by Lizza Littlewort
Globally, the art market is experiencing a boom which just seems to go on and on, to the astonishment of all onlookers. Will the bubble last, will it burst, and if it does who will come crashing down in the carnage?
The bubble dates back to the 1980's when, according to Richard Feigen who lectured on it at the Harvard Business School, "art was monetised". It was then, he says, that "art began its transformation from luxury to fungible asset, from bagatelle to investment."
But that bubble burst in the mid '90's and it was assumed that there would never be another… until suddenly up it came, larger and stickier than ever. There were fears that it would be pricked by the sinking value of the dollar, but it appears that art, and specifically Western art, is not supported by the West alone. It is highly prized by the Chinese and the staggeringly wealthy Russian oligarchs, and could remain unruffled by major shifts in global economic power, as the buying population could keep following the patterns of emerging wealth.
One aspect of this bubble that seems to mystify and offend the huffily conservative Feigen, though, is that within the spectrum of art on sale, the greatest price hikes have not been in the old traditional works… the Titians, for example, which Feigen perceives as works of unimpeachable genius. He is mildly scandalised by the fact that the greatest area of growth in the art world is in contemporary art.
Feigen's view seems based on the lamentably common assumption that no mere mortal could possibly ever be as intelligent as an old master, despite modern intelligence being very much in evidence in areas outside of art. Even though Titian has been argued in retrospect as producing little but soft porn dressed up as a string of vacuous and vain Greek goddesses, it is the view of such as he that Culture with a Capital 'C' has been on the decline since the heyday of Socrates, and the moderns times which we are fated to actually live in are not significant enough to merit artistic reflection.
Fortunately, there are art collectors sophisticated enough to be able to understand a little more than this about the dialogue between contemporary life and the culture it generates. It is a difficult skill to achieve, as making serious money doesn't often leave a lot of time for cultural engagement of any depth. Traditionally, this role has only been achievable by those with very old wealth, but recently some perceptive and agile thinkers have pushed the boundaries of art collecting.
The most famously well-known of these is Charles Saatchi, the British advertising mogul, inspiration for a brand new art term, "Supercollector". Saatchi's collecting of contemporary art has been on such a scale that it would not be unreasonable to suggest that the staggering global rise in the value of contemporary art could be largely his doing. The stimulation produced by his adventurous buying has sharpened up energy levels in the whole world of contemporary art production, and inspired a growing number of Supercollectors. And this has had no small effect on a massive burst of interest in contemporary art, resulting in so may Biennales that there is one opening somewhere in the world every week of the year, and so many Art Fairs that they outnumber Biennales.
I'm sad to say that South Africa is, at this time, the world slowcoach at art collection. Probably largely due to forty years of dismal apartheid conservatism, we are comparable in our utter philistinism only with countries governed by draconian religious fundamentalists. It seems difficult to persuade our public that art has any validity at all, or any validity beyond the stodgy, anachronistic depiction of seascapes and vineyards. (Not to forget those lovely brass sculptures of the Big Five.) We are about as sophisticated as a cheesy theme park, and wouldn't know the difference between that and intelligent art if we fell over it. There are many great artists of international repute emerging from this country, but largely they are forced to forge careers abroad.
All of which is good news for some, as despite our conservative popular culture we have very good art schools, so that we are an almost completely untapped resource of new art of a high quality. It will be interesting to see what our first major international-scale contemporary art fair will bring to this strange and volatile circumstance.

Labels: Joburg art fair