THE CANADIAN ECONOMIST Don Thompson, after years of exploring the market in modern art, offered this pity comment on the collector class: “Money is no problem, everybody’s got it.” The average painter may agree. Yet the compelling question remains: Where are the collectors, and how do you reach them?
There is no easy answer. One suggestion often heard is, simply, to find out who those easy-buying people are and cozy up to them—develop a personal relationship. This obviously demands a good deal of personal skill, or natural magnetism, on the part of the painter. Don’t we wish that everyone had that personality quirk?
Case by case, there are indeed certain galleries, art fairs, and publications that have cultivated a “client list,” moneyed art aficionado who will reliably show up to buy an artwork. At this level, we’re typically in the “blue chip” range, art that can be bought with some guarantee of resale.
Another somewhat reliable forum is the art event sponsored by art associations. The marketing takes on a charitable aura: Come one and all, buy a painting, and support the local art organization. This has particularly taken off with the relatively new growth of well-organized plein air festivals and competitions.
Not being a particularly collectable painter myself, I have nevertheless visited a wide number of art-market and art-event, venues, putting my ear to ground, listening for how it works. As one gallerist told me at a show, “There are too many painters, and too few collectors.”
That bears itself out. One day at the famous Plein Air Easton event, I walked into an exhibit area next to an older gentleman, an obviously well-to-do “Eastern Shore” resident, being shepherded in by his wife. “I don’t know where I’m going to put another painting,” he said to her. They were obviously Easton regulars, there to support the good cause (the sponsoring Avalon Foundation).
At a less prestigious plein air event, on reception and awards night, the painter-emcee advised the audience, “If you already have paintings [from last year’s event] on your walls, you can buy another one and rotate them.”
According to the famed auctioneer Simon de Pury, there are maybe 50 people in the world who will buy works of art for $1 million or more, and “several thousand” globally who will buy it for $1,000 or more. That’s not many people.
So where is the opening, or what De Pury calls “the in between,” or the below? For one, there is a laudable movement afoot to urge more ordinary Americans to become collectors. Millions of people are collectors—dolls, baseball cards, coins, vintage objects—so why not paintings? Such art has been around a long time, but the public still needs education on the matter, apparently. Living daily with a pricey painting is different from a coin collection in a drawer, or doll line-up on a shelf.
Still, the movers and shakers advise seeking out the rich. One talented painter received advice from a prominent art magazine publisher: “Don’t bother with the small stuff, go after people who are wealthy,” is roughly how she conveyed the publisher’s advice. Just how to do that, and still keep one’s “dignity” and artistic aloofness, is the million-dollar question.
Oddly, the modern art market (versus traditional realism) is far more transparent on who the collector class is. The venerable Art News magazine annually, or more, has a special section on collectors, typically folks in finance (with the wife the moving art force). They veritably give their names and addresses! Such personages (or their agents) are well known at the modern art venues, Art Basel, the Venice Biennial, Art Miami, or the Armory Show in New York City. They are honored as great collectors.
In the more traditional painting circles—plein air and representational realism—the “collector class” remains opaque. Who are they, if such a class exists? The imbalance reflects, for the time being, how the modern art behemoth has eclipsed “old fashioned” art. Yet that kind of art—traditional painting—is making a comeback. Top names are recognized. More talent is emerging from art schools and ateliers. And now it is “cool” to be a traditional painter.
So, where is the collector class for this worthy group of artists? Perhaps it will emerge from middle class Americans with disposable income—and need of an aesthetic hobby. At a national plein air conference, one enterprising painter advised forming a kind of cartel: nobody should sell their paintings for less than $2 a square inch (the square inch being a way to set a base price for paintings: a 16x20 artwork base price would be $640, and that is before the gallery commission, which typically ads 40%). Very few Americans will buy this painting for $896.
I’ve also heard the sage advice—persuasive—that the goal of a productive painter is “to move product.” That means bringing prices way down, and selling a lot.
Either way, we can hope that, one day, an economist like Mr. Thompson can say of the more traditional painting market, “Money is no problem, everybody’s got it.” They’d also need to have enough wall space, or storage, to keep collecting.