by anemenemone
According to an article from March 2019, one man bought art for around 400 million kroner. His name is Petter Stordalen, and he is one of Norways most successful and richest men. He is an investor and a property developer. He also runs Nordic Choice Hotels consisting of 190 hotels spread out in 6 different countries and employing 13.000 people. Nordic Choice Hotels is one of Norways largest hotel businesses. So, as I mentioned, and as you probably understood already – he is a wealthy man.
There are different types of art buyers. First of all, there are the home collectors who buy art often, and display it in their homes. Next one is the investors who are used to take risks, and they are open to invest in new and experimental art as long as they think that the art might go up in price. Next up there are the trophy hunters who are less motivated by the art itself, but they care more for how they managed to buy the art and how much they bought it for. The social status value of artwork is important to them. There are two more types, but I am just going to mention one of them because I think in this matter, not all of the categories are relevant. The last one is interior designers. They are hired by businesses and homeowners to decorate for them. It could be either an office or home.
Now, you’re probably curious on what Stordalen and the types of buyers have in common. Usually one would be just a specific type of buyer. In my opinion, Petter Stordalen fits all of these different types. He has a lot of money and can both invest, buy for pleasure, or even hire someone to buy art for him. As he says in the article, art was not in his interest at all. He had to become really rich first. Now he has a big interest, but does not know a lot about art. He points out that everyone who talks about their art is really into the fact that they made a great purchase, or that they made money on the purchase (investors, or maybe trophy hunters?). Stordalen says he have lost a lot of money on his purchases. Stordalen also points out that he does not buy art to make money, he simply buys to make his guests say, “there is fine art here”.
So I find it kind of interesting that he first of all had to make a lot of money before he became interested in art, second he doesn’t really care about the money – he just wants to have cool paintings for himself and his guests, and he even lost money on some of the paintings he bought. Does this say something about the art industry itself? Do you have to be rich to be able to buy and enjoy art? That is a question for another blog post.
Making sense of art and design industries 