Is glitzy art on the way out?
The changing market may diversify the works being produced
Judith H. Dobrzynski | 4.12.08 | Daily fair edition
Prices aren’t the only thing different about the art on offer at ABMB this year: tough economic conditions have also influenced what many dealers have brought and what many collectors are buying. Eventually, the times may also affect what art is made.
In a word—or a few—big, glitzy, high-cost art is out, replaced by smaller, less showy works that don’t require artists or dealers to take out a mortgage to produce, or collectors to build showcase museums to display their treasures.
“The art here is more conservative, more accessible and more residential-compatible,” says Ann Richards Nitze, who both collects and guides other collectors. Advisor Todd Levin agrees: “That whole big ‘I’m going to build a museum, here’s the huge coffee-table book’ thing has gone ‘poof!’ So all those huge installations have disappeared from the fair. Now people are returning to cocooning, so they want domestic-size art that they can live with.” Diamond-dusted works seem to be gone, too, also a casualty of the times. The tone is simply different this year.
Some long-time collectors welcome the trend as good not only for their budgets but also for artists, especially those who’ve struggled to get noticed in the money-driven market of the past several years. Now people may look for these kinds of artists—the young or overlooked. “I’ve heard collectors saying: ‘I’m going back to my roots of collecting younger artists’,” says Andrea Rosen (C15).
In fact, this is the kind of market that collectors such as Agnes Gund, president emerita of the Museum of Modern Art, says she likes. “The froth is gone. There’ll be less blingy art,” she says. “The market is better for selling less-well-known but important artists like Lynda Benglis. She’s finally coming into her own.