At a sale last week auction house Christie’s sold a record $744.9 million worth of contemporary art. Top lots included a Barnett Newman painting that fetched $84.2 million (including auction house fees), a Francis Bacon triptych that went for $80.8 million and two silk screened works by Andy Warhol that sold for $62.2 million and $41 million a piece. The next night at its rival sale Sotheby’s raked in $364.4 million.
Such staggering figures are a source of pride for auction houses. They also spark chatter of an art bubble about to burst, provide ammo to people who never cared for paint on canvas anyway and strike fear in the hearts of art lovers who want to cost consciously replace the Campbell Soup CPB -0.43% can posters they bought for $20 at the college bookstore. Art, however, doesn’t need to cost millions and the art world doesn’t need to be scary.
Alex Farkas and Stephen Tanenbaum founded digital art store UGallery eight years ago. They were young business school students at the time and saw the site as a way to help recent art school graduates find buyers. Today the site still aims to expose emerging artists to the masses but also to help new buyers navigate the art buying terrain. “If you were interested in buying your first artwork there was a big learning curve to see what was out there,” say the gallerists of the pre-online gallery days. The time it took to figure out which galleries sold work you like — and could afford — plus the time to visit all of them was a barrier to many would be buyers. Today, in a few hours on the web you can see what would have taken weeks to uncover before.
Now 31, Farkas and Tanenbaum find that their friends want to upgrade from posters and prints. While these 20 and 30-somethings don’t have bottomless art budgets they do have a bit of discretionary income. With this group in mind, UGallery sells work from $50 to $20,000 with average prices clocking in at roughly $800.
“Art is not necessarily in everyone’s daily life. If someone is curious and wants to learn they can go and actively become educated – through museums and galleries – but from the outside it can be intimidating like a fancy restaurant or symphony,” says Cristina Salmastrelli director of the Affordable Art Fair New York. “We’ve dedicated our lives to original contemporary art work. We want to share that love with other people — what art is and what art can be.”
The first Affordable Art Fair was held in 1999 based on the idea that you can own an original piece of contemporary (a.k.a. new) art no matter how much money you have in the bank. In 2014 the organization will hold 15 fairs in 13 cities around the globe. At its two annual fairs in New York, prices range from $100 to $10,000 with half the works costing less than $5,000. (Exact ranges vary from city to city but are in the same ballpark as NY.) Works under $1,000 are highlighted with bright pink stickers and during the most recent fair — held in April — Salmastelli led a tour of works under $500.
You could fairly argue that $10,000 isn’t affordable at all, but it would be hard to claim that Salmastelli and her team don’t try to make art more approachable than what the headline grabbing auctions present.
On sale night last week Christie’s Upper East Side headquarters bustled with activity, women wore cocktail attire and high heels while many men donned sport coats and ties. Legions of Christie’s staff lined the back wall armed with at least a phone each to take bids from afar. The auctioneer stood at a podium above it all, coaxing ever higher bids and declaring “not yours sir” when a hopeful millionaire was outbid by another hopeful billionaire millionaire. It’s a glorious spectacle and it can be rewarding to see a work by an artist you respect fetch a higher price then anticipated or even set a new record. However, as figures rise in $100,000 increments or more it’s easy to see why many people believe owning art is not in the cards for them.
Most people at the Affordable Art Fair last month, on the other hand, wore jeans and the gallery staffs manning booths largely blended in with the rest of the crowd. The people watching wasn’t as good as at the auction but you could choose to gape at a piece of art for as long as you’d like or simply wander through the aisles taking in the various mediums. You could ask questions and consider how a work might look over your couch knowing — even if its too pricey right now — you’ll probably earn that much money in your lifetime.
A few art buying tips for beginners –
1. Look.
Art is about seeing. So visit museums and galleries, surf the web and get a sense of what sort of work you would be happy to look at every day. Are you drawn to photographs, oil paintings or silk screens? Do you like dark colors or pastels? Would you rather look at people or abstractions?
2. Budget.
As with any expense you are less likely to experience art buyer’s remorse if you go in with a plan. Buying a work you love, however, may require tucking away some cash until you’ve accumulated enough to comfortably afford it. If it is going to take several months to hit your goal try to fall in love with a medium or artist rather than a specific piece of work to avoid disappointment if it sells before you can pounce.
3. Visualize.
The photograph of bacon and eggs that would look great in your kitchen might not feel at home over your bed, just like the nude sketch you might want for your bathroom might not be ideal for your living room. Imagine where you want to hang the work keeping in mind context, color and size.
No hay comentarios.:
Publicar un comentario