| Issue #40, January 12, 2007 |
LOCAL GALLERY MODELS ART SHOW FOR NEW BUYERS
By Sabrina C. Mashburn
The Baby Boomers are turning sixty this year – and that’s a very good thing. For with age can come wealth, home ownership and on occasion, taste. The luxuries markets have been preparing for this generational milestone for years, and with ad campaigns such as the “Isn’t It Time For That Boat” and the uncanny success of De Beer’s “Right-Hand Rings” for Boomer ladies to buy themselves. Luxury markets are rippling with excitement as the Baby Boomers become their target audience. But one industry in particular, seems to have changed everything about the way it advertises and conducts business; the industry dealing with and around art. What was once the realm of museums, galleries, and a handful of internationally known collectors, is now more accessible to the middle and upper classes than ever before.
While cheesy art shows at big hotels on the Island have always catered to the $50 and under, Impressionist-reproduction crowd, more traditionally exclusive galleries are also trying to appeal to the Boomers, even advertising with slogans, such as one borrowed from a tastefully placed poster on Fifth Avenue in New York City which reads “Million Dollar Paintings Didn’t Start Out That Way. Join Us For A Very Special Show of Small Works.” Even auction houses such as Christies and Sotheby’s hold physical auctions more for tradition’s sake. Most of the works have already been shopped to the auction houses’ stable of boomer-aged collectors willing to pay well above the projected value to own a new, exciting and valuable piece of original artwork. They make tacit agreements to bid an agreed-upon price via telephone on the day of the auction.
East Hampton’s Spanierman Gallery has recently launched their own attempt at catering to the Baby Boomers in the form of a new series of shows unapologetically titled Art For The New Collector. It is aimed at attracting art lovers with little to no previous experience buying artwork to the decadent hobby of art collecting. Instead of “Price upon request”-labeled art, woven seamlessly into an exhibition of similar works, New Collector shows allow those with no idea as to what they want to buy, to walk into the gallery, see sculptures, paintings and drawings of every style created from the 1800s to the present and take something home in their budget (in this case, $1,000 to $15,000). The art ranges from bourgeois still-lifes and energetic drawings of cowboys to Cezanne-esque Cubist landscapes and dainty, pastel-colored watercolor landscapes. The only common thread between them is that all of the pieces are consumer-friendly, both in price and subject, and each work has been selected by the gallery to be a “safe purchase” for a first time buyer. Gone are the days of discovering a new, controversial artist and buying their work in the hopes that they will make a splash in an art world already over-saturated with art school graduates and self-destructive pariahs. Today’s new collector wants a portable investment that looks good on the living room wall and in the bank book.
This pandering to the collector is not new. Since the Middle Ages, patrons have dictated trends in art. Every work that came out of the Renaissance was commissioned by a collector. Even the poster boy for the Avant-Garde, East Hampton’s own Jackson Pollock, was supported by Ms. Peggy Guggenheim, the collector for whose gallery most of his masterpieces were painted. Though contemporary artists now create works on the speculation that they will one day be sold, art is still created to be sold and must cater to those who have the means to buy it. Now that an entire generation of educated, moderately wealthy Americans is old enough to buy art, they are the patrons, and must be catered to. The baby boomers are smart – they have money, and they want to invest. Unlike land and stock, art is portable, and almost never depreciates in value. Art prices are at the highest they have ever been, with no sign of dropping in the near future. Even if one can only afford a drawing by a master painter, it is worth the investment. Since there are only a certain number of irreproducible, unique works by each master, their pieces will only become more rare and valuable as time progresses. There will never be another Picasso or de Kooning, so anything they touched will only become more valuable. For this reason, collectors on a limited budget who prefer to purchase art made by the masters may find charcoal and pen drawings a safer investment than a more impressive canvas made by a lesser-known artist. This is the philosophy behind the shows of “small works,” as well as the inclusion of simple drawings in exhibits such as the New Collector otherwise dedicated to more polished pieces such as oil paintings and bronze sculptures.
While traditionalists might scoff at the notion of art shows pieced together under the same premise as sections in a department store, art buffs in the know appreciate venues such as the Spanierman Gallery’s honesty and foresight. Every successful member of the art world has been crafting exhibits with this educated, yet inexperienced, group of consumers in mind — most galleries and auction houses are simply too timid or old-fashioned to admit that their target audience has changed. Auctions are no longer forums for museum directors to fill their walls, and very few institutions use their funding to purchase art from auction houses and dealers anymore. Most new acquisitions are left to museums by great collectors in their wills, or promised to the institution as gifts and loaned to them indefinitely. If the Baby Boomers are not seduced into the art world now, when they have the funds to begin a collection and enough years ahead of them to develop their tastes and holdings, who will take the place of the Peggy Guggenheims and the other great collectors who are slipping away? Without the Baby Boomers participation, the future of the art world is very grim indeed.
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