More on valuing art

More on how to value art in a new book called The $12 Million Stuffed Shark: The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art by Don Thompson. Felix Salmon writes a thorough review of the book here.

You know when you see a pile of candy in the corner of a museum gallery and you wonder how that is art and you think to yourself, "I could have done that?" My stock reply is that you didn't do that. You didn't even think to do that. And you ask, "Why would anyone pay money for a pile of candy in the corner?" Here's the answer to that question:

The buyer isn't buying the fortune cookies themselves but rather ownership of the work: the moral right to recreate the sculpture made from them and exhibit it as a genuine Gonzales-Torres, and the ability to resell the sculpture at a future date. When you buy a Gonzales-Torres, you buy the (largely conceptual) art, not the stuff it's made from.

Disappointingly, Thompson seems a little too happy skitting along the surface of this central paradox of art economics: that while (most of the time) it is an object which is bought and sold, the dollar value lies in the art, not the object. If a painting formerly attributed to Rembrandt turns out to be executed by a minor follower, the object doesn't change but its value plunges. It's no different with a pile of candy: whether or not it's a genuine Gonzales-Torres makes an enormous difference to its value. Thompson is happy conjuring up an art collector's friends "staring open-mouthed and gasping: 'You paid what for the candy?'", but he never points out that they might as well ask the same question about an object made of oil paint on canvas which would be equally worthless without the requisite authority.

Here's an interesting thought on being an artist patron rather than just buying so-so art:

More to the point, an investor with $50,000 to spend on one artist has a choice: she can either buy a middling work from a middling artist at a middling dealer, or she can directly support an artist outside the gallery system entirely, buying pieces as necessary, maybe giving her a couple of thousand dollars to live on now and then, possibly helping out with studio space, that sort of thing. That kind of relationship is generally far more rewarding for the benefactor, and might well enable the artist to stay outside the gallery system for long enough that she has the time to develop a real artistic voice before being thrust blinking into the art-world spotlight. For the collector, the non-financial returns are much higher, while the financial returns can be equally large: what's not to like?

Being a patron allows you the opportunity to establish a relationship with an artist, which has great value to me.