At the opening of William Kentridge’s most recent exhibition Stereotype (at The Goodman Gallery until November 20), the word “investment” hissed through the air like a spell. Distasteful? Perhaps, to those preoccupied with “form”, “content” and “texture”, but an overwhelming reality none the less.
It’s hardly surprising, a Kentridge drawing which cost R20 000 just three years ago, would go for four times that amount today. An increase of 100% annually is one which most stockbrokers would drool over. But there’s no guarantee that the trend will continue, and those who quick-stepped to the Goodman back office and laid out R90 000 for a drawing three weeks ago (90% of the show sold out at the opening), relishing the idea of doubling their money by next spring, might wish they’d bought the work for the joy of it.
Art markets can be fickle and unpredictable. The dynamic at work is massive and it’s global. No South African artist of any stature only sells work here. There is, in fact, more interest in contemporary South African artists abroad than at home. (According to an expert at Christie’s in London, it is only really this contemporary market which enjoys such interest abroad. Collectors of Africana and earlier 20th-century South African masters are mostly South African.)
The past two years in particular have seen a boom in the contemporary market in Europe and the United States.
Why? Who decides what a work is worth? And what factors influence the market? The answers are so complex as to throw the non- expert writer of this, brief and elementary exegesis, into something of a froth. However, according to Fredrick Goetzen of Christie’s, there are three major factors which influence valuation: artistic merit and quality, history and providence, and freshness to the market.
A more Sesame Street approach might be to think of the art market as a creature. A giant organism. Dealers, auctioneers and artists are its heart. The veins running into and out of the pulsating organ being just about everything else: politics, war, education, tradition, religion, fashion, literature, interior decoration, greed, fear, romance, spite, and so on. Consider the following scenarios:
Scenario one: Cause – there’s an economic boom. People are making so much money that they actually want things to be more expensive. So they fork out a fortune for enormous canvasses with crockery stuck to the messily painted surface (Julian Schnabel). Effect – the works are so badly made, bits soon start dropping off. Yuppies resent the mess this makes in their immaculate loft apartments and stop buying.
Scenario two: Cause – everyone’s reading One Hundred Years of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez). Suddenly South and Central America is where the art is. Effect -no Communist Party member is likely to afford a work by Frida Khalo or Diego Riviera again.
Scenario three: Cause -Vogue magazine declares colour to be the new black. (They got the idea from fine art, of course, but never mind.) Effect – artists who use lots of bright colour start selling like petrol.
Scenario four: Cause – Vogue magazine declares that black is probably a better black than colour. Effect – three guesses.
It’s like some Tom Wolfe novel: hype, trends, strange twists of fate, influencing what sells/hype, trends strange twists of fate, influencing what doesn’t sell.
The most startling crash hit the art market around 1993. During the late 1980s and early 1990s, everyone who was anyone simply had to have an important impressionist or post-impressionist work.
The market frenzied, and in 1990 the Portrait of Dr Gachet by Vincent van Gogh (he sold just one work during his lifetime) sold at Christie’s for $82- million. The market crashed shortly thereafter, seemingly shocked by its own extravagance. Prices have recovered slightly since then; another Van Gogh portrait fetched $71-million last year, but the market has sobered up considerably.
Fredrick Goetzen describes today’s buyers thus: “They have more savvy, they’re more selective and they want quality. The market has become more realistic as a result.”
It is reassuring to note that the value of art is not simply dreamed up by a few prominent dealers eager to make a killing. Buyers ultimately have the last say. Supply and demand. Art as commodity.
Neil Dundas, curator at the Goodman Gallery winces: “Of course nobody wants to think about art that way, but .” One appreciates the wincing and, of course, one hopes that resale is not the only thing going through a buyer’s mind when they decide on a work, but a depressed market is no fun for anyone, artists least of all.
Wayne Barker – something of a struggling artist icon – seems understandably gratified as he discusses the hand which the European art market has extended to him and several of his contemporaries. One of his works, priced at R450 in 1989, was recently bought by a museum in Cologne for R19 000. That doesn’t mean to say Barker can pop home, dash something off, and thereby make R19 000. Nor does it mean that those who have bought his work can rush to auction and be similarly rewarded. It’s not as simple as that. But it is an indicator that the European market values him a lot more than we do.
Naturally Barker laments the fact: “People who pay R500 for an etching and then spend R5 000 framing it must wake up. If they need to see it as investment, then they should understand the value of local art, and pay for it.”
But the local market is essentially a conservative one, which demands either decorative appeal or investment prospects from its purchases. Most buyers are hardly aficionados. They take their cue from the gallerists, and like any other commodity, packaging matters: shoppers at the Everard Read Gallery are unlikely to schlep to Troyeville – “Where’s that?” – to see works by Barker or Karl Gietl. Barker and Gietl enthusiasts would probably rather drink tar than go to an opening at the Read’s. It’s Woolworths and Pick ‘n Pay, Gucci and Mr Price, but with one major difference: the quality and intrinsic artistic merit of the works shown in one place may not be superior to the other, regardless of price or location. In fact, the lower-priced, cruder-displayed works may, in the long run, prove to be the more valuable.
Perhaps the greatest support for widely representative contemporary South African art comes from corporate collectors: MTN, Absa, Sasol, to name but a few. With reasonably large annual budgets set aside specifically for acquisitions, and pressure to appear as though they actually give a shit, they do stimulate markets across the board.
Despite the complexities influencing price, art remains one of the most rewarding investments one can make. Art works rarely decrease in value, and works which do are generally of such enormous stature (Van Gogh, Schnabel, Picasso), the loss is a drop in the ocean to the kind of buyer who can afford it, and with a little patience, the market generally recovers.
As for South African art: work sold here is generally priced well below its international value. Then, of course, there’s the privilege of living with a thing of beauty and integrity, and those who acquire a piece merely to invest or show off deserve any feelings of aesthetic discomfort which may result.