X Marks the Spot is a blog on contemporary art, created by a group of art professionals in the New York area. We’ll be covering news, events and happenings in the art world, and posting about our own experiences with everything from gallery openings to jury duty.
What makes us qualified? Well, we’re not exactly a who’s who of art history or curatorship or anything like that. In fact, most of us have never worked in museums or galleries before. But we do have first-hand experience with the art market from all sides: as collectors, gallerists, critics and artists. We developed this blog to share our insights and experiences with people who are curious about the inner workings of the art world but don’t have access to it.
We’re thrilled to have you along for the ride!
“The market for stolen art is very big and very active,” says Raphael Minder, a New York Times reporter.
He has just published an article on “a shadowy figure in the global trade in stolen art.” The man’s name is Yves Bouvier, and he describes himself as a “freeport manager.”
Freeports are storage facilities for valuable objects. In theory, they allow their customers to bring art or other valuables into places like Geneva or Luxembourg without paying import taxes. That can be an important service for collectors with valuable items that would otherwise have to be kept in a vault outside the city.
The Times article raises serious questions about Bouvier’s business practices. It alleges that he has helped his clients avoid paying large amounts of money in both import taxes and customs duties by using small airports where customs officials are less likely to check goods carefully.
Bouvier denies those charges. He says his company’s clients include major museums and collectors who want to keep their best pieces close by rather than sending them back and forth across oceans for temporary exhibitions. And he says he helps his clients find ways to pay as little tax as possible without breaking the law.”
The Art Loss Register is the most comprehensive database of stolen and missing art worldwide, with information on over 100,000 works, including sculptures, paintings, drawings and photographs. Since its inception in 1991, the Art Loss Register has assisted law enforcement agencies in locating and recovering thousands of items valued in excess of $500 million.
The next time someone tells you that art prices are too high, and that they’re only a product of speculative excess, remember that art is a $45 billion dollar a year industry.
The value of art has never been higher. As a general rule, the greater the number of people with access to any given work of art, the less its value. The more copies there are of anything, the less special it becomes, and the less valuable it becomes. But in the case of contemporary art, that’s not really true. Contemporary art pieces are limited in number by the artist’s willingness to make them. The artist is protected from mass-production by his or her own intentionality.
The degree to which an artwork can be reproduced and still retain its meaning is directly related to its price tag. While most gallery owners have come to accept that their artists’ work will be reproduced on coffee mugs and t-shirts for sale on street corners in China, they will also tell you that this practice devalues their work. And yet at some point, if an artist’s work is truly successful, it will be copied so extensively that it becomes difficult for collectors to know what they’re buying; and at this point the market for his or her work will decline precipit
It’s difficult to tell exactly what the current state of the art market is, but it’s helping to fuel a burgeoning secondary art market. There are buyers who can afford to purchase art for tens of thousands of dollars, and there are sellers who can make their living selling pieces for this price.
In fact, the value of art has been increasing steadily over the past 20 years. A recent study in the Journal of Finance found that Mezzanine returns for modern, contemporary and even postwar artwork have increased with time. This is despite an ever-increasing pool of buyers, which should theoretically drive down prices.
This means that not only can a buyer purchase art at a reasonable price point and resell it later at a profit, but they are likely to see success in multiple attempts at reselling works.”
Donald Hays writes on his blog that dealers generally encourage artists’ work to climb in value over time–a process known as “appreciation.” He says that dealers will sometimes sell an artist’s work at an higher rate than they could have sold it just two years ago because collectors will pay more for it today than they would have in 2007.”
In the art market this means that forgeries are forgeries and fakes are fakes. But when something is not an original but is nevertheless a valuable artwork, it is called a reproduction. Now, in the art market, a reproduction can be worth a lot of money; but then again, so can an original. The difference is that people who buy originals are aware they are originals; they pay more while they expect to get something that is really worth it. Reproductions, on the other hand, are generally bought by people who believe they are getting something special without paying too much.
Thing is: since reproductions are also sold as if they were originals, every collector should know what they’re buying. And in most cases that’s not possible because there is no reliable way to tell whether an artwork is an original or a reproduction.
Art fraud is a big problem, with estimates ranging up to $6 billion per year. But what exactly is art fraud? How much art on the market is fake? Is it a widespread problem in the United States? How do people decide what’s real and what’s not?
There is no clear definition of “art fraud.” It can include copying an artist’s work, passing off a fake as an original piece, or even selling something that isn’t art at all (like a stolen vase). Exact numbers are tough to come by, but experts estimate that between forty and fifty percent of the art sold at auction houses is suspect. That means that for every two pieces of art for sale, one is fake.
Auction houses aren’t required to authenticate works before putting them up for sale, so many fakes make it through the authentication process and are sold as originals.
Spotting a fake can be tricky because con artists can be very good at imitating the style of their chosen artist. The forger might even reuse original materials from the original artist’s studio. The experts who authenticate pieces often have trouble identifying fakes because they become too attached to their own opinions. Many argue that there’s no sure way to tell if a piece is
