»GOOD BUSINESS IS THE BEST ART»

Buying and selling contemporary art at the highest level currently has a lot more to do with capitalism than it does cultural value. Unless you understand that, you aren’t actually talking about the art market at all.

The big dealers — Gagosian, David Zwirner, Pace, etc. — and the deep-pocketed collecting families like the Mugrabis and the Nahmads — have almost complete control over the markets of contemporary art's most expensive artists. Furthermore, the cultural cachet of having done business at one of the world’s most famous galleries is part of what you pay for when you buy a work by one of those galleries’ artists. That value will likely drop in the long run — but it’s currently a market force continuing to push prices upward. High prices for contemporary artists are entirely dependent on the ability of the best dealers to continue to convince their wealthy clients that higher prices are worth paying, and to dish out the cash themselves at times to keep everything going when demand is lean. As long as they can continue to do that, the state of the market is unlikely to change.

-Artinfo

Jan 7 2013