Over the last two months, I have gotten calls from several clients asking me where I think the art market will be when this pandemic is over. I always pause, and in that space they usually go on to say they expect it will be where the stock market is…that is, 15-20% lower in terms of values.
This is, of course, an impossible question to answer, but it opens a door to the real question…which is NOT “what is my collection worth to others” (after all a market is just an assessment of what others collectively agree something is worth), BUT what is my collection worth to me?
No doubt this period has been filled with attempts to find things that bring us joy…activities that take us away from the fear and uncertainty that hold us tight in their grasp. I have spoken to many people who are spending more time in nature, or picking up an old or neglected hobby, or learning a new one. I recently pulled out a book of recipes that has been sitting dusty on a shelf for years and made a wonderful dinner with my daughter. We now make a new one every week. Almost everyone I bet has taken some extra time to check in with themselves to see what they need in the moment, and we have also given ourselves space to indulge that need. Without so many of the things that are common to our everyday experience, our choices are fewer and more deliberate.
Why does it feel that indulging in things that bring us joy is an escape?
Why isn’t finding the things that excite us and bring us joy part of our path rather than the exception, the distraction?
What happens when we buy a work of art? Are we making an investment in a marketplace? Are we also making an investment in the artist who produced it? Are we listening to that part of us that was attracted to that particular work of brilliance and committing to that response?
I think when we collect art we are making an investment in ourselves.
Does the writer or artist create for the marketplace or to satisfy a need to be heard, to bring out and share what is within? Why do our responses have to be any different? Why do we have to buy always with an eye to the marketplace and how it will be received by others who do not share our particular joy?
So, I would like to explore these questions with you: Why Do We Collect? What Does It Mean To Collect? Why Collect Now?
ORIGINAL COMMENTS:
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Dear Aaron, Finally have time to sit down and absorb what you are doing here. Naturally I enjoy your perspective, free of the usual jargon attached to ‘art’ leading some to believe if they don’t understand it and can’t do it themselves it must be ‘art’. I just finished reading Tom Wolfe’s “The Painted Word” again, a refreshingly revealing observation still true today. Fortunately, you do not follow the path Wolfe describes so accurately and hilariously. I look forward to reading the rest of your emails received over the last month or so and also to those in the making. Your thoughts are what the ‘art world’ needs to consider more rather than making things up as they go. Yours contain deep thought and profound affection for art as you see it. Wonderful.