Market Matters 03/10/2007 11:02 AM This is the html version of the file http://www.artscouncil.org.uk/documents/publications/phpbWxMrb.pdf. G o o g l e automatically generates html versions of documents as we crawl the web. To link to or bookmark this page, use the following url: http://www.google.com/search? q=cache:XCDyFveR7lgJ:www.artscouncil.org.uk/documents/publications/phpbWxMrb.pdf+Relative+Values+or+What%E2%80%99s+Art+Worth&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=10&gl=us Google is neither affiliated with the authors of this page nor responsible for its content. These search terms have been highlighted: relative values s art worth Page 1 Market Matters The dynamics of the contemporary art market By Louisa Buck Page 2 Market Matters The dynamics of the contemporary art market By Louisa Buck Carey Young Detail of production still from http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:XCDyFveR7lgJ:www.artscouncil…pdf+Relative+Values+or+What’s+Art+Worth&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=10&gl=us Page 1 of 26 Market Matters 03/10/2007 11:02 AM I am a Revolutionary, 2001 Video, 4.08 mins; colour, sound Commissioned by Film & Video Umbrella in association with John Hansard Gallery Arts Council Collection, Hayward Gallery, London Courtesy of IBID projects, London/Vilnius In the video I am a Revolutionary we see the artist dressed in a smart business suit in a slick office space. Young is rehearsing part of a script with a presentation skills trainer: ‘I am a revolutionary.’ The line could equally come from the ‘business leadership‘ rhetoric of globalisation as from the language of political activists, much as it also seems to refer to the legacy of the artistic avant-garde. Young struggles to say her line with conviction, but to her trainer, the words seem unproblematic, as if they are just another message that can be spouted to an audience like any other within the realm of popular or political culture. Carey Young, September 2004 Page 3 Acknowledgments Contents Among the many people who have provided information 4 Foreword and advice I am especially grateful to Andrew Wheatley for his invaluable input and to Sarah Thelwall for sharing 6 Introduction her knowledge so generously. Thanks also to Gill 12 Mechanics of the market Johnson, Marjorie Allthorpe-Guyton, Viola von Harrach, 18 Value of the market Tim Eastop, Sarah Wason, Paula Silcox, and Kirsten 21 Characterising the market Dunne of Arts Council England for their contribution and commitment to this project, and to Eileen Daly 27 Distribution for her editing skills. Gerri Morris of Morris Hargreaves 39 Buyers McIntyre was most helpful in guiding me through her 49 Public sector research, and Taste Buds is the cornerstone from which this publication has developed. Thanks are also due to 63 Developing the market the Taste Buds Steering Group, chaired by Gill Hedley, 69 Conclusion: the market does matter Director of the Contemporary Art Society. 70 Endnotes 72 Quote sources http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:XCDyFveR7lgJ:www.artscouncil…pdf+Relative+Values+or+What’s+Art+Worth&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=10&gl=us Page 2 of 26 Market Matters 03/10/2007 11:02 AM Page 4 Foreword a debate that centres on local and national, public and private, the present as well as the past. The The art market and contemporary art generate intense Contemporary Art Society’s Special Collections scheme media and public interest, yet the workings of the art has made an impressive start to create credible public world are impenetrable to all but insiders in the field. collections of contemporary art outside London. This This snapshot draws on interviews with artists, collectors, needs to be sustained. curators, dealers and galleries. Louisa Buck’s incisive text shows how the international art market works and To widen the current market and collector base for looks at the importance of growing private and public contemporary art, the Arts Council’s New Audiences collecting in Britain. It concludes with proposals to Department commissioned research on the size and strengthen the art economy and to widen its reach. composition of the market for contemporary art in England for which little data existed. The report, Taste Arts Council England aims to place the artist at the Buds, presents the findings of a year-long research centre of its activities and to grow the economy for exercise. The scope was to cover the entire spectrum artists. This more overt engagement with the commercial of contemporary art as well as to identify the market sector requires a knowledge and relationship with the for what is defined as ‘challenging’ contemporary art. market based on the need to balance public values This market is global and its dynamics international. and private interests. Many artists work outside the conventions of the gallery system and eschew the art Market Matters draws on Taste Buds to throw a spotlight market. There is a live tradition in Britain of art in the on the workings of this market to encourage those who public realm which is politically and socially focused, want to buy new work and relish a challenge. It does not where the process of art has precedence over the object underplay the pitfalls, but will give confidence through or ‘product’. The economy of art has changed. Many providing ways in, at all levels. It also makes suggestions artists receive fees for projects which are often temporary, on how the Arts Council and the galleries and museums although they may generate related works for sale in the might work more closely to establish protocols to traditional market. The roles of the publicly funded and support the economy for artists and collectors. We the private gallery are becoming interchangeable as recognise that strong public collections for the benefit public galleries need to raise more income and as the of all are the best advocate for growing engagement private galleries expand their public presence. and for stimulating private collecting. An informed and appropriate relationship with the commercial sector is Artists now negotiate a wider market, public as well as fundamental for arts organisations in the 21st century. private and this has implications for the private collector This presents challenges; we commissioned this essay to too. It also impacts on the capacity of our regional contribute to the debate. The market does matter and it museums to develop strong contemporary collections See Robertson, Iain, is both private and public. which provide the critical context for increased private Understanding international art markets and collecting, especially outside London. The Museums management, (forthcoming) Marjorie Allthorpe-Guyton, Association is consulting on Collections for the Future, Routledge, 2005 Director Visual Arts, Arts Council England 4 Foreword Page 5 Introduction “It is a well-known particular artist.’ 2 Much of the Arts Council Collection, melancholy truth that which began when the Arts Council of Great Britain was An unholy alliance? the tribe of auctioneers, founded in 1946, has been acquired from commercial Art history confirms that the relationship between connoisseurs, picture galleries and the Arts Council continues to purchase 3 art and money is a time-honoured one. Ever since the dealers … have monopolised ‘innovative work from artists living in Britain’ from church, the crown and the aristocracy ceased to be the trade of pictures and dealers great and small. significant sources of patronage, contemporary art made it a matter of ridicule has been inextricably involved in and subject to the to purchase any modern Yet despite a long history of symbiosis, relations vicissitudes of the market-place. Writing in the 17th production or to encourage between public and private remain ambiguous. century the diarist John Evelyn records that it was quite an English artist. By this The two sectors may be entwined but this does not usual to find Dutch farmers paying the equivalent of craft the leaders of taste necessarily mean that they are at ease with their up to £3,000 for paintings and then reselling them at of these kingdoms acquire conjoined state. At a time when the art market in this ‘very great gaines’; 1 and more recently, as every artist fortunes and credit, whilst country is undergoing a period of unprecedented from Marcel Duchamp onwards is all too aware, no many of our painters, men expansion it is especially important that this relationship http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:XCDyFveR7lgJ:www.artscouncil…pdf+Relative+Values+or+What’s+Art+Worth&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=10&gl=us Page 3 of 26 Market Matters 03/10/2007 11:02 AM from Marcel Duchamp onwards is all too aware, no artwork, however radical or overtly critical of the of genius and industry, is reassessed. In the past, visual art has primarily been market-place, is immune from being absorbed and are absolutely starving.” understood and utilised according to cultural and social consumed as marketable material. From the museums Letter in St James’s Chronicle, criteria: either for its intrinsic value, as ‘art for art’s sake’ through to the heritage sector, Arts Council England 25 April 1761 or, more recently, for its role as a driver of regeneration. and the British Council, the public sector has always Now, however, the re-evaluation of the art market as been engaged with the art market, and it should not an economy or an industry with all the considerations assume that it can or should remain aloof from its and benefits that this implies, introduces the new activities. How it engages is the key question. concept of discussing art and artists in terms framed by an economic as well as a cultural and a social imperative.