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December 21, 2008

A season of wants

A season of wants

I want to be a super hero
I want to return
I want to date
I want to be heard
I want to focus
I want to lock up
I want 18 million dollars
I want my title back
I want a win
I want to watch
I want to establish an identity
I want to ban booze
I want to stay safe
I want you
I want a child
I want a friend on facebook
I want season tickets
I want be a guy that makes stupid comments
I want date a rock star

I want a lot

I want stay
I want see how it ends
I want be a part
I want discuss your future
I want to change it
I want a new deal
I want to rock
I want it the best way
I want to be a spoiler
I want to stop
I want to outlaw
I want to say too much
I want to keep all my cards on the table
I want to to be patient
I want to you to believe
I want to eat at a table with my own silver
I want a wife
I want to be back

October 19, 2008

Wall Street Sends Tremors to 57th Street Art Dealers

from Bloomberg

Letting Phones Ring

At the Laurence Miller gallery, which specializes in modern and contemporary photography, director Laurence Miller said clients' reactions to Wall Street's woes have varied.

``We are dealing with a few collectors who are in the highest level of economics and wealth in the country and it doesn't affect them,'' Miller said. He noted, though, that ``clients who are money managers are not answering their phones.''

A survivor of three recessions, Miller said, ``Interestingly, each time, as people scale back, they scale back into photography.'' "

October 02, 2008

New York art market shows evidence of weakness

Art newspaper

Sign of things to come? New York art market shows evidence of weakness

Global stocks crash; buying drops at auctions in US and fairs in Korea and France

By Melanie Gerlis | From News | Posted: 2.10.08

LONDON. The Asia Week auctions in New York were the first to show a dramatic fall in revenue and buy-in rates since last year, suggesting that the art market can no longer withstand the pressure of the surrounding economic turmoil. In the same week, although nearly all lots sold at Damien Hirst’s solo auction at Sotheby’s in London (some of it to his art dealers), the Korea International Art Fair was hit by the financial backdrop and buying also dropped at the art and antiquities biennial in Paris.

In the space of a few days in September, the investment bank Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy protection; the US’s biggest insurance group, AIG, was rescued from collapse by the Federal Reserve; and financial corporations including Merrill Lynch and Halifax Bank of Scotland (the UK’s largest lender) were pushed into acquisitions by their competitors. Market commentators were comparing the situation to the economic gloom of the Great Depression, which began in the US in 1929, and warning that it could be at least five years before stability returns.

There are still those who profess to believe that there are markets that can continue to operate in isolation; auctioneers and dealers have been saying for months that buyers from growing economies such as China and Russia can make up for the likely retirement of western buyers. But news of Lehman Brothers’ collapse didn’t only see the Dow Jones fall 500-points: Asian stocks nosedived (the benchmark Shanghai Composite Index closed down 4.5% on 16 September), and on 17 September trading on Russia’s main stock exchange—one of the best performing indexes in recent years—was suspended following sharp falls in share prices prompted by the news from Wall Street.

“There will be a tightening of belts,” says Philip Hoffman, founder of the UK’s Fine Art Fund. Andreas Gegner, director at Sprüth Magers in London, says: “September’s news was more dramatic than we’ve seen before and sent more alarming signals. The Damien Hirst sale went fine, but you could argue this sale was the exception and therefore can’t be relied upon. I would imagine that people who have started buying art recently, many of whom work in financial companies, may pull out now.”

Historically there has been a loose correlation between the wider economy and the art market, which has taken around 18 months to react to financial downturns. It is now over a year since the sub-prime mortgage fiasco began to unwind.

October’s Frieze Art Fair and the following contemporary sales in London and New York will once again hope to defy economic gravity.

GALLERIES FEELING THE SQUEEZE?

from Artforum

The Süddeutsche Zeitung’s Jörg Häntzschel looks at the impact of the bank crash on the art market in New York. Although he suspects that galleries and auction houses will be hit hard, no one has yet issued a statement about the financial crisis. “No comment from the three big auction houses, Christie’s, Sotheby’s, and Phillips de Pury,” writes Häntzschel. The city’s most important galleries—Gagosian, Zwirner & Wirth, Marian Goodman, Deitch Projects, and Gladstone—have also remained silent. “And who wants to talk down a nervous market with bad news? No one could say anything about the Frieze Art Fair in London in October, about the auctions at the beginning of November. Only a director from Yvon Lambert was willing to provide information: ‘The last two weeks have been noticeably quiet.’” Although a few collectors here and there have apparently taken their names off waiting lists, there is no trace of panic among New York dealers, who can still choose among buyers.

“What distinguishes this crisis from others is the new internationalism of the market,” writes Häntzschel. “When New York investment bankers drop out, Moscow oil barons jump in. There are fewer risks for artists whose works have obtained spectacular prices in the last years. . . . But things could turn out to become slightly tougher for younger names.”

September 28, 2008

Exhibiting in difficult economic times

I was down at the gallery yesterday and made an unscientific survey of 12 galleries on 25th Street - between 2-2:30pm on Saturday there were only 19 people that I counted in any of the galleries, 6 galleries had none and there was little street traffic.

Just read this:

From William Powhida

The reality is the art market is a lagging indicator. There won't be a spectacular crash, but how the auctions unfold this fall and sales in Miami should start to give us a picture of what the damage will be. As galleries start to close and artists lose representation, the oversaturated art market, which has produced a stunning amount of art about anything and everything, may start to develop some clarity. I wonder what will be left standing in the wake of the contraction. Whose work will still be deemed important by the critics when there is no money left to prop it up. I expect we will see a lot of discussion, debate, and movement to define what the last decade was really about. What will the story be? The umbrella of post-modernism is wearing thin.

Will critics matter again?

Yikes, glad I still have a day job.

January 15, 2007

Ubiquity is the new exclusivity

from the NY Times Anywhere the Eye Can See, It’s Likely to See an Ad

“We never know where the consumer is going to be at any point in time, so we have to find a way to be everywhere,” said Linda Kaplan Thaler, chief executive at the Kaplan Thaler Group, a New York ad agency. “Ubiquity is the new exclusivity.”