Disappearing act

2018 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 157-176
Author(s):  
Jayme Yahr
Keyword(s):  
American Art ◽  
Art Market ◽  
Strategic Vision ◽  
Art Collection ◽  
Art Dealers ◽  
Failed Attempt ◽  
Rapid Transformation

Abstract The American self-made businessman Daniel J. Terra (1911–1996) collected art as a testament to his patriotism and in an attempt to establish his cultural prowess. Between 1971 and his death in 1996, Terra amassed a collection of 605 paintings, works on paper, and sculpture, made possible by a small network of art dealers who aided Terra in his rapid transformation of the American art market. After a failed attempt to donate his collection to the Art Institute of Chicago, Terra created not one, but two museums in Illinois and one in France over the course of twelve years. Each Terra-backed museum struggled to find visitors, structures of support, and strategic vision while under his control. With the disappearance of each museum, the story of Terra’s art collection became inexorably intertwined with concepts of value, identity, and the physical shift from private hobby to public endeavour.

The ingenious marketing of modern paintings

2014 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 211-233
Author(s):  
Thomas M. Bayer ◽  
John Page
Keyword(s):  
Exchange Process ◽  
Art Market ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Data Sets ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Secondary Sources ◽  
Auction Houses ◽  
Art Dealers ◽  
The Media ◽  
Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries

Purpose – This paper aims to analyze the evolution of the marketing of paintings and related visual products from its nascent stages in England around 1700 to the development of the modern art market by 1900, with a brief discussion connecting to the present. Design/methodology/approach – Sources consist of a mixture of primary and secondary sources as well as a series of econometric and statistical analyses of specifically constructed and unique data sets that list nearly more than 50,000 different sales of paintings during this period. One set records sales of paintings at various English auction houses during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; the second set consists of all purchases and sales of paintings recorded in the stock books of the late nineteenth-century London art dealer, Arthur Tooth, during the years of 1870/1871. The authors interpret the data under a commoditization model first introduced by Igor Kopytoff in 1986 that posits that markets and their participants evolve toward maximizing the efficiency of their exchange process within the prevailing exchange technology. Findings – We found that artists were largely responsible for a series of innovations in the art market that replaced the prevailing direct relationship between artists and patron with a modern market for which painters produced works on speculation to be sold by enterprising middlemen to an anonymous public. In this process, artists displayed a remarkable creativity and a seemingly instinctive understanding of the principles of competitive marketing that should dispel the erroneous but persistent notion that artistic genius and business savvy are incompatible. Research limitations/implications – A similar marketing analysis could be done of the development of the art markets of other leading countries, such as France, Italy and Holland, as well as the current developments of the art market. Practical implications – The same process of the development of the art market in England is now occurring in Latin America and China. Also, the commoditization process continues in the present, now using the Internet and worldwide art dealers. Originality/value – This is the first article to trace the historical development of the marketing of art in all of its components: artists, dealers, artist organizations, museums, curators, art critics, the media and art historians.

Merchants of Asianness: Japanese Art Dealers in the United States in the Early Twentieth Century

2009 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-46
Author(s):  
CONSTANCE J. S. CHEN
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cultural Capital ◽  
American Art ◽  
The United States ◽  
Racial Identities ◽  
Japanese Art ◽  
Art Dealers ◽  
Cultural Intermediaries

This article explores the role of Japanese merchants within American art and collecting circles and analyzes the ways in which the construction of “Asianness” and, in particular, “Japaneseness” became intertwined with the classification of Asian art. In order to reconstitute the market for high art and to create their own positionalities as legitimate cultural intermediaries, Asian art dealers such as Bunkio Matsuki (1867–1940) and Sadajiro Yamanaka (1866–1936) used their connections to Japan as cultural capital. Ultimately, their experiences illuminate the complexities of the reconceptualization of ethnic–racial identities through the lens of aesthetic discourses.

The Latin American art market: literature and perspectives

2018 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 239-276 ◽  
Author(s):  
Urbi Garay
Keyword(s):  
Latin American ◽  
American Art ◽  
Art Market ◽  
Latin American Art ◽  
Positive Real ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Art Collectors ◽  
The Arts ◽  
New Research ◽  
Practical Implications

Objective The purpose of this paper is to present the progress and trends of the literature on art as an investment and to outline potential research lines to be developed. Design/methodology/approach This work gathers, analyses and critically discusses the attributes of investments in art in general, and in Latin American art in particular. Findings Most studies report that art (art in general, and Latin American in particular) has offered relatively low but positive real returns, which have tended to be below those offered by stocks and similar to those realized by bonds. Art has a low correlation with other investments. Research limitations and implications The literature on the attributes of Latin American art as an investment is limited and new research would help to close the knowledge gap with respect to this segment of the art market as it continues to grow. Practical implications Similarly to the research carried out into other segments of the art market, studies on Latin American art suggest that the works of art are worth more, ceteris paribus: the more renowned the artist, the larger the work, whether they were executed in oil, and if they were auctioned at Sotheby’s or Christie’s. The paper also details a series of practical implications for those who participate in the art market. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first exhaustive review of the literature on the attributes of Latin American art as an investment. The findings of this study are useful for academics, art collectors, auction houses, gallerists and others who take part in the arts market.

The Zentralarchiv des internationalen Kunsthandels ZADIK

2006 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-16
Author(s):  
Günter Herzog
Keyword(s):  
Art Market ◽  
The World ◽  
German Art ◽  
Art Dealers ◽  
Art Trade ◽  
Central Archive

The Zentralarchiv des internationalen Kunsthandels (ZADIK = Central Archive of the International Art Trade) was established in 1992 by the Bundesverband Deutscher Galerien (BVDG), the association of German art dealers, and is the only research archive in the world that specialises in collecting and preserving documents and information from the art market. The history, purpose, collection profile and work of this still very young art archive is described here.

The Impact of Death and Bubbles in American Art

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert B. Ekelund ◽  
John D. Jackson ◽  
Robert D. Tollison
Keyword(s):  
Income Distribution ◽  
Supply And Demand ◽  
American Art ◽  
Art Market ◽  
Sample Period ◽  
Price Increases ◽  
Price Bubble ◽  
World Income ◽  
World Income Distribution ◽  
The Impact

Chapter 7 presents a dissection of two important issues affecting the art market and the fate of artists: “a death effect” and “bubbles.” Death of an artist is a guarantee that additional legitimate output will not be forthcoming, the “Coase durable monopoly conjecture.” Evidence indicates that the price path of seventeen artists who died over the sample period rises as the artist approaches death. After death, price may rise or fall with supply and demand, but we find it rises for our contemporary artists. “Bubbles”—rapid price increases—have and do occur in the art market. We find that art price behavior parallel GDP prior to 2008, but rose much faster thereafter. This result, coupled with an increasingly skewed world income distribution and billionaire buying, potentially denotes an “art price bubble.”

Dimensions of the American Art Market

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert B. Ekelund ◽  
John D. Jackson ◽  
Robert D. Tollison
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Art Education ◽  
Abstract Expressionism ◽  
American Art ◽  
Art Market ◽  
Postwar Period ◽  
World War ◽  
American Modernism ◽  
Alfred Stieglitz

Chapter 2 discusses the long evolution of the market for American art in a brief synopsis of key developments along the way. It explains the early marketing of American art, the romance of collectors with Old Masters, the shift in art education of Americans to Europe (especially Paris and Munich) and the ultimate development of a “unique” American art at the turn of the nineteenth century—involving the mix of European modernism with American influences of the “ashcan” artists and the American modernism sponsored by Alfred Stieglitz. Finally, the shift from pre–World War II art to abstract expressionism and contemporary styles is explained as the result of politics in the postwar period. The chapter includes dichotomized lists of eighty prominent American artists—those born prior to 1900 and those born 1900 through 1960.

Fabulous at 50: the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art celebrates a Golden Anniversary

2006 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 28-32
Author(s):  
Liza Kirwin
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Visual Arts ◽  
American Art ◽  
The United States ◽  
Raw Material ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Single Source ◽  
Art Dealers ◽  
History Of

Founded in 1954, the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art collects, preserves and makes available primary sources documenting the history of the visual arts in the United States. More than 16 million items strong, its collections comprise the world’s largest single source for letters, diaries, financial records, unpublished writings, sketchbooks, scrapbooks and photographs created by artists, critics, collectors, art dealers and art societies – the raw material for scholarship in American art.

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