http://www.luxist.com/2009/08/06/art-market-pits-old-against-young-with-age-reigning-supreme/ Luxist Comments for Art Market Pits Old against Young, with Age Reigning Supreme http://www.luxist.com/media/feedlogo.gif http://www.luxist.com en-us Copyright 2012 Weblogs, Inc. The contents of this feed are available for non-commercial use only. Blogsmith http://www.blogsmith.com/http://www.luxist.com/2009/08/06/art-market-pits-old-against-young-with-age-reigning-supreme/http://www.luxist.com/2009/08/06/art-market-pits-old-against-young-with-age-reigning-supreme/
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]]>Aug 10th 2009 12:27PM