The Collector Market
Journal Entry: Friday, September 2, 2022
Collector Market
A collector who buys works of art and holds onto them for 20-30 or more years might get lucky and be able to sell it for what we could call ‘a killing’, maybe 50x-1000x of the original purchase price if the artist’s name was Pablo Picasso or Jasper Johns or Andy Warhol. We hear of this happening and sometimes even with contemporary artists.
BUT this is the collector market that is driving those kind of prices, not the artist who made the work. It is like the postage stamp market or the baseball card market. The original item at the time of ‘primary market’ purchase was almost nothing, but, over time collectors drive the values of a small portion of those items to extremely high levels for a variety of reasons that, in the case of art, the artist has no control over or influence on other than keeping on making better and better work and deepening business relationships.
The collector market is its own animal and has little or nothing to do with the artists in a direct way. Other investment players are playing the ‘killings’ game. Artists only need to be concerned with making a living and leave the future killings for speculators further up the economic food chain.
At the beginning I didn’t really understand this idea and I thought I would somehow need to become famous to make a living, but it is actually not true. The mantel of fame in the art world hangs on the shoulders of only a very few artists and they are famous to a very small slice of the general population. A lot of the time it is about being in the right place at the right time under the right circumstances with the right support. Most of us can’t expect that kind of happy accident and we don’t need to.
When you think about it, what makes an artist famous is institutional publicity. If you are one of the artists that various institutions think is currently or historically relevant for any number of reasons - often for political, cultural or social reasons - whatever is in fashion - then such artists get attention. It is in the institutional art world's interest to promote certain artists based on their own mission statements, collection policies and public reputation and status. This is quite beyond the control of the individual artist since so many other factors and decision makers are at play at any given moment.
Don’t confuse what you, as an artist are doing, with what institutions are doing. You do what you do. Don’t play to outside forces. Maybe they can use you for their own purposes, maybe not. It doesn’t matter. Focus on your own community. Stay to your own course.
In media such as film and music also, only a few bands or singers or actors and directors achieve the kind of fame that makes them a household name. Most people in these industries go quietly about their lives without anyone outside of their industry ever knowing who they are. But everybody is more or less making a living and living out their creative lifestyle one way or other.
If you slowly make good business connections and build your network of relationships inside of the creative community and keep producing and getting the work out there, an artist can quietly create a comfortable lifestyle without too much fanfare. You will build a following and eventually people will come to know and appreciate your work, but your work doesn’t ever have to be falling under a hammer price at the auction houses in NYC or be on the cover of whatever is the best art magazine at any given moment. And that is 100% OK. As Forest Gump says: ‘One less thing to worry about.’
So just keep working at what you do, follow your own vision. Keep your mind on what you can control which is mostly just yourself. Leave the rest to sort itself out.
TAKE A MOMENT: Listen to all the sounds around you right now.
My secret plan is to eventually make the posts in the Touchonian a book about the Creative Lifestyle for Artists. You, my favorite readers, are privy to the book in it’s formation. I would really appreciate your help by making comments, asking questions and suggesting topics I should explore and write about. It is hard for me to dream up what artists need and want to know to keep going and keep creating. I have fifty years of figuring out all of the details I needed to keep going and become self-sustaining as an artist and want to share enough insight to smooth the path for others facing this complicated, daunting task of being a self-sustaining artist. I know from experience it can feel overwhelming, unreachable and even depressing. So feel free to say or ask something! Thanks in advance.
Great post Cecil. I'm especially observing this, since the series "Masters of the Air" premeires tonight. CREW 713 is a completely different type of film, so I would waste a lot of energy being jealous, which is also a time-waster. too! I just gotta stay in my own lane and let my own film speak for itself.
Wise words!