Interesting explanation of the processes on the art market

[Vladimir]

Interested in the chain of reasoning and noted by some of the habits of the auction market, set out in Article Kommersant. And it is these paragraphs:

One of the most respected critics in the world, nyuyorkets Souren Melikian, explains the situation thus: "In place of the old school heads of auction houses, for whom art was a subject of admiration and personal passion, came new people for whom art is not more than a commodity" . In his article in the Herald Tribune, he wrote that the experts of Sotheby `s and Christie` s lost the respect in the art world, which they enjoyed before. Auction catalogs are now designed not to connoisseurs of fine (which is quite a few words in order to understand the meaning of things) - they look like catalogs - mail "with great articles, descriptions, calculated to know nothing about the art of the people.

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Press Service engaged in an aggressive public relations, and referred to a system of guarantees for sellers to corrupt markets and created artificial prices.

20 years ago to the leadership of Sotheby `s come a businessman Alfred Taubman, who made money on the construction and management of shopping malls. It was he who coined to focus on those potential customers who have had a lot of money, but the love of art has never been observed. It is oriented to them the last two decades the art market, it is they did the price of as high art.

Targeting golden clients affected the policy of Christie `s - two of his last pre-auction exhibition in Moscow could visit only by invitation. Since last year, Christie `s began to call themselves not the auction house (ie, a service provider services company), a leading business-structure. It is possible that this transformation of the art market in an ordinary commodity market and led to the crisis grasped it so quickly. It had previously been considered that the art market is practically not affected by fall, and investment in paintings - the most reliable.

Neither Sotheby `s, nor Christie` s (sorry blame for these auction houses to all the charges, but they form the face of the market, it is on their results oriented private sellers and buyers) do not take into account that buyers, neophytes will leave as quickly as came. To become a collector of the heart, not a purse (no matter how ridiculous it sounds), and takes years of knowledge. To buy the art under any circumstances, and not only when money has nowhere to go, you need a special type of character. So did the Soviet collector Solomon Shuster, bought Russian avant-garde filmmaker Salary. So did the postal clerk Herbert Vogel and his wife, Dorothy, a librarian - their collection of American minimalism and avant-garde is now stored in the Washington National Gallery. In order to successfully play on the price fluctuations in the art, as in the exchange rates are needed flair and decades of practice. Neither the addition nor the other, many new collectors to develop in itself simply did not have. When he was due to objective reasons not to art, they immediately stopped to arrange auctions show with records.

Article written on February 2, when optimism for the upcoming auction was moderate. Moreover, the key word here is "moderate" (and heavily). But now we know that everything went sensationally well.

Original article - here: http://www.kommersant.ru/doc.aspx?DocsID=1104802
The article, by the way, use our codes ARTIMX - http://artinvestment.ru/indices/arti..._0_0_0_0_0_0_0