Publish : Visual Arts, Vol. 8, November - December 2011 #51
BEHIND THE GAME OF ‘FRYING’ ARTWORK SO FAR DEEMED BENEFITING EVERYBODY, HARMFULNESS LURKS.
Entering the building of an international auction house visitors will generally find themselves astonished and bedazzled. In addition to its extensiveness, height and grandeur, it boasts charming, neat interior arrangement coupled with cleanness, fragrance and appropriate lighting. Then there are the security system, orderliness, information service, registration, free drinks and snacks, all well integrated. On top of everything else are the attractive displays of art objects to be auctioned, be they paintings, photographs or sculptures, contemporary, modern and traditional ones, as well as Hanji calligraphy, watches, precious stones, jewels, jadeite, various luxurious jewelry, antique ceramics, antique robes or fine wine.
If you are interested in joining an auction, the entire registration process through the point you get the bidding paddle and auction book, or perhaps you’d prefer the light and practical mini-mag/thumbnail, will only take a short time. Collectors and market players are granted pre-viewing two or three days before the auction day, and they can ask for condition report.
One day in the auction hours of contemporary painting I was among some 150 people seated or standing on the floor. Part of them had serious interest as potential bidders while some others were there just to record data. On the stage were the auctioneer and two assistants, standing, while by a side platform some fifteen operators were seated, ready to serve collectors or market players making phone bids (or absentee bids to be submitted to the auctioneer).
Then the sound made by the auctioneer’s gavel reverberated throughout the room. An art object with an estimated price of US$ 40,000 to 60,000 sold at US$ 550,000 (equals to some IDR 4.7 billion). Seeing the very item in the lot, the actual auctioning process of which did not involve bidders on the floor, it was easy to sense the ‘frying game’ vendors had played. As far as I know artist managers and auction hosts/organizers are the ones that usually play this particular ‘game’.
Experienced Indonesian collectors and market players must have been aware of such practice. So far, in international scenes buyers from Indonesia are known to have ‘a keen sense of smell’ in this regard. Yet sad things could happen to young collectors and fledgling market players and other people that succumb to the persuasion whispered by beautiful girls mesmerizing them to join in crafty auction sessions. See how in a short time an artwork increases its price like crazy, tenfold or even more, while it is only medium in terms of quality as well as the artist’s brand. The artist’s track record is still to be tested nationally and internationally and his/her work is not yet collected by art museums of the MoMA class, and he/she has never exhibits solo at reputable international galleries yet, and never as yet invited as a special invitee to the Venice Biennale for instance. So in this regard the formed price too far exceeds the ceiling of the real price of the object in question. In fact the market price or private sale price of the painting that ‘sells’ at IDR 4.7 never exceeds US$ 70,000 that is equivalent to IDR 600 million.
People forget that such unnatural instance will sooner or later generate issues and problems that finally betray craftiness. Such an event astonishes potential bidders on floor and cynical grins unfold on their faces.
Increases in the price of works of contemporary artists should be gradual in accordance with their aesthetic developments and artistic achievements: the qualities of works and their forms, the technical skills involved and the profoundness of the works, and the recognized reputations of the artists.
The artist’s manager who fries his/her artist’s works in the ‘gigantic frying pan’ (i.e. international auction houses) probably aims at setting a market price construction for the works while branding the artist as soon as possible. By ‘borrowing’ the influence of an auction house the manager heedlessly takes a shortcut, or even sets an expressway, toward millions-of-IDR pricing. However such ‘blown-up bubbles’ will not, again, easily deceive seasoned collectors and market players.
Among the numerous hazards posed by blowing up bubbles is that a price deviously or very questionably set will never get admitted. In effect when the price stays stagnant (no one wants to buy) public, market players in particular, let go the works of the artist in question, which in turn means that people are not interested in acquiring them. People may even become allergic to hearing/reading the artist’s name.
International Capitalists’ Game
As we all know many of powerful investors or international capitalists dealing in contemporary artworks and old masters come largely from among players in property and stock exchange business. Because of the crisis befalling the US and some European countries these last years, those investors and capitalists switch their attention and investment to works of art, particularly contemporary art and old masters.
Now, this is an opportunity that numerous parties do not want to miss, and they include managers of contemporary artists and ... (sorry, please guess).
Then, the one or those you refer in your guess offer themselves to work together with potential artists (meaning: their works are presumed to be wanted, even hunted at market, circulating only in some small number and the circulation is controlled, and deemed quite good and powerful while the artist’s explorative spirit is considered to be consistent enough). The operation of the system is similar to that of film industry. 1) promotion through public seminars where collectors talk about art; 2) the sending of various exploring teams comprising groups of collectors, museum directors and curators, grandchildren of certain maestros, mostly white, into bases of artists and centers of collectors. Usually those teams do not know each other, and the expats in the teams are perhaps not even aware they are being used; 3) promotion again to pose various kinds of justification (including the incorporation of theories taken from voluminous books) coupled with rumors spread all over that there is Mr. X loving the piece and the estimated hammer price is IDR four billion, and so on and so forth. So the frying is done and items are passed little by little to the auction market at some soaring price, and the profit sharing will be fifty-fifty. Because behind soaring prices reached at an auction house are layers of black curtains, it would be better for you to take a skeptical position.
Profitable yet rotting
‘Frying’ art objects at auctions is considered normal and it makes various parties happy with profits they gain. It improves the well-being of the artists whose works are ‘fried’, increases their managers’ capital, while collectors and market players who have the items in question that they acquired earlier at low prices before the frying are also happy because they can make big profit, and auction houses get much higher premium fees’.
Sarah Thornton, an observer of art from London maintains in her famous Seven Days in the Art World (New York: C.C. Morgan & Company, Inc., 2009: xi) “the contemporary art world is a loose network of overlapping subcultures held together by a belief in art”.
With that belief contemporary art community has a shared principle, or social morality, which provides a system of value concerning behavior in appreciating, consuming or selling and buying artworks. The world of contemporary art is not concerned with power but with belief in values as well as control over the belief, as power may become vulgar.
Belief in values and its control is reliable; it indicates things correctly. So controlling belief in true and upright values is the true issue in the world of contemporary art today.
So if Indonesia sees the rise of the issue of blown-up bubbles or fried artworks, through auction houses in particular, one should realize, despite the claim that such practice brings benefits to artist managers and makes collectors happy, that the harmfulness of the practice will be manifold.
Firstly, it will draw (or entrap) contemporary art community into a power conspiracy where collusion at the auction house – taking the place of belief in value and the control of the belief – will lead to artificial well-being, profit and cheerfulness, and transform the contemporary art community to a castle of sand nice to see but is not to be touched.
Secondly, it will invisibly destroy the system of value and belief amidst art community that in the end imprison the community in just the vulgar game of money. Thirdly, it will ruin the authority of art community, entrap its members in networks that ignore the issue of dignity and sensitivity thus defiling the creative life of art.
So if you want to buy artworks for collection and/or investment, in addition to your loving them, it would be better for you to first learn well about investment and how to collect. Or you could consult persons with significant experience in this, for instance owners of reputable galleries.
At the end of this essay there could be the question whether we still need to voice truth. Is it possible to erect the pillar of truth amidst a horde of lying Pinnochios ?. [hendrotan ]
