What Gets People to Walk Into an Art Gallery and Buy
How to Purchase Fine art: A Beginner'southward Cheat Sheet
You probably aren't the one who shelled out $66.three one thousand thousand for that late van Gogh on Tuesday night at Sotheby's. And the stratosphere of next week's art auctions at Sotheby's and Christie's, with works by Picasso and Giacometti poised to prepare records, is about likely out of your league also. Still, there are more than earthbound ways to go into the fine art-buying game — at auctions, art fairs, cease-of-year educatee shows and some big open-studio events. The next iv weeks present art-ownership opportunities galore in New York, with bargains for anyone willing to stray from the beaten path and stay warning. The hunt and its thrills do not take to lead to a giant price tag if you go along a few tips in mind.
The Galleries
Go A MAP New York is a city of multiplying art districts. Explore them. Bushwick and Williamsburg in Brooklyn, and Long Isle City in Queens, are well established as alternative fine art centers. And then is the Lower East Side in Manhattan. Just artists and galleries too cluster in Greenpoint, Bedford-Stuyvesant and Gowanus, Brooklyn. Gallery Guide, a free booklet with listings of electric current exhibitions and neighborhood maps, tin be found in many galleries. Online, there's the Chelsea Gallery Map, and for Brooklyn, the monthly guide Wagmag.
CHECK PAST SALES See if the artist you like has a rail record. Artnet sells subscriptions to its price database, which has sales from 1,600 auction houses since 1985.
NEGOTIATE The contract between dealer and artist normally includes a clause permitting the dealer to lower the price of an artwork up to a sure per centum, somewhere between five and twenty percent. Remember that the artist gets only half of the listed cost. The gallery takes the rest.
DON'T TAKE Information technology PERSONALLY Some of the higher-end galleries can be snooty, forcing you to ask for price information, which should be visible, and assuming you're not a serious heir-apparent. Leading dealers also similar to identify their holdings with established collectors to protect the works' pedigree, then even if you can beget a major painting, a gallery may non desire to sell information technology to you. Don't sweat information technology. But motion on to more welcoming galleries.
WORK THE ANGLES For a higher-priced work, a dealer might concord to installment payments.
LOOK FOR THE Crimson DOT If an artwork on the wall or on the gallery's toll list (which, past law, must exist prominently displayed, though ofttimes is not) has a red dot, that means it has been sold.
HAVE A Plan B If the work you lot want is too expensive, consider smaller works by the same artist, a work on paper rather than an oil painting, an oil-pastel written report, an older work or a photograph. And ask to look in the back room. Near dealers will take additional work by an artist they correspond.
"Art doesn't have to exist expensive, only it'due south of import to exist out there and see what'southward happening. Information technology may accept yous six months or a yr to observe what yous like." Judith Selkowitz (art adviser)
The Auctions
HIRE AN Fine art ADVISER At that place are plenty of people whose chore it is to help y'all purchase art, whether it'southward merely a few decorative pieces or the beginnings of a serious drove. You can find them through online listings, only it's better to enquire your art-ownership acquaintances for their directorate or search for names in news articles about collectors and the art market.
READ AND PREVIEW Practice your homework. Study the auction catalog — including cost estimates — and visit previews for a shut-up look at the art on offer. Set a budget and stick to information technology.
SIT ON YOUR HANDS Auctions tin exist overwhelming. There is a show-business chemical element to the proceedings, and big names in attendance. You can't ever tell what's happening — or who's bidding. That's because some buyers prefer anonymity so they bid over the phone or from private boxes in a higher place the sale room. Too, the behest tin can get fast, with auctioneers throwing out several figures in succession to jump-beginning the process. When in doubt, just scout.
CLICK, WITH CAUTION There are some slap-up deals online and legitimate outfits getting into the act — Sotheby'southward recently held its outset auction in a new partnership with eBay, and Christie'due south in 2012 sold some of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Art's collection online. But buyers must beware; the online sphere leaves all sorts of room for specious claims almost provenance, condition and value. Paddle8 and Auctionata are considered reputable sites. Yous demand to exercise due diligence on sellers and their claims before you click the behest push button.
LOOK AT THE CLOCK Lisa Dennison, the chairwoman of Sotheby's Northward and South America, advises deal hunters to look at the day sales, where "y'all will detect works by many of the same artists in the evening sale, at a fraction of the cost."
At Sotheby's, an untitled 2009 polyurethanic prophylactic hand by Maurizio Cattelan is estimated at $15,000 to $twenty,000 in the 24-hour interval sale on Wednesday, whereas that artist'due south piece featuring miniature working elevators (as well untitled) from 2001 is estimated at $ane.ii million to $1.8 million at the auction the previous evening.
"People get sentimental virtually the starting time few works of fine art they buy, or they detect them laughable and employ them equally benchmarks of their early mistakes. But either mode, it's like first honey, and one should totally revel in it." — Amy Cappellazzo (art adviser)
The Students
Principal'S WORK Fine art schools in New York present terminate-of-semester student shows by M.F.A. candidates, a happy hunting ground for inexpensive art. Columbia Academy'southward Schoolhouse of the Arts, the School of Visual Arts, Parsons, Pratt Institute and Hunter Higher all listing educatee shows on their websites. Some are on campus, others in gallerylike locations exterior the schools, with guest curators.
Brand AN Offer Or ask. Student shows are informal, without toll lists. The school acts as a go-between and takes no fee, and so the artist receives the full price. If it feels awkward to talk money with the artist in person, accept a card and talk over money later on.
Reddish-DOT JUNE From January to May, the Fine art Students League exhibits pupil work. The all-time pieces, chosen past faculty members, are included in its Ruby-red Dot Exhibition each June.
CHECK WEBSITES Even student artists have websites, usually with images, a biography and an artist's argument that will offering insights into the work.
The Studios
KNOCK KNOCK Open studios are annual events in art districts like Gowanus, Bushwick and Long Island Metropolis. Individual artists, or buildings housing multiple artists' studios, join forces and concord an open house for a weekend, with maps and websites to help navigation.
STRATEGIZE YOUR ROUTE Bushwick Open Studios, from June 5 to 7, has grown so big that the festival has been divided into a one-half-dozen zones, each with its own map, available equally a smartphone app or on the Arts in Bushwick website. A impress version will be distributed at hub points in the neighborhood. Profiles of the 700 individual artists are online. LIC Arts Open up, in Long Island Urban center, from May 13 to 17, also has a guide and map on its website.
DON'T FORGET THE STUDENTS Most fine art schools, in add-on to end-of-semester thesis shows, also hold open studios during the academic twelvemonth.
Engage The point of an open studio is to let the public come across work outside the gallery organization and promote dialogue. This is your chance to become the inside scoop on the art and the artist backside it.
BARGAIN The art is for sale. Deals tin can be struck.
LET YOUR FINGERS Do THE WALKING Artsicle operates a virtual open studio, putting users in contact with more than 5,000 artists in 88 countries.
"Purchase fewer, amend works of fine art. Buy the best you can afford. Have your time. There is no fine art emergency." — Liz Klein (fine art adviser)
The Fairs
MORE IS Ameliorate Half of buying wisely is knowing what'due south out there and the going rates. Art fairs brand it possible to see the maximum number of galleries and dealers in the minimum corporeality of time. Exploit this. Frieze New York, on Randalls Isle from Th through May 17, is like shooting fish in a barrel to reach and fun to navigate.
THINK CHEAP Some fairs, like Spring Masters New York, opening Friday at the Park Avenue Arsenal, or Frieze serve a rich clientele. Others, similar the Affordable Art Fair, every September, or the New Fine art Dealers Alliance fair, opening on Thursday, offer less expensive piece of work.
SEEK THE SATELLITES Every March, when the big fairs striking New York — the Art Dealers Association of America show and the Arsenal Show, followed by Asia Week — smaller fish swim in their wake, many of them offering bargains. These include Volta, Pulse New York, Scope, the Independent and the quirky Spring/Break Art Show in Moynihan Station, the former James A. Farley Post Function in Manhattan.
THE LAST-DAY DIP Typically, art at the big fairs is pricey. But when a fair enters its final day, prices can get soft on works that have not moved.
TALK TO DEALERS The aforementioned dealers who may be tied upward on the phone at their galleries, or are absent entirely, tin can exist outgoing and talkative at a fair. This is a golden opportunity to look, ask questions and learn.
DON'T FORGET FESTIVALS Trade fairs control nigh of the art-buying attention, but events like the Harlem Arts Festival can also present opportunities. Forth with a full schedule of performing arts, the festival (June 27 and 28 in Marcus Garvey Park) includes a dozen visual artists with work for sale.
"Ninety pct of the people walking in have no inkling what a gallery is all about. They remember that I am the artist who painted all the work on the walls. Some of them telephone call and enquire if there is a charge to enter the gallery." — Adriaan Van Der Plas (gallery owner, Lower East Side)
Bonus Tips
ART CAN BE A Skilful INVESTMENT Personal sense of taste aside, art has also proven to be a serious nugget class, so you can arroyo acquisitions from a more lesser-line, business organization-oriented perspective. Purchase fourth dimension-tested artists whose works go on to appreciate or try to get in on the ground flooring of emerging talents who seem — in the press or through give-and-take of oral fissure — poised to have off.
Brainwash YOUR Center Go see every bit much as y'all can — at galleries, museums and art fairs and past trolling online. The more art you see, the more you will develop clear judgment. Cognition can help put things in context, but expertise isn't a prerequisite. Marc Glimcher, president of Pace Gallery, says: "Go to a museum first and run across what speaks to you. Identify which thread of fine art history is meaningful to yous before heading to the galleries or the auction."
THE LONG VIEW Budding collectors shouldn't just buy what initially captivates them. "Ask yourself how something might wait when you know more, how something might look over fourth dimension," said Amy Cappellazzo, co-founder of Art Agency, Partners, an fine art advisory firm. "The best thing to exercise is put yourself in a position where the first purchase actually challenges you a petty — you're not sure you like something, but you can't stop looking at it. Imagine your smarter self looking at it in 5 years."
Get WHAT Yous Dearest All sorts of people will requite all sorts of advice about what to buy and when and where to purchase it. But the lesser line is, yous take to live with the painting or sculpture or installation, then you should like what it looks like, how information technology feels to accept it in your home. Unless you're viewing art equally a pure financial investment, trust your aesthetic response.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/08/arts/design/how-to-buy-art-a-beginners-cheat-sheet.html
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