With today’s continued concern for financial stability, some art should be looked at for it’s long term value.
First and foremost when an artist, dealer or gallery can only claim a high sticker price for a non-credentialed artist or body of work, kindly say thank you but no thanks. That “it’s a great investment or it’s for charity” means typically “head for the hills.” The bubble in assets has burst for many asset classes including in the arts generally. Is now the time to buy – absolutely.
What countless downturns have demonstrated is, like a stock, the chaf fall hard and those of substance, those with an ability to capture the world around us and make us relate and react ultimately create a new movement. The movement before us is New Media.
Don’t be fooled – there have been predecessors to new media in the fine arts. Warhol, Hockney, Katz, Max, Agam, Vasarely, Wesselmann, Dali and Leichtenstein are the new basis to many new media artists. The pop art, op-art and surreal movement while somewhat tired is found in New Media.
When an artist embeds painting and photography into one – this is only new media when it comes alive electrically – and in rare or unique editions. When a sculptor or glass blower shoots a photo of the main work and frames it as an extension of the main work – this is not New Media (recycled media is perhaps a better definition). Ultimately the ease of an artist’s ability to extend the main work’s concept is no different than a block buster film promoting itself with countless sponsor goodies in a box for the masses.
The key in turbulent financial and art waters – credibility and skill perfected over an extended period of time – usually a lifetime. Investment art does exist – typically when artist are long gone. Consider a Warhol soup can screened onto a shopping bag over a tryptic of books photographed and then framed as fine art.
