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What does a buyer of art attain when they purchase the work of a living artist? I have usually seen them acquiring an object that stimulates their senses and spirit. From my point of view as an artist, there is much to recommend this transaction.
The self-esteem I took from the first sales of my work through a commercial gallery buoyed me at the beginning of an uncertain career. Seeing my skills valued and fairly rewarded gave me some confidence to proceed as an artist. I was particularly fortunate to be exhibiting with a family who have, to this day, run their galleries on a commission of 33.3% on artists’ sales.
The impending closure of their gallery – Watters Gallery in East Sydney – was reported on ArtsHub last week in an article that examined the economic conditions in which commercial galleries now operate, locally and internationally. Citing a proposition by the self-described art market expert Magnus Resch that a dealer’s commission of 70% is reasonable given the costs that now accrue to the representation of artists, the article made sobering reading.
Read: Why are so many commercial galleries closing?
Once my outrage that the artist’s portion of the pie could be reduced to such a sliver had subsided, I wondered what kind of impact Resch’s economics, calculated in the apparently booming European art market, would have on our local scene with its low prices and patchy sales patterns? This surely is one of the key questions the article raised.
But of greater interest still is the question of what a proposed 70% dealer’s commission tells us about the distortion of art’s value and function at the so-called high end of the international contemporary art market.
Are the foundations for ‘the value argument’ valid or rocky?
Up until the 1960s the notion that an artwork’s value was inherent and attributable to the artistry of the maker was an established presumption. But as artists began to pose questions about how status is conferred on works of art by museums and the art market, the informed public became more acutely aware – perhaps almost suspicious – of the power plays that had determined the shape of art history. Personal judgement became contested ground.
Now, several decades later, with every kind of art object imaginable being created and exhibited, it is difficult for anybody to make encompassing statements about the art of our time. Who is able to say what is significant this year, let alone identify the artists whose work will retain value in 50 years?
Diversity and uncertainty are the perfect conditions for the propagation of hype, and the more expensive the art, the more audacious and contentious the claims made for it seem to become. One of the key lessons of the 1960s and ’70s – that the arc of history is susceptible to market influence – has been sadly interpreted 50 years later as a green light for transitory value judgments to be marketed as bankable truth.
This is the world in which the 70% dealer’s commission becomes possible: a world beholden to the false images of marketing.
Resch is prepared to propose that the skills of the dealer out-value the skills of the artist by a factor of more than two to one because he is immersed in a market that lacks the patience to wait for the art object to do its slow work of transporting the viewer. The dealer is a rapid and reliable fixer of artists’ reputations, and the presumption is that the artist desires wild success more than fair recognition. Thus the dealer secures the artist’s reputation and takes the spoils.
What does the buyer get?
Returning to my initial question about what a buyer of art attains when they purchase the work of a living artist, I offer these thoughts.
There is a class of art buyers who are bent on attaining an aura of success through their purchases: the buyer joining the exclusive circle of those who can afford and discern significant work; the gallery claiming the lion’s share of the spoils for being the sole agent capable of sustaining such a transaction, and the artist left with little more than the status of a once-proud vocation, grateful to win the support of such a persuasive enterprise force.
Whatever satisfaction the artist might feel at having climbed the ladder of contemporary art, it must be tempered by the realisation that their work has become a mere token in a commercial exchange predicated more on the buyer’s vanity than their love of the artwork.
