The value of art

This fun image of Adrian, Ayo, and Lauren lounging on Akemi Maegawa's piece entitled Your Sunny Side Should Be Up Chair was taken at Saturday's opening reception of Invisible, Inc. at Irvine Contemporary. It's a fantastic and creative show about how we value art. From the press release:

The exhibition investigates the invisible cultural values that surround art objects and the making of art value, opening up the art world's practice as Invisible, Inc. The works engage playfully with ongoing questions about an art work's conceptual basis, the status of the material object, and the effects of scale, size, and materials.

Got me thinking about a post I made a couple weeks ago in which I said: "When collecting, I simply buy what I like and enjoy living with it." That's not exactly true. When deciding whether to buy a piece of art, I absolutely give thought to its current and future market value. And there are numerous tangible factors that an art collector or investor can consider in determining market value - what kinds of gallery and museum shows the artist has been in, what collections the artist's work belongs to, etc. That said, I have never bought any art for pure investment purposes, but I have bought art for pure pleasure or otherwise despite the fact that it is not a "good investment." I collect art because I connect with it in some personal way or because I see some potential in a young artist who hasn't had a gallery show yet. Even after having considered market factors, these emotional aspects of art collecting can still win out because in the end, collecting art for me is about living with and experience art that helps me live a creative life.