I'm a working-class gentleman and I have still been able to amassing a nice little collection, including work by Portland artists such as Stephen O'Donnell, but also a small Haring, Hockney, Magritte, and Dine, none it speculative, all of it loved, none of it for resale. You should come see it. I'll serve refreshments.
Another eye-opening article. I don't know why I have never thought about speculative collectors. Maybe because I don't know any. I find purchasing art to make a tidy profit for the collector without any deeper connection to the art itself extremely bizarre. I've been fortunate to make a small living with my art. Do I want a broader reach? Yes. Do I want collectors passionate about my work? Yes. Do I care if I get into one of these major collections? I thought I did. But not in the speculative art scene you write about here. It is extremely offensive to what that I thought I was creating. I like what you said about BELIEFS. I choose to believe in the higher purpose of art: Creating something that can improve someones life. I am grateful for my collectors that appreciate my work for the personal value it brings them.
my life is better because of you and my weeks are better because, early each week, i get to learn from, and be encouraged by, you! you know you have inspired my own art collecting which has, in turn, inspired others. i am profoundly grateful!
this line, from this week, is everything! “What if instead of collecting art as a way to grow our bank accounts we thought of it a way to grow our emotional, aesthetic, and spiritual lives?” You have modeled and inspired this for me and it is changing me!
Beautifully written, as always. Congratulations on your bravery in sampling that sort of event. It is a perpetual frustration that this speculative end of the art market is the bit that gets written about in newspapers and magazines. The least satisfying, and frequently mortifying, moments of my gallery career were always when I had to interact with that end of the art market. Sure, it's where the money concentrates — but the vast majority of the "art world" (such a problematic concept all on its own), in terms of people and art rather than bottom lines, is not that (as you know). It's comprised of people who make art because they will lose a piece of their soul if they don't, and people who buy art because they find a piece of theirs in it. The problem is that, with the ongoing and compounding concentration of ever greater wealth into an ever smaller minority, there are fewer and fewer people who have the disposable income to buy art (or homes, or healthcare, etc. etc.). Every great period of artistic growth and endeavor has been preceded by the enlargement of what is typically called the middle class, and/or an explosion in public funding of art (as in the WPA). This is why workers' rights and economic justice are vital for the arts (without even touching on the fact that artists typically also have wage jobs, or that art-making is labor). The lack of these is why galleries that champion emerging artists, and artists of diverse backgrounds (because as you note, that speculative tier is supported by and reinforces patriarchy and white supremacy), rarely survive.
Yes to all of this!
Terrific piece.
I'm a working-class gentleman and I have still been able to amassing a nice little collection, including work by Portland artists such as Stephen O'Donnell, but also a small Haring, Hockney, Magritte, and Dine, none it speculative, all of it loved, none of it for resale. You should come see it. I'll serve refreshments.
Another eye-opening article. I don't know why I have never thought about speculative collectors. Maybe because I don't know any. I find purchasing art to make a tidy profit for the collector without any deeper connection to the art itself extremely bizarre. I've been fortunate to make a small living with my art. Do I want a broader reach? Yes. Do I want collectors passionate about my work? Yes. Do I care if I get into one of these major collections? I thought I did. But not in the speculative art scene you write about here. It is extremely offensive to what that I thought I was creating. I like what you said about BELIEFS. I choose to believe in the higher purpose of art: Creating something that can improve someones life. I am grateful for my collectors that appreciate my work for the personal value it brings them.
my life is better because of you and my weeks are better because, early each week, i get to learn from, and be encouraged by, you! you know you have inspired my own art collecting which has, in turn, inspired others. i am profoundly grateful!
this line, from this week, is everything! “What if instead of collecting art as a way to grow our bank accounts we thought of it a way to grow our emotional, aesthetic, and spiritual lives?” You have modeled and inspired this for me and it is changing me!
Great educational piece... as all way!
Beautifully written, as always. Congratulations on your bravery in sampling that sort of event. It is a perpetual frustration that this speculative end of the art market is the bit that gets written about in newspapers and magazines. The least satisfying, and frequently mortifying, moments of my gallery career were always when I had to interact with that end of the art market. Sure, it's where the money concentrates — but the vast majority of the "art world" (such a problematic concept all on its own), in terms of people and art rather than bottom lines, is not that (as you know). It's comprised of people who make art because they will lose a piece of their soul if they don't, and people who buy art because they find a piece of theirs in it. The problem is that, with the ongoing and compounding concentration of ever greater wealth into an ever smaller minority, there are fewer and fewer people who have the disposable income to buy art (or homes, or healthcare, etc. etc.). Every great period of artistic growth and endeavor has been preceded by the enlargement of what is typically called the middle class, and/or an explosion in public funding of art (as in the WPA). This is why workers' rights and economic justice are vital for the arts (without even touching on the fact that artists typically also have wage jobs, or that art-making is labor). The lack of these is why galleries that champion emerging artists, and artists of diverse backgrounds (because as you note, that speculative tier is supported by and reinforces patriarchy and white supremacy), rarely survive.