or who weren’t deemed worthy by said people. I received a huge piece from Denmark today. The whole experience is lovely and the artists really appreciate that someone loves their work. This is the future.
Because of the internet, and social media and specifically Instagram in this case, I see my aunt's artwork regularly. I live a few hours from her and see her once or twice a year. She is quite eccentric and her artwork is amazing. It's kind of sad that this is the best way for me to see her work. . . or it's not so sad, and really just convenient.
We are in a golden age for discovering art that you really wouldn't get to see otherwise. I would not even call myself a hardcore art enthusiast but I stumble upon great art all the time on Instagram, as you mentioned, from around the globe.
> I can give my money to excellent artists directly
No, you can't, or at least not to any artist.
Although I wholeheartedly support the idea of paying directly to the artist and even commissioning specific pieces, many "blue chips" are selling only via galleries/dealers to ditch management and bargaining and keep prices consistent.
My city has a medium size art gallery. Every couple of years, the curators will hold their nose and run an exhibit by "dead white males": figurative painters like Rembrandt. The gallery becomes packed with people. Afterward the curators go back to their usual fare of "Iranian-American textile artists" or whatever; the gallery sees no visitors for months.
Bleeding money, the gallery recently laid off half their staff.
It's almost as if the curators would rather lose their jobs than exhibit art that the public enjoys.
> My former Artnet colleague Tim Schneider’s analysis at the time of the deal revealed that the gallery was on the hook for $704,000 in monthly rent, or $8.5 million a year—$220 million over the course of the lease
Seems like it’s not an art problem but an art dealer problem. If you rent a $100k/month restaurant space that seats 20 people, is the food industry dying if you can’t turn a profit and close?
I'm amazed that the article doesn't discuss the end of ZIRP. The bursting of the art market bubble in mid 2022 coincides exactly with when interest rates started rising following the 'transitory' inflation caused by pandemic relief measures. This was also the same time that we started seeing hiring freezes in tech, the bursting of the luxury watch bubble, etc. It's all tied together, and has the same root cause: It stopped being cheap to borrow money, and it started being lucrative to lend it out for guaranteed returns (e.g. by buying Treasuries) rather than speculating on artworks, or NFTs, or whatever.
45 comments
[ 14.7 ms ] story [ 62.9 ms ] thread> Valentine said ... "Asking $20,000 for a work in an artist’s first show is unsustainable"
none of the separate participants in this article are willing to acknowledge that these are related problems.
there is no price discovery in the art world, and it was only just beginning to happen in the pandemic era flush with cash
when you question the price or try to find any rational trend, the gallery director gaslights you into the prior quote "you should just love the piece!" okay but why should I love it at this price "because it will be another price in the future!" but why will it be another price who sets that price "we the gallery do! it moves up over time!" how does that work "you should just love the piece!"
It would be tempting to see if there is a correlation in when the “legit” art world price going off a cliff and the NFT bubble, because that suckered in a lot of the idiot end of the speculator crowd.
[0] https://www.lseg.com/en/risk-intelligence/financial-crime-ri...
It might be a stretch, but Dall-E 2 came out in April 2022.
Etsy and reddit are easy ways to find rather good art for what I can tell is a consistent price based on the size of the piece.
The only time I 'browse' art offline is during special events, which have all been wander from house to house or small art studio to studio. I love the experience, it's much more personal as you know the artist will be there and you can discuss the piece with them.
Got to love 'late stage capitalism'
"I've got an exciting bag-holding opportunity that you don't want to miss."
Anything worthy of the concept of art isn't likely to be found in these places.
If you like making shit that looks cool and you want to sell it, have at it. Just please drop the intellectual pretence that anything other than "it looks cool" is going on.
> “The juice has got to be worth the squeeze,” one collector-trader said. “And there’s no juice in the art market. It’s just squeeze, squeeze, squeeze. Rude, rude, rude.”
From what little I know of the NY art scene, by osmosis (by having an SO who previously was accomplished in it, and could mingle well at gallery openings and cocktail parties, infinitely better than I could ever learn to)...
I wonder whether the "rude, rude, rude" means that the market had come to depend on nouveau riche speculators (who'd typically have neither the intellectual and artistic background, nor old-money social graces/conventions).
If you didn't respect your customers, and didn't make them feel valued, then the ones who only cared about money or status games have other options.
I do see that there are too many galleries in places, selling too many artists, to too many people, with massive overhead (in the story, the gallery had $100k+ a month in expenses). Also, it's hard to make something new that is still saleable, almost every kind of art is basically something people did 50 or even 100 years ago; I look at art people are selling all the time, and most is not anything different. The best stuff is from people that hardly anyone knows, who like me just make something different because they want to.
I'd love to sell it online, but without an audience, no one will visit. I could sell it at https://www.saatchiart.com, but they don't really market most of what they have. You have to drag people there. Plus they take 30% or 40% (50% is normal for galleries). Locally, in the right location, people see your art, and stop by. It's just the pain of setting it up, and then sitting there while you wait!
Mentioned it here before, https://andrewwulf.com if interested.
In a way, we are actually in a golden age. I lurk on social media accounts of amateur art enthusiasts around the globe with (IMHO) good taste who seek out interesting little known artists and post it on their feeds. I am introduced to so much great art that I probably would have never known about otherwise. If I see something I like, I search for the artist online and see if they have something available in their portfolio for sale that I love.
I’ve bought amazing art from talented artists around the globe that speak no common language with me. We get it done (Google Translate to the rescue). I don’t filter on price but virtually everything I’ve bought is always in a couple hundred dollars to a couple thousand dollars range. The fact that you can talk to the artist just adds to the story.
Forget the “tastemakers” in art. I can give my money to excellent artists directly, including many that never attracted the attention of tastemakers or who weren’t deemed worthy by said people. I received a huge piece from Denmark today. The whole experience is lovely and the artists really appreciate that someone loves their work. This is the future.
We are in a golden age for discovering art that you really wouldn't get to see otherwise. I would not even call myself a hardcore art enthusiast but I stumble upon great art all the time on Instagram, as you mentioned, from around the globe.
It's really cool.
No, you can't, or at least not to any artist.
Although I wholeheartedly support the idea of paying directly to the artist and even commissioning specific pieces, many "blue chips" are selling only via galleries/dealers to ditch management and bargaining and keep prices consistent.
Bleeding money, the gallery recently laid off half their staff.
It's almost as if the curators would rather lose their jobs than exhibit art that the public enjoys.
Seems like it’s not an art problem but an art dealer problem. If you rent a $100k/month restaurant space that seats 20 people, is the food industry dying if you can’t turn a profit and close?