adminDr Tony Monda Art Zone
In order to appreciate the value of contemporary visual art this instalment of Art Zone will look at some of the financial highlights and development of art galleries in the US art market over the last four decades, some of which I witnessed as a student in the mid-1990s and later towards the end of the last decade in 2008 and 2009.
Between 1983 and 1985 more than one hundred galleries opened in New York. Gallery sales in 1984 alone exceeded US$1 billion; 50 percent of all these auction transactions were under US$1 000. Four years later, the average price paid for a work of art had risen from between US$7 000 and US$11 000.
During a great deal of the 1980s, Americans encouraged the incredible growth in the art market, particularly in New York City, as the “baby-boom generation” as they were called, rushed to invest in art during those “boom years”. During the same “boom years” the works acquired and held by some private individual collectors appreciated in value by as much as 700 percent. By 1989, the turnover in hard currency in the art industry worldwide was estimated at US$50 billion annually. Upper-income Americans, from young urban professionals to CEOs, began to perceive art, comparable to real estate, as a commodity which essentially could be bought and re-sold at higher values.
The 1980’s rebirth of the upper-class America’s self-indulgence also brought about a new generation of artists who marketed their work aggressively and were in turn lavished with attention from their media.
The art was often characterised by highly accessible imagery derived from media and “pop” sources. The market value for art
was enhanced by the buying public’s tireless thirst for novelty, newness, hipness, and trendiness. Many of the new buyers included doctors, lawyers, advertising executives, and entrepreneurs, had little or no knowledge of art, aesthetics or patronage. Although their interest was primarily fuelled by investment, these collectors helped to make the visual arts one of the most vital cultural forces of America of the 1980s.
Earlier in the 1980s dealers at auction sold works that ranged in prices at around US$3 million, mostly for single art works. By the end of the same decade individual works sold to private bidders were fetching between ten to twenty times the amounts.
A painting which sold for US$200 000 in 1971 was auctioned in 1988 for US$4,8 million – an increase of 2 400 percent. Such price inflation was typical during the boom years of the 1980s. By the year 1987 Christie’s auctioned Vincent van Gogh’s Sunflowers for an unheard of amount of US$39,9 million – the highest auction price ever paid for a single work of art. A few months later Sotheby’s sold van Gogh’s Irises for a record-setting US$53,9 million. A work by Picasso was bought for US$5,83 million in 1981 and sold eight years later for US$47,85 million, and another van Gogh’s painting sold for US$53,9 million.
Art sales at Sotheby’s and Christie’s in 1987 surpassed US$1 billion, which accounted for a third of the world’s art transactions. The stock-market crash of October 1987 had no real negative effect on art prices. The halcyon days continued for art investment. In May 1988 US investors paid record-breaking prices for works of art in the millions by living American artists.
No longer able to ignore the thrust towards contemporary art, major museums that traditionally were reluctant to include this genre in their permanent collections began to include them among their collections. American museums and corporations began supporting the contemporary artists and contributed to the massive public art awareness in the 1980s.
A real-estate boom in Manhattan stimulated the growth of corporate art sponsorship. IBM, Equitable Life Insurance, and Philip Morris opened free galleries in New York. Philip Morris and IBM featured large-scale art installations in their new office towers, and in 1985 Equitable Life Insurance devoted the entire ground floor of its new fifty-four story headquarters to galleries and public art shows, the largest corporate-sponsored art complex in America.
An example of the attention that new art is garnering today can be seen at The Metropolitan Museum in New York which has added a new wing for contemporary art and the Museum of Modern Art, who hired a curator especially to appraise the inclusion of works by younger artists in the museum’s collection. The Brooklyn Museum has begun a series of large-scale multi-media installation projects in its lobby which are near completion.
However, more recently the art scene in the US has taken a different route. While the art indices for the first decade of the new millennium continued to reflect art to be a strong hedge against the fluctuations of most other commodities, the art market remained buoyant – reflecting a constant 1,5 percent annual increase. The years 2012-2013, however, have seen the art market losing some ground, with the Old Masters, Impressionist, and Contemporary Art remaining the favourites among art aficionados and investors.
While we may be a long way away from the million-dollar-mark for art in Zimbabwe, potential patrons and investors should not be discouraged by the current minor downward trend both locally and internationally as art is a good investment and hedge against inflation. Across the Atlantic in the United Kingdom, the creative industries accounted for 25 percent of the world’s exports – largely of works of art, at the start of the New Millennium 2001-2002.
This writer has for many years been advocating for local art patronage and sponsorship. Zimbabwean business people, industry and commerce cannot afford to ignore art. They need to see the value in the arts of this country as a long-term investment. Not only is it an investment financially but in the holistic socio-economic and corporate environment that constitutes Zimbabwe.
Given that Zimbabwe is in the throes of implementing an Arts policy to facilitate the crafting of a new national strategy for the arts of Zimbabwe, it is important that we make comparative analytical studies of the running of creative arts industries in other nations.
Art plays a large part in making our lives culturally, morally, spiritually and infinitely richer. Let us as a nation work towards the cultural, educational, financial, logistical and patriotic re-alignment of the Arts. With right-minded and qualified people at the helm in the arts, we can create our own “Art Boom” in Zimbabwe in the near future.
Dr Tony Monda holds a PhD in Art Theory and Philosophy and a Doctorate of Business Administration in Post-Colonial Heritage Studies. He studied law and photography at the Corcoran School of Art, Washington, DC, USA. He is a writer, art critic, practicing artist and Corporate Image Consultant.
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