Recent research indicates a misunderstanding of the potential market for contemporary art. Gerri Morris explores the dynamics that keep art and potential buyers apart.
Two opposing views emerged from the most extensive piece of research ever commissioned into the visual art sector in England: whilst art dealers told us that the market was small and fully developed, our research uncovered 5.9 million people with an unsatisfied desire to buy contemporary art ? that is on top of the 4.9 million who already possess it. This finding sums up the situation: a conservative and passive traditional gallery sector blames the lack of a healthy market on the philistine tendencies of the British public; while 27% of the public say they would like to buy contemporary art but the traditional gallery set-up puts them off. These issues are explored at length in ?Taste Buds ? how to cultivate the art market?(1), the report of a three-year research project involving more than 6,000 people, including artists, sellers, buyers and potential buyers, on why they make, sell and buy, or would like to buy, contemporary art.
Aspirational art
Possessing an original work of art is a strong aspiration in many people and, once they have bought their first, it can quickly become addictive. Art is symbolic, it makes a personal statement, it helps people define themselves, it provides interesting anecdotes, and it can have deep meaning and personal significance. People love being close to and having a bit of an artist in their homes. They admire the skill, the ideas, the humour, the liberation of artistic expression, and find enormous satisfaction in surrounding themselves with aesthetically or intellectually stimulating objects. For this reason, significant numbers of people are prepared to pay the symbolic prices attached to artworks. What they need is an insight into how that value is arrived at and sustained, and comfortable opportunities to buy it.
The art sector is a complex and opaque system that is baffling to many, including some of the people inside it, and entirely impenetrable to those on the outside. The high end of the art market is built upon two principles: rarity and endorsement. For values to be managed upwards, and maintained at those levels, access to artists? work needs to be restricted so that demand always outstrips supply. This de facto regulation is managed by dealers who tightly control the portals through which both artists and buyers gain entry to the marketplace. Value is then ascribed to artworks on the basis of rarity and on the level of endorsement the artist has received. Endorsement is accrued through subscription: the process of internal peer review and selection that determines what, in the whole field of creative output, can be deemed worthy of calling itself art. The more important buyers, public exhibitions, places in public collections, catalogues, monographs, articles, critical essays and prizes that an artist clocks up, the more collectable he or she will become and the higher their value will rise.
Dealers then manage this increase in value by carefully controlling who is buying the work and doing what they can to ensure that the work isn?t re-sold on the secondary market. The more important the artist, the more the dealer is looking for custodians rather than just buyers. The high-level dealers concentrate all their efforts on the serious collector market in the UK. This amounts to super-serving between 100 and 150 individuals.
Conformity
These guiding principles mean a great deal to those players at the high end of the market but little to those operating lower down the food chain who just want attractive or interesting artworks at an affordable price, or to be able to live by their work. However, the whole art market mimics the conventions of the high end and this constrains market development. First of all, artists are discouraged from selling their work directly, because having a dealer provides an important layer of subscription. Proactive and entrepreneurial artists threaten the delicate ecology of supply and demand and ambitious artists are frightened that being too energetic in selling their work independently will alienate potential dealers. Second, galleries tend to operate along similar lines, promoting the image of exclusivity in order to uphold values and maintain rarity. Few galleries step out of line because convention within peer circles is the best way of keeping a strong professional position. It isn?t done to look too keen on developing the market or to be seen to be selling too much.
So artists are discouraged from selling their own work and potential buyers are discouraged from risking their self-esteem in galleries. Many dealers are surprisingly conformist in the way they go about their business and do very little in the way of market development. And then dealers and artists complain that the market is too small, and that this has nothing to do with them.
Reducing the threat
What the research shows is that for the market to flourish, buyers need to be encouraged at all levels. We spoke to millionaire entrepreneurs and architects working in contemporary design who want to collect art on a serious level but don?t want to risk looking foolish in galleries. Whilst people who work in the visual arts make up a sizeable proportion of buyers, there is enormous potential to develop sales amongst people working in the creative industries, education and health sectors. Also, contrary to the assumptions of the art market, living in London is not a prerequisite for having a taste for contemporary art. There are 8.9 million people living in the regions who would like to buy it, and only 1.7 million in London.
So the whole eco-system needs to be addressed. We need better public collections, more serious collectors, more healthy contemporary dealerships and art fairs, especially outside London. We also need more buyers entering the market at modest levels of expenditure, able to access the information they need and to buy in unthreatening retail environments. Ironically, we need more innovation and entrepreneurial thinking if we are to develop the market for progressive contemporary art.
This activity can all fit into the same eco-system: serious collectors don?t just appear, they evolve. Most of them start off buying at a very modest and uninformed level and, as their enthusiasm grows, they then become more engaged with contemporary art and seek out information and mentors to help them develop their knowledge and discernment. Those mentors are often dealers. Early buyers will spend up to £2,000 on work simply because they like it. Beyond this price, buyers need a level of informed endorsement to reassure them that they are not being ripped off. A passionate and well-informed, reputable dealer provides this reassurance and there are plenty of them about. So we need to help these new buyers enter the market, through interest-free purchase plans, open studio events, affordable art fairs and new-style outlets. They will gradually find their way into higher-level dealerships and may eventually emerge as serious collectors.
Generating growth
With the present super-serving of serious collectors and the wilful neglect of millions of aspiring buyers, the art market lends itself to horticultural metaphors: the serious collectors are like those prize leeks forced and fattened up through dedicated attention for annual shows, while the rest of the market are like mushrooms, kept in the dark and fed on, well, waste products. A holistic view of the market and a bottom-up as well as a top-down approach aimed at cultivating a larger number of green shoots to achieve modest levels of growth, will benefit artists, sellers and buyers alike.
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(1)?Taste Buds ? How to cultivate the art market? is available at http://www.newaudiences.org.uk.