Contemporary art is a fraud, says top dealer
The soaring prices - and their subsequent collapse - are proof to some experts that the works had a price, but not much value
Spanish artist Eugenio Merino's 2009 sculpture '4 the Love of Go(l)d' is a satire on Damien Hirst and the vast prices his work commands
One of the world’s leading art dealers this week launched an astonishing attack on the contemporary art market, condemning the millions charged for some works as “almost fraud”.
The comments from David Nahmad, a Monaco-based dealer who is possibly the biggest in the world, come as art buyers reel from the collapse of the contemporary market.
They echo remarks by the British sculptor Sir Anthony Caro, who last week said that “stupid outrageous values” had become more important than the work itself.
Mr Nahmad, who is reputed to have a £2bn collection of some 5,000 paintings, including 300 Picassos, told The Independent on Sunday: “There are a lot of embarrassed people who bought art that is now not worth what they paid for it. For the past three or four years it’s been a very, very thin market, with just two or three buyers pushing up prices by bidding against each other.
“Unfortunately, a lot of people knew the game. So those people who did not know are realising it now. It’s almost a fraud. I would never advise my clients to buy contemporary art.”
Mr Nahmad and his family have made billions of dollars trading art. They specialise in the works of great modern artists such as Picasso, Matisse and Rothko. He added that he doesn’t think any artist since Francis Bacon had pushed art forward. The last notable artists were Lucio Fontana and Yves Klein, he said. “There is the real art market, with real artists, and then there is the stupid art market which uses publicity to make some artists become very expensive. That doesn’t mean they are good. Damien Hirst’s diamond skull at $100m was a stupid thing; $100m is an offence. Hirst started with $10,000 – that’s OK. But $100m? That’s ridiculous.”
Last week Sir Anthony Caro, 84, one of Britain’s greatest living artists, bemoaned the fact that the market value of paintings had become more meaningful to artists than creating beautiful work. “Some art has got some stupid, outrageous values and it is very sad that money has become a very important part of the art world,” he said at the opening of a new sculpture exhibition in Monterrey, Mexico.
“Because of this crisis, something will change in art and there may be a rethinking of value. In my time, art was never about money. I am not a millionaire. I have tried to make good art.”
Louisa Buck, a columnist for The Art Newspaper, disagreed. “There is no doubt that the likes of Rothko, Picasso and Matisse are magisterial figures,” she said. “But the art world has moved on and to dismiss everything after Bacon is utter nonsense. The contemporary market has been subject to extreme speculation, but there is a difference between speculation and fraud. The economic downturn will moderate the speculative bubble that has seen some less deserving artists command extreme prices.”
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Comments
http://pagesperso-orange.fr/kathy.steph
http://sites.google.com/site/seosurreyu
says Louisa Buck, can one shed some more light on that because the only difference I can see is only with the privilege of hindsight. Speculatio9n that happens to be true is "brilliance" and speculation that happens to be false is fraud....
I think we have lost our mind as a society (and our values with it)
Probably the market was fueled by merchant banker's bonuses (rhyming slang intended) who have proved now they had more money than sense.
Art should involve both imagination and technical skill; both seem optional these days.
I agree.
We need fresh talent.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencet
But if there is a hint of truth to the statement that art reflects the soul of an era, I fear that we are seeing our souls revealed as stupid and greedy - with modern art reflecting the souls of the bankers and their all too willing victims.
Maybe some day someone will explain what it was about the Renaissance that produced outstanding visual arts, or about the Baroque/classical that produced outstanding music. But really, what would it take to see new works that resonate as deeply as those masterpieces?
Of course money is a profound necessity in the physical creation of any object and though 'Factory art',i.e. assistant artists involved in the execution of multiples or monumental work, has an age old pedigree, this stultifying climate of art judged the speculative onanism of todays aspiring Medicis, to say nothing of the equally onanistic artist/facilitators, should not be the guiding light.
"art judged BY the speculative onanism"
What I would like to see is an investigation into who is funding these "bids". Is it not in the interests of an artist, dealer or gallery to inflate the market value of the work?
My interest in this subject was raised when after "selling" many millions worth of "work" an artist was forced to make staff redundant?
The problem with it being an Art market first and foremost is that once people have started to invest in it, it becomes increasingly difficult to change anything. If all these people have been making or paying exorbitant sums for art which isn't particularly good, is anyone from the Art world really going to turn round and say, "Is it just me, or does anyone else reckon this is all a bit... well, rubbish?" and if other people started putting their hands up too saying "Thank god for that, all these years and I thought it was just me!" then the values would start to go down and there'd be a lot of unhappy artists and even more unhappy buyers. Perhaps this is why, despite believing there's been nobody of any substance since Bacon, Nahmad has chosen now to make his remarks - at a time when values are slipping anyway due to the crunch?
Just one other comment before I finish waffling - 'Art' as it stands today is essentially undemocratic insofar as literature, cinema, theatre, music and other areas of 'the arts' rely to a greater or lesser extent on the public. Art on the other. hand doesn't need us, in fact doesn't even want us (perish the though of being... ughhh, popular). Ultimately it's just a game for rich people and a few others who have figured out to play the system. I'm not saying the public at large should be the sole arbiters of worth (and in a world where the X Factor and its ilk exist, I should surely hope not) but when you look at some of the artists the general public have well and truly taken to heart over the decades and even centuries, are we really all that bad at recognising quality?
The unfortunate effect of the recent financial bubble has been that vastly overrated prices have been paid for work that will end up flushed down the toilet of history. Maybe some sanity will return to the art market.
The real art, i.e. expressions of society / beauty/ (whatever your definition of art ) is made by people with visual communication skills (natural or learned) and is to be seen in small exhibitions all over the world and above all on the internet where artists have discovered that they can show their work to the world without the costs of mounting an exhibition, which are crippling to any poor, unrecognized artist.
Sure there is a load of crap on the internet, but that is no different to any other era. If you enjoy interesting, moving and excellent art it can easily be found. The artists don't make anything much of the time, which makes it all the more art. Celebrity is one thing, art is another.
As a non-rich collector, this whole art-hype-bubble-burst-top-dealer-damien-h
And to those complaining about contemporary artists not being able to draw: I don't understand how that would be a necessary skill in video art ...
http://blog.independent-collectors.com