Art Market Pits Old against Young, with Age Reigning Supreme
Combined, Sotheby's and Christie's moved £39 million ($63.25 million) in art from the Old Masters & 19th Century category at the beginning of July. Though it's still nothing compared to the levels reached the year before, it was good enough to top the Contemporary Art auction performances at those houses the month before. Collectors, together, cast a £1 million vote for age over beauty, a stunning development in an art market that has become accustomed to emphasizing the value of twentieth century pieces.
The rise in older works is akin to a flight to quality in financial markets, as the rarer, more reliable pieces have substantial track records and are less likely to fall victim to changes in taste. Speculation isn't as rampant in the Old Masters as it is for contemporary works: the market is a known quantity, with room for very few "discoveries," while there are still many twentieth century artists among us ... some of whom are even deigning to create their own paintings.
The success of the Old Masters category last month is due in part to the availability of inventory. Sotheby's was fortunate enough to be chosen for the Barbara Piasecka Johnson collection, which brought in more than £5 million. Christie's saw three new records set, though the house didn't keep pace with rival Sotheby's, despite sending more lots under the gavel.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Matthew Kinsey Aug 10th 2009 12:27PM
Some have observed that this trend may have been overdue anyway. New York dealer Richard L. Feigen was quoted as saying, “The disparity in price rises between Old Masters and contemporary has been crazy…Some Old Master pictures haven’t increased in price in the last 20 years and there are people with a lot of cash at Tefaf looking for a place to park it..” Feigen referred to Tefaf Maastricht art and antiques fair, where, according to Emily Waldorf of ArtsEtoile, recently prices for contemporary works were being cut up to 20% while Old Master prices held steady.
Age over beauty? I'm not so certain it's as simple as that, anyway. Beautifully crafted antique pictures have the ability to communicate their best qualities to any observer. One need not be a trained academic or cultivated collector to judge (at least to some degree) the quality of craftsmanship and execution in a traditional figure painting, still life or landscape. It may be that contemporary art, especially the most experimental, “avant-garde” work, being more opaque to many collectors, seems speculative and risky to the collector compared to art and objects where craftsmanship, aesthetics and pictorial goals are more central and self-evident.
This is perhaps more than just a shift in taste to the conservative or nostalgic, but rather collectors insisting on standards increasingly not being met by contemporary art, which often seems to have the central (maybe sole) function of being expensive to buy.
Matthew Kinsey
www.matthewkinsey.com