The Art of Buying Art
Matthew Day Jackson's "To Infinity..." is in Shariat's collection. Photograph courtesy of Matthew Day Jackson
With a spate of new galleries showing works by emerging artists, now’s the time to find the next Jeff Koons.
Amir Shariat, chief executive officer of financing and advisory firm Auctor Capital Partners Ltd. in London, prowls for art much as he does for stock. In 2005, the collector noticed a colorful stripe painting by little-known artist Anselm Reyle at the Art Basel fair in Switzerland. He liked the painter’s new take on pop art and bought the work for 10,000 euros. In the following two years, the artist’s career took off, with another of his stripe paintings fetching $634,956 at Christie’s in London in 2007.
“To discover artists before they become famous, that’s the thrill for me,” Shariat, 38, says. “It’s like spotting a great stock that nobody else thought of.”
Today, collectors are flocking to small galleries in Berlin, London and New York to play the art market as Shariat does. Rather than paying a few million to $100 million for a Picasso painting, they’re buying the works of emerging artists for $1,000 to $20,000. In New York, where galleries in Chelsea have dominated, new art outposts have been opening downtown on the Lower East Side and East Village.
Rental, a gallery on the Lower East Side that has mounted exhibitions of cutting-edge art from Cologne, London and Warsaw, is moving a few blocks to Orchard Street in September to triple its size to 2,800 square feet (260 square meters). Another hot spot, Museum 52 in the East Village, sold out paintings from Julia Goldman’s debut solo show within a week last October at prices from $2,500 to $6,000.
“Collectors don’t have to rack their brains about whether they can afford pieces of emerging art,” says Augusto Arbizo, director of gallery Eleven Rivington on the Lower East Side. “They are already cheap.”
Most artists will never transcend the lower rungs of the market. The key to finding a winner, Shariat says, is research. Visit as many art openings, fairs and museum exhibitions as you can. Talk to dealers, artists and collectors about the art, not about making money from it. Dealers frown on speculators and prefer to do business with buy-and-hold collectors. And watch for signs of a rising star, such as artwork shown at the Whitney Biennial or the Art Basel fair. The website oneartworld.com, which tracks shows at more than 2,000 galleries by about 38,000 artists around the world, is a good place to start exploring.
“Like everything in life, you need to be dedicated to be successful,” says Shariat, whose collection includes several hundred pieces, mostly from artists who weren’t established at the time he bought their work. “Instead of going to play soccer in the park, I see five or six art shows during the weekend.”
Andrew Ong, an architectural designer based in New York, has discovered up-and-comers by seeking out art that challenges him. When he began collecting in the 1980s, he coveted sculpture by established minimalist artists Dan Flavin and Donald Judd that he couldn’t afford. Instead, he bought one of four identical stainless steel sculptures titled Fisherman Golfer by a relative unknown named Jeff Koons at a Los Angeles gallery for $15,000 in 1986. In May of this year, another of the Fisherman Golfer sculptures, which ended up in the collection of the late best- selling author Michael Crichton, fetched $434,500 at Christie’s in New York.
“I bought that Koons because it was really interesting and new,” Ong, 54, says. “It was the art of my generation.”
Ong has bought early works by Richard Prince and Felix Gonzalez- Torres for a fraction of what they would cost now. Ong’s advice to new collectors: Follow your eyes and ignore what’s fashionable at the moment. “To have a strong feeling about something--loving or hating it--that’s what I am looking for,” he says.
Katya Kazakina is in New York at kkazakina@bloomberg.net
#<535521.2245115.2.1.46.17993.25># -0- Jul/07/2010 13:48 GMT
Rate These Stories
Rate this Page