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Is present day art just one of the countless investment instruments? According to the article Problems Plaguing the Art Industry Globally, galleries sell about 90% of all artworks even though they rarely reveal their prices to the public. Auction houses sell the remaining 10% of the artworks. The difference between the galleries and the auction houses is that auction houses tell their prices to the public. This means that you can have an influence on the prices of the art pieces, when you know the start prices of the pieces. In the auction, the price of an art piece can be influenced by bidding. Gallerists, for example, have the chance to bid on the artworks at the auction, and get the prices of art pieces to go up. When the price of an art piece goes up in the auction house, the price of the artist’s other art pieces often rise in prices as well. In this way gallerists who own art from the same artists can increase the value of their investment in the existing art pieces they have in their galleries.
Most of the exchanges between auction houses and gallerists are made in the secondary market. The place where the exchange takes place can be called a market. The secondary art market describes a market where art resold an unspecified number of times after the initial sale. Both gallerists and auction houses act mainly in the secondary market. Because art is traded on the secondary market, again and again, it can be assumed to be a financial asset. In practice, art can be traded almost just like equities. Selling and buying art pieces can be seen as a tool for investing your own money. The value of the item may fall or rise relative to the buyer’s original purchase price. If art is used solely for investing money, has the secondary art market ruined the primary art market? On the primary art market, the art piece is sold for the first time, often by the artist.
Is art made to be a financial asset or to be a beautiful piece of culture? Has the arrival of the secondary art market ruined the way we look at art? Trading art pieces on the secondary art market is not going anywhere, but the attitude of appreciating art as it is (not as a money maker) should be reinstalled in peoples’ minds. We already have so many investment tools, so why do we need to use art as one? There will always be people that only see money when they look at something and will take advantage of it, if it is possible. Of course, art pieces can be sold and bought, but it would be best to not try to make money with the sale. The main idea should be to enjoy the beauty of the art piece, because some artist has created it by implementing themselves.
Problems Plaguing the Art Industry Globally from: https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/288290 Picture: https://fortune.com/2015/11/04/sothebys-auction-alfred-taubman/
Making sense of art and design industries 