Losing Master Works to Private Collections - Egos and Capitalism
Today, I saw that the newest owner of
the Picasso painting was identified. The painting was sold for a
record-breaking $180 million to the former Prime Minister of Qatar. For
me, it provoked an emotion of loss to know that the painting was on it's way to
the middle east and it is likely never to be viewed in public again. In
fact, I would bet that very few people would ever see it again. It will
most likely be kept behind closed doors thanks to the Middle Eastern country's
strict laws. The painting is vibrant and features a number of
bare-breasted women. Who knows? The guy owns a lot of houses. Maybe he'll keep it locked up in his man cave in New York.
If the rumors of this latest purchase
are true, it is the second major purchase made by a Qatari recently.
It is thought Paul Gauguin's When Will
You Marry? - a scene of two Tahitian girls - fetched $300 million
earlier this year was bought by a Qatari museum, making it the most expensive
painting ever bought.
The Qatari royal family also made the
second most expensive art purchase ever in 2011. They bought a version of
Paul Cezanne's "The Card Players" for $250 million.
This particular painting also broke
records, say experts. The prices are driven by artworks' investment
value and by wealthy new and established collectors seeking out the very best
works.
The auction houses do not cater to carefully selected museums and collectors.
They sell works to the highest bidder. They find two people who want the
same work and get them to bid as high as possible.
Art lovers are the real
losers here. This is capitalism at work. I like capitalism.
I subscribe to it as a business owner but when it comes to works of art, there are losers.
Often those who buy work will only sell it again in two years. It
becomes difficult to keep track of these beautiful works as they move between
private buyers. It makes the art world feel like a circus to me. It
doesn't matter to me what the dollar amount of a particular work is. I
love the work, not the artificial over inflated value. The selfish part of me wants to be able to go see these great works.
Were these paintings
originally commissions to go into private home? I don't know. Maybe
they were but there was a time that it crossed over and became part of our
culture. It is just the way I see it. Others disagree. The
only real art that survives the Renaissance is religiously inspired because they
were the only ones that could afford to fund the artist. A lot of those artists
snubbed the patrons in return. Look at Carravagio for example, he put local whores
and drunks in his paintings. The church was not really pleased with him
once they realized what he were doing.
In my own little world, I believe that regardless who physically owns a
work like this, sometimes they come to belong to humankind as a significant
achievement. I wish more people had exposure to the arts and loved it for
the joy and the message it conveys.
When the collection at the
National Museum of Art in Washington D.C. was conceived, people of great
wealth bought the art but housed it where others could view it.
Banker, Andrew
W. Mellon began gathering a private collection
of old master paintings and
sculptures during World War I, but in the late 1920s he decided to direct his
collecting efforts towards the establishment of a new national gallery for the
United States.
The core collection of the
National Museum of Art includes major works of art donated by Paul
Mellon, Ailsa Mellon Bruce, Lessing J. Rosenwald, Samuel Henry Kress, Rush
Harrison Kress, Peter Arrell Brown
Widener, Joseph E. Widener, and Chester Dale.
The Gallery's collection of paintings, drawings, prints, photographs,
sculpture, medals, and decorative arts traces the development of Western Art
from the Middle Ages to the present. There is a great audio podcast from
the National Museum of Art that details it's inception. I learned a lot
of things that I didn't know from that podcast and I am grateful for his vision.
Gertrude Stein was
known as a collector of Modernist art. She had a great eye for genius. She bought
Picasso paintings in 1905 before anyone even knew who he was. I had the
great pleasure of seeing this collection in San Francisco at the Museum of
Modern Art a few years ago. I could have lingered in that collection for
hours if I had that luxury but I could not. I was there for a work conference
and snuck away for a couple hours to see it. Seeing those works from that magic period of time of the Salon of Paris had a lasting impression on
me. And that is where these auctions have a detrimental impact on
collections. When a museum or gallery owns a work, they often loan the
artwork to other museums. Curators have a talent for displaying different
works together in new ways to convey a different emotion or message. That
is what I love, the evolution of how we look at paintings through the eyes of
future generations.
I like to believe that I
share the same wish for art as these generous benefactors, the belief that
art should be loved by the many instead of the few. Most galleries
and museums are non-profit entities and can never compete on the open market with
the auction houses. They can barely
afford to mount large shows. Auction houses are wrong if they think that
what they're organizing are "exhibitions." These are highly promoted
sales events, ways to cajole collectors, soothe anxious buyers and sellers, and
maximize profits.
It isn't merely the monetary values of
the art that is out of whack. So are the values of the people who are
buying and selling it. Wealthy collectors and their spawn tell everyone they
love the art they own. I am cynical and believe these collectors don't
have a clue about what it means to own art. Like the auction houses, they're
only interested in money and publicity. There is a glut of artists in the
world today. Everyone thinks they are an artist and they lick their chops
at getting a fraction of the money generated at the actions. They
are delusional dreamers.
Alas, there is some hope for the future
generations to actually be able to see original artistic masterpieces. There are
even more collectors working with museums to offer up to the public the art
they have cherished after they die. Many loan it to the museums while
they are still kicking.
Most all of the great American museums owe the
vast majority of their art collections to gifts from private collectors. Since
the 19th century, collectors such as J.P. Morgan, Solomon Guggenheim, Gertrude
Vanderbilt Whitney and generations of Rockefellers have donated their art
collections.
In 1981, Joseph Hirshhorn, the patron of
modern paintings and sculpture who died at the age of 82, left his entire
private collection to the museum that bears his name on The Mall in Washington.
This was in addition to the 6,000 works he gave to the museum to open the
wing in the first place.
The Billionaire Boys Club are the big winners in buying up
the art today. Whether these collectors are
rounding up Renaissance drawings, African masks or bare-breasted women in a Picasso, they often see their collections as a form of
self-expression.
Today, a big part of a
museum director's job is to try to cultivate people who will eventually give
the museum their art. But getting a collector to part with his or her art is no
easy job. A lot of would-be art donors are getting more picky about where they
want to donate.
Gap founder and art
collector Don Fisher Fisher died in September 2009. He wanted to
build his own museum, rather than give his collection to the San Francisco
Museum of Modern Art (SFMoMA).
Fisher proposed building a
museum in a national park in the city, but that idea ran into opposition from
local activists. So in the summer of 2009, while he was battling cancer, Fisher
dropped the plan and started talking with SFMoMA.
Just two days before
Fisher died, the museum announced that he and his wife, Doris, had agreed to
lend their collection for 25 years. The arrangement is unusual, since the
museum won't own the art outright. None the less, curators will get to treat the art almost as
though they did.
Walter H.
Annenberg, the billionaire publisher, art collector, and one-time ambassador to
Great Britain, left half his $8 billion fortune to his wife and family, his
renowned art collection to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.
There is a lot of
contemporary art in the world. There is a proliferation of collectors of
contemporary art, and there isn't enough space in the museums to show all of
it. Part of it is that time will take its course and cull those works in each
era down to a smaller number that the public and art historians consider
valuable for the long term. It can be like predicting interest
rates.
My clients used to ask me all the time where I thought rates were
going. If I knew that, I would be part of the Billionaire Girls Club and be hanging that Picasso in my living room.