Understanding today's wild art market with journalist and author Georgina Adam

Join me as I chat with the incomparable journalist and author, Georgina Adam. 

This episode explores the evolving dynamics of the art market, focusing on the misconceptions surrounding art as merely an investment. We discuss the roles of galleries, auction houses, and the overall impact of economic and geopolitical factors on art appreciation and valuation.

• Discussion of various models and analogues for the art market 

• Why is the current art market lethargic, or floppy?

• The growing trend of viewing art as a mere investment 

• The state of art galleries today - their challenges and opportunities

• How auctions have grown, and how they are driving the market

• Art fairs as galleries’ way to compete with auction houses

• How to understand artists careers over time, as journey-driven

• Emphasis on the accessibility of art experiences for all

Georgina Adam has written about the art market and the arts in general for over 30 years, starting in Paris where she studied Islamic art at the Ecole du Louvre. After that she lived in London before spending five years in Japan, where she wrote on a freelance basis for a number of arts publications – The Art Newspaper, The Asian Art Newspaper, Art and Auction and Artnews - as well as Nikkei publishing.

She was art market editor at The Art Newspaper in London on her return from Tokyo, and remains art market editor-at-large for that publication. She wrote the art market column for the Financial Times for eight years and continues to contribute collector profiles to the newspaper. She is currently working on a new book.

Be sure to check out my two favorite books of Georgina's:

Big Bucks

The Dark Side of the Boom

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Transcript

Lisa Cooley 0:41

Welcome to OKO, a podcast for collectors and other art lovers. I'm Lisa Cooley, your host. I have 25 years experience working in this field and I want to share it with you. For our first season, I'm taking you on a tour through the power centers of the art world. We're talking to artists, journalists, gallerists, critics, auctioneers, curators and art fair directors about what defines the art world right now and how we got to this moment Today. To artists, journalists, gallerists, critics, auctioneers, curators and art fair directors about what defines the art world right now and how we got to this moment.

Lisa Cooley 1:06

Today I'm talking with journalist and author Georgina Adam. Georgina has been writing about the art market for over 30 years. Georgina is a London-based journalist and author. She was the art market editor at the Art Newspaper in London and remains art market editor at large for that publication. She wrote the art market column for the Financial Times of London for eight years and continues to contribute collector profiles to the newspaper. She's currently working on a new book about the next generation of art collectors. For me personally, two of her books Big Bucks, which was published in 2014, and the Dark Side of the Boom, published in 2018, were hugely inspirational for me when I was planning this podcast. I am so excited to talk to her. Welcome, georgina. I am so thrilled to speak with you. I um, when I read your book Big Bucks of maybe a year or two ago, I was completely blown away, because it took it added very high level context to the events that I lived through my career. I started working in the art world, and um at the end of 2001.

Lisa Cooley 2:19

And I think, your book roughly covers that period the beginning of the 21st century and how, and just the explosion of scale in the art world yes, the, the explosion of scale and the transformation driven by a number of different elements that no doubt we will discuss. Yes, um. So, since this is the, and so also that's why I wanted you to be the very first guest for this podcast.

Georgina Adam 2:45

Well, thank you.

Lisa Cooley 2:50

So, just so for new listeners, we are going to talk a lot about the art market and I want to go over some terms.

Lisa Cooley 2:57

When we talk about the primary market, we talk about when artists release artworks from their studio, almost always to their galleries, and it's the first time that they're sold, and the secondary market is any time it's sold after that.

Lisa Cooley 3:11

So, for an artist who's passed away an artwork that's sold at auction, or when a collector decides that they want to sell their work, another thing that I want to explain about the art market is that it is a - I've always described it as a matching market, not a retail market, because gallerists are selective about how and where they place the works, and this is because they have to be. When there's a lot of demand, they will try to find secondary benefits. So that's why sometimes it's harder to walk into a gallery and just buy something off the wall. I think that's just a thing that people don't understand and we'll get into that and explain that more But beyond that, Georgina, do you have any other analogy or any way to quantify or explain the art market based on your experience.

Georgina Adam 4:19

Well, yes, I think that there is a lot of comparability with the luxury goods market. I don't think you can just walk in and buy a Ferrari if you had that sort of money.

Georgina Adam 4:28

I think you have to get onto a waiting list and I understand, and particularly there's a lawsuit going on at the moment in California I think, in which a luxury goods company didn't want to sell to somebody one of their desirable handbags because they hadn't got on the list and were buying smaller items before to show that they're serious. That's quite comparable to the art market, very comparable, yes. So I would have said, yes, luxury goods is definitely a comparable market. And of course, I think you have to, to an extent, defend the galleries when they don't just sell to anybody, because they are trying to promote the artists careers and they want to place, which is the word they use, they want to place the work in a good collection or preferably in a museum. So I think that it is defensible.

Lisa Cooley 5:27

Oh, absolutely. Y I am still a gallerist at heart, and I just think people don't understand that, for instance, like an artist may only make 12 paintings a year.

Lisa Cooley 5:43

There was just a profile of Anya Weyant that came out in Vogue in the last week, and it says it takes her one month to make a painting. Her works are incredibly in demand, and if her gallery does not place those 12 works with collectors that will further enhance her career in different ways, then she can leave them. So, I feel that's always the danger for the gallerists.

Georgina Adam 6:11

yes, and the danger of flipping, the danger of particularly, as we will discuss, a disconnect now between the prices from the gallery and then when it's resold, and some collectors, you know they just want to make a quick buck and that's not good for the artist's career either. So the gallery is actually defending the artist.

Lisa Cooley 6:32

Yes, so we are recording this in the middle of New York auctions and I think there's one more big today, or tomorrow. Part of my drive to make this whole podcast is that the current art market has some very serious challenges. I was speaking with a dear friend of mine who's run a gallery for about 20 years and she told me from her perspective, this is the worst market she's ever experienced. Worse than 2008, when there was a financial crash, and worse than 2016, when I think there was a much smaller dip, but that is when I closed my gallery. So is this the worst market in 20 years?

Georgina Adam 7:24

The market has gone up and down. If you go further back, there have been other bad times. 1990 was a terrible period as well.

Lisa Cooley 7:31

That one seems like the worst to me.

Georgina Adam 7:33

Yes, I've been told that nothing sold in 1990. I've been told that at art fairs - Of course there were far fewer art fairs in days - but people were playing like billiards in the alleys because they couldn't do anything else, it was really bad.

Georgina Adam 7:51

So the art market, like any market, has its highs and lows, but it is very bad at the moment. However, whatever you think of the election of Donald Trump, personally I would have much preferred to have seen Kamala Harris win, but there we are. He is going to deregulate. It's going to be good for people with a lot of money and that might be good for the art market. Even though I think it's, personally I think it's not good for America.

Lisa Cooley 8:20

So why is the market so bad right now?

Georgina Adam 8:24

Well, there's a number of elements. Firstly, that's the geopolitical situation, which is simply awful. Yes, you've got a war in Ukraine, you've got the war in Gaza, you've also got a general slowdown, and particularly in China. China has been a big motor for the consumption of luxury goods and art, and the Chinese do not necessarily distinguish that much between art and luxury goods. So if you look at the figures for luxury goods, they've fallen by, I think, about 2% this year, which is quite a lot considering the size. That's a much bigger market than the art market, um, probably 10 times. So we had, of course, political uncertainty in the sense that there was an election here in britain and, of course, there was the election in America. No markets like uncertainty. So we have a bad geopolitical situation, slowing economic situation in China, which is, of course, a huge number of consumers there, political uncertainty. To an extent, those political uncertainties have now been resolved, whether you like it or not.

Georgina Adam 9:41

Trump has been elected. Britain has elected a Labour government, a left-wing government, um, which is not necessarily terribly good for very, very rich people who, because of a rule that they are changing, in which you didn't have to pay tax on your overseas earnings. It was called the non-dom non-domiciled, non-fiscally domiciled. That might see a few some rich people leave the UK, so none of this is a quiet, stable market. However, as I said earlier, trump is going to deregulate and probably lower taxes for very rich people, which might well have a positive effect on the art market.

Georgina Adam 10:27

We'll see.

Lisa Cooley 10:30

And another issue I definitely think is that interest rates have been higher here.

Georgina Adam 10:36

Yes, good point.

Lisa Cooley 10:37

I also think that well, I know that there was quite a boom during COVID. People were sitting at home looking at their walls thinking about what they could do, and a lot of people entered the market for the first time and, I think, really thought all art was an investment and that everything would appreciate, which is, of course, not true. Obviously. That's not true of any assets. You can't just say, like every bottle of wine I buy is going to appreciate, every property is going to appreciate, and so I think there are a lot of people who are realizing that that is not the case. So I think another defining feature of the market right now is that there's a big disconnect between primary prices and secondary prices. So something will be very easily sold from the gallery, but then if somebody goes and tries to resell that same work, the secondary prices are much, much lower, and I know a lot of the press has treated this like a giant scandal, but it really isn't, because no one should ever assume that that is going to be the case.

Georgina Adam 11:43

I think If you buy another commodity, for example a car, it's going to go down in price, so that happens as well. I think that one of the problems is that a gallery if you bring back a work of art you bought from a gallery and ask them to resell it, they've got new work by the artist to sell. Yes, so they're, obviously, and they're going to make a bigger margin on that.

Lisa Cooley 12:10

Yes, they're less incentivized to sell, to do the secondary market resale, unless it's something that they can resell very easily. Speaking personally, it takes less work to sell a primary market work than it does to sell a secondary market work. Frequently the secondary market works that get brought back are works that are maybe the auction houses have rejected.

Lisa Cooley 12:43

Very frequently I've watched that happen, um, so I, I don't really, I don't really blame collectors for necessarily taking things to auction because the gallerists um, it's hard for them in some cases to resell those works. So even if the the, the collector is trying to do the right thing, which is the which is the accepted idea, It's polite to give the galleries the first right of refusal to bring it back to them to resell the work.

Lisa Cooley 13:16

So do you think that? Do you think it's accurate that it seems like more people have an idea that art is primarily an investment? When I started in the art world, it didn't seem like it was as widely held of an idea, but it seems like it's much more widely held now.

Georgina Adam 13:39

Yes, I think that is absolutely true, what you might call the financialization. Yes, firstly, because it has to be said that in some cases, there are colossal gains to be made. When you look at some of the prices that we've just seen recently in New York, you know over $100 million for that Magritte. Yes, I can't remember how much she bought it for, but a good deal less. Yes, so I mean really multiples, multiples, less. Uh, okay, so she bought it 20, 30 years ago, but there are few assets in which such enormous gains can be made. There really are few assets. So, um, obviously everybody would like to get a piece of that cake, uh, and a lot of people have. I mean, there have been a lot of initiatives, for example, of fractionalisation. You can't afford to buy a warhole, but you can afford to buy a small part of a warhole niche.

Georgina Adam 14:38

But, um, there's certainly people in finance are looking at art purely as an asset, which I think is a pity, because it has other qualities than just its, uh, its its value as an asset. But, um, banks are interested. A lot of people buy art and stick it straight into store. Yes, I'm waiting a good moment to resell. I think that most artists do not make artworks for them to be stuck in a store, no, so I think it is a pity, but it does happen, and I think it is happening more frequently. And the other phenomenon, particularly in America, is, of course, borrowing against your art, and that's also been a big business. I mean, I think that's worth billions a year now, right, so you keep your Warhol or whatever it is, your Klimt, and then you borrow against it and with that money you buy more art or you invest in pay perhaps a tax bill, or you invest in your company, Right?

Lisa Cooley 15:37

I just I want to say that as an art advisor, if you are buying art and you expect it to increase in value, you absolutely need to hire a professional. I can say more about that later, but I've watched clients that I know from my gallery days, that I've sort of reconnected with them, and they have said that they were buying on own but not making the best choices and they thought they were going to get really big returns and and they didn't. But I see that so frequently. But that is an aside 100%, absolutely 100%

Georgina Adam 16:15

You definitely need advice if you're going to think about that, and do not imagine that all the that, all art, is going to think about that.

Lisa Cooley 16:20

and do not imagine that all the that, all art, is going to go up in price, because it's just simply not and I, just to give that as an example like this client who I I love, he bought a Sterling Ruby bronze sculpture, which it's a great sculpture, um, but the things that are very in demand are his ceramics or his paintings, less the bronzes, just because they're not as common, they're not as well known, they're just not as in demand.

Lisa Cooley 16:51

So that is a really simple thing where a professional could have told him like buy the ceramic and not the bronze um so, um so, how did how did this idea that art is primarily an investment like get into the bloodstream, so to speak?

Georgina Adam 17:09

well, I think you really have to go back. You have to go back quite a long way. I think it's definitely a phenomenon that's amplified in this century. I think it did sort of start in the 1980s. You know, before the 1980s, contemporary art was a very, very small part of the market, um, and artists were not making art that was particularly attractive to sell either, you know it was minimalism on purpose.

Lisa Cooley 17:34

They didn't want it to be sold

Georgina Adam 17:38

If you sold your show, you know you must have been doing something wrong, and that changed in the 80s, you know. And I mean, do you remember Wall Street?

Georgina Adam 17:47

greed is good and so on, and artists all of a sudden became fashionable and they used to go to different galleries. That was something that didn't really and I uh, it's just amplified. Um, because of the enormous gains. I mean the art market itself with the end of communism, brought huge populations into the consuming world. I'm thinking of Russia, India, China, particularly China. Yes, China ends, it's you, it's still a communist country, but it's more liberal from the economic point of view. That dates back to Deng Xiaoping, I think. And all of a sudden, you had these huge new economies that were able to buy art and, as a result, the art market expanded enormously and has become much bigger, although, interestingly, in the last 10 years, it hasn't grown as much as, for example, wealth, which is interesting. And I think that the notion that art I think art will always be a bit elitist and I don't think it will be for everyone and I don't believe that millions and millions of people will ever want to buy art. It's just well, I just they can't.

Lisa Cooley 19:05

It's just the nature of an artwork, unlike a song, which is can be very easy to distribute um and anyone can, can just even sing the song. Um, and an artwork is usually a object that stays in one place. That isn't easy to move around. An object that stays in one place, that isn't easy to move around, and so it can't flow through society in quite the same way that like a song or even like play or a book can.

Georgina Adam 19:34

So it's it's tethered to a place, usually yes but but also the entry point, although I'll come back to that because there is something interesting as well about art. But the the entry point is not. You know, we live and work in the art market and we will say something like that was cheap at a million right for most people.

Georgina Adam 19:54

That's ridiculous, I know. Even the notion of investing five or six thousand dollars in a work of art is a lot for a lot of people, so the entry point is quite high. I know you can buy a print for very much less, but even so. Um, but as far as staying in one place is concerned, I think also it is interesting that the fact that art can be moved around and can be used to arbitrate um differences, for example in currency exchange rates, you can buy work in pounds and sell it in dollars if the exchange rate

Georgina Adam 20:27

So I think that has also been a bit of an attraction of the art market as well.

Lisa Cooley 20:32

Do you see any signs of things improving?

Georgina Adam 20:35

Well, as I have said before, I think that the election of Trump and lower taxes, deregulation will probably stimulate the art market next year. What's very interesting is what is called the Great Wealth Transfer, the death of the baby boomers. Now, that is very, very interesting. Baby boomers are basically dying out there. The baby boomer generation was born just after the second world war yes, so in the 1940s 50s and they really benefited from extraordinary benefited from being able to buy their own homes. They benefited from in most advanced democratic countries by an enormous explosion of wealth, and they are currently passing that wealth on to the next generations, to gen x , the millennials, and then gen z. They're passing on art and money. Yes, physical money, yes, and we've already seen this. For example, paul allen you know that was a colossal collection and just recently just I think yesterday or two days ago the Margitte that sold for a sensational price, over a hundred million dollars. Yes, it belonged to somebody called Mika Erdogan who had a very good collection and who died.

Georgina Adam 21:58

So, of course, the question is you - the supply. The supply has always been a problem in the art market is that, um, there wasn't enough good art. You know for the number of buyers, whether we will see in the coming years almost too much supply of very good works of art and will there be enough people to take it up, and will it be the same taste, particularly right? Surrealism is doing really well at the moment. I have questions about some of the artists who've been very, very popular, particularly some american artists.

The state of art galleries today - cosolidation and scale

Georgina Adam 22:34

Um, in particular well, I'm thinking Rothko, funnily enough. I mean, you know, will Rothko resonate as much with the younger generation? Will Franz Klein, will Pollock? Will they resonate as much with the younger generation who will have the money to spend on art, even Picasso, right? So you know, it's interesting. This is a debate. I'm not saying that these artists are not going to resonate, but I'm just asking the question. Well, I think it's a fair question.

Georgina Adam 23:10

Yes, what will resonate with the young who are buying Banksy, who are buying Kaws, who are buying younger artists as well, who resonate perhaps more with their cultural references as well?

Lisa Cooley 23:25

Right, right, I mean I. I think that the one of the most fascinating examples of that is how the Wildensteins cornered the um the market of Bonnard and other old masters There's not as much demand for them. Tastes change. I think that's a great example of taste changing over time.

Georgina Adam 23:54

Absolutely. I mean what was called the Park Avenue taste, you know, and you had Impressionist painting in a fiddly little frame, you know, with soft focus. Do people really want that today, you know, will that do as well? Or in 20 years.

Lisa Cooley 24:11

Exactly so. This is a great chance to segue to talking about art galleries. Speaking of supply, it seems to me that scale is really the defining quality of galleries these days. It really seems to define their business model, whether they're tiny or in the middle or really large. Do you have an idea? I know in your book, your 2013 book, you estimated that there were about 300,000 galleries. Do you think that stayed the same or do you think that has increased since?

Georgina Adam 24:45

Then I'm amazed that I stuck my neck out that much. I mean, how do you define a gallery, right you?

Lisa Cooley 24:52

know, do you define?

Georgina Adam 24:53

a gallery, as a little guy who does framing and also sells prints, you know, all the way through to the very big boys you know, the Zwirners, Pace. So, as I say, I would not. Really I'm surprised that I wrote that thing down. I don't think I made it up. I got it from someone, sure, I think that another. There probably are more, but they do come and go.

Lisa Cooley 25:17

They come and go a lot.

Georgina Adam 25:19

We've actually seen a lot of closures recently.

Georgina Adam 25:21

Yes, but, we've also seen openings, um, but I think think is interesting in as a phenomenon of the 21st century has been the emergence of these mega galleries that have got 17 outlets, more possibly um, Hauser and Wirth, Gagosian, uh, Zwirner, who I mentioned, Pace. These are mega galleries and I think it's tough when you're a gallery a bit further down the food chain, because if you have a successful artist, that successful artist will probably at one point want to move up and he'll probably move up towards one of the mega galleries where the rewards will be higher. And, don't forget, a small gallery will not be able to sell work over a certain price just because their clientele will not have that sort of money. So if the artist wants their earnings to improve and why not? They probably have to change galleries, so they have to move up the food chain have to change galleries.

Lisa Cooley 26:26

And are there other ways in your mind to define a mega gallery?

Georgina Adam 26:32

Yes, White Cube, I would put a little bit underneath, right um, because, for a start, it doesn't have as many outlets, right um, and I'm not sure that they have have the clout as we would say in england. You know, right, I don't think they do right um, but it definitely comes just under. I mean, ropak is probably a very important today as Ropac.

Georgina Adam 26:59

Yes, Thaddeus Ropac, yes, Thaddeus Ropac yeah. With beautiful outlets. He has a beautiful outlet here in London.

Lisa Cooley 27:04

Yes, yes, it is exquisite. Another way I want to quantify galleries for people who are for listeners that may be just new to all this is we're talking about it in terms of scale and in terms of size. But there's another way to think about this which, if you think about the food world, there are street carts, there's like your neighborhood restaurant, there's fine dining, there's the like, you know, edgy, like farm to table restaurant that's very beloved by the critics. So I think a lot of those analogies are really helpful when you're talking about galleries as well, because there's also sort of a, a taste hierarchy, like, just because there's a like, there can be huge differences between, like, two small galleries where there's not so many differences between, at the higher end, um, I think, between, um, Pace, Zwirner, Hauser and Wirth, Gagosian . I mean, there definitely are differences, but not as much as there are at the bottom end. Yes, I agree. Oh, go ahead.

Georgina Adam 28:09

No, you go on.

Lisa Cooley 28:10

What is the question? I love that you were talking about how important supply is, because galleries are one of the main sources of supply. Their supplies are theoretically infinite as long as the artists are still alive so I think that's one of the reasons why the primary market um does does so well

Lisa Cooley 28:35

There's a huge array, there's a huge choice of galleries and you find a gallerist that you have a good relationship with because they're very personality driven, and I think that experience is part of the experience of buying art at the primary market, where you're really you become part of. You can become part of a community. You can go to the dinners, you can meet the artists, and that can be a very enriching experience. That is beyond just the economic value of our work.

Georgina Adam 29:11

I'm currently writing a book about next-gen collectors and one of the motivations for the next-gen collectors, which is the next generation, the collectors who are starting now, is one of the things they really prize is the contact with the artists going to their studios, you know, becoming involved in the cultural life of their times. And I don't think that was really quite so much the case with with an older generation, with the baby boomers. They didn't necessarily have that relationship or prize that relationship with artists. They probably prized more relationship with a museum and that's an interesting difference.

Lisa Cooley 29:48

I'm so happy to hear that because I think that one of the greatest benefits of buying art from a gallery because again, that's my background, is that it's really a passport to a life of intellectual and aesthetic adventure. And nobody talks about that. They really just talk about the investment and I just it's, it's just unending. There's there's no shortage of things to learn about, there's no shortage of people to meet, and it is really a community, like you see the people, the same people at different events.

Lisa Cooley 30:27

It is really a community of people that love the pleasure and the intellectual experience of visually decoding objects and the intellectual experience of visually decoding objects.

Georgina Adam 30:39

Absolutely, yes, absolutely, and being part of the cultural discourse of our time.

Lisa Cooley 30:43

Yes, I think that's very important as well, I am so heartened to hear that. Thank you for sharing that.

Lisa Cooley 30:54

And so I think another way to think about galleries is that when an artist joins a gallery, it's really a kind of co-branding, right?

Georgina Adam 30:58

yes, branding is actually really interesting

Lisa Cooley 31:03

like I remember talking to someone a while ago and they said like well, maybe, um, you know, 50 years ago, if an art critic say, clement Greenberg reviewed your work, it, you got a huge bump and you were considered a made artist. You were considered like that's it, you made it. And now, um, something comparable would be if um, like david swirner, announces your rip, that they're going to represent you yes, yes, absolutely.

Georgina Adam 31:30

But it's interesting because there are some artists who are sort of brands in themselves, and some of these, particularly the top auction houses, but also Zwirner, pace and so on, they are brands, yes, yes. So I mean, I hate to mention Damien Hirst, but he is a brand, you know, it is a brand. Jeff Koons is a brand, tracy Eamon here in the UK is a brand and, slightly sadly, sometimes people will say, oh, yes, I bought this at Gagosian, for example, and when you say, well, what's the name of the artist? And they say, well, it was from Gagosian, you know. So there is that element.

Lisa Cooley 32:07

It's not, fortunately, not often the case, I have not had that experience, thankfully.

Georgina Adam 32:12

Or Sotheby's and Christie's as well. I got it at Sotheby's.

Lisa Cooley 32:15

I got it.

Georgina Adam 32:16

And it has to be said, you know, an artwork that you bought on eBay you know doesn't have the same resonance. As you know, I bought it on eBay as opposed to I bought it at Sotheby's Right.

Georgina Adam 32:27

So there's like the status and the experience of that the status exactly yes, and that, incidentally, also is very luxury goods market. That is a real parallel between luxury goods and the art market, which I think I went into in depth I can't remember which of the two books, but I certainly investigated and, interestingly, I actually bought a book about marketing luxury goods and I was quite shocked by how similar many of the marketing techniques are, how comparable the two markets are.

Lisa Cooley 32:58

Yes, yes, client like talking about all these artists as brands, um, and the mega galleries, is having you know multiple different locations. I think you get this experience where, art buyers like buy the same art regardless of where they are in, what country they're in and, um, maybe that uh is you know they're competing over the same um Jeff Koons, because Jeff Koons is a brand and it's like very recognizable, but it also I think has really lLaderman lLaderman Laderman L M Lwho M , like that very, very top of the market too.

Georgina Adam 33:35

I think that is true and that is a criticism that I have heard of contemporary art museums the private ones, although almost all contemporary is that they tend to slightly tick the boxes. You know they tend to have the same things. However, it has to be said that traditional museums will have Picasso and Monet and Manet if they can afford it. So the only difference really is that time has consecrated those earlier artists, whereas in today's world will, in 50 years time, people still think that Tracy Eamon was a very significant artist, or Gilbert and George, I don't know, it's difficult, we haven't got, we haven't, you know we, we haven't got that delay of time right. You know, our, our children and grandchildren will see yes, yeah, no.

Lisa Cooley 34:24

I had a clan ask me like well, isn't there like a curator that I can follow, that mints all the stars? And like, if this curator likes them, then, um, you know, then, like that's how I'm gonna know what to buy. And I had to explain that it's like it's not just one person. Partly it's time, because time changes how we see things through the lens of history. For instance, um, there's an artist I really love, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, who made a lot of work about care and about cleaning and maintenance and, um, I think after the pandemic her work has a lot more resonance. But nobody could have foreseen the pandemic and what happened. And the lens of history changes things and I think that's another reason why it's not just one curator, it's a consensus of curators and different locations and over time. So the best thing is to me, I always say, is to follow museums and to follow art history, and over time, the market value and the symbolic value of art, the art historic historical value, will line up with market value.

Georgina Adam 35:33

It may take a hundred years, but eventually they will align yes, and you're right to talk about art history, and I think that one of the questions that collectors should be asking themselves is this significant is this sort of moving forward, our notion of art and some things that perhaps shock us today, but you know, they are significant and that is, I think that is an indication of whether something will stand the test of time or not.

Lisa Cooley 35:59

Yes, um, um, I, the marizio Cattelan "Comedian, just sold like, I think, like last night, and I was fat the person who so. For those of you who don't know, it's a artwork that's a banana taped to a wall with duct tape and it was very instantly, very, very, very iconic. I think it was an edition of three and originally sold for like $150, 000 or around there and then it was just sold. One edition was sold at auction for I think 6.5 million, I think it was 6.2.

Georgina Adam 36:30

Yes, yeah, it doesn't matter, just over six.

Lisa Cooley 36:32

Yes, um, and I was fascinated with the fact that the gentleman who bought it worked in crypto and he really resonated or connected with the fact that what he was actually buying was a set of instructions of how to a certificate of authenticity and a set of instructions of how to construct the artwork and the right to construct it, and he really felt like so essentially he's buying a contract and that is also, in many ways, like what crypto or like what an NFT is. So I liked that he was making this connection between a way that contemporary art has worked for many years and what his business was doing and just sort of remains to be seen how, um, if that's a thing that other people their entryway into, into conceptual art.

Georgina Adam 37:30

This is my opinion only but, um, I'm old enough to remember when Van Gogh yes, sunflowers sold to a Japanese entrepreneur for 22 million pounds, I think it was at the time. It was a colossal price, and it put those sunflowers on the front page of every newspaper in the world and we discovered the name of YASDA, which was the name of the insurance company that was run by the person who bought Sunflowers for that colossal amount of money. Okay, he spent 22 million and he got the work of art, but he also got a swathe of free publicity as well. I think that Justin Sun who is

Georgina Adam 38:11

the buyer of the banana, who is a crypto entrepreneur, who has a crypto platform called tron. I think it may well be that his six million odd purchase also has got him a colossal amount of publicity as well, is, I think, yes, but there are other works. I mean, for example, um, I'm thinking of candy spill by Gonzalez. Yes, uh, that is.

Lisa Cooley 38:34

I mean a number of those conceptual works are really basically or.

Georgina Adam 38:37

I'm thinking of Candy Spill by González Felix González Torres. Yes, yes, that is. I mean, a number of those conceptual works are really basically or wall drawings by Sol LeWitt. They come with a set of instructions and you do it yourself basically, so that is not completely new. With the banana, I think the sensation value of the banana, it's interesting what Catalan said. He said I wanted to show that you could sell anything at an art fair and so he taped up this banana. It's very interesting. Of course, it does also form an x when you have the banana plus the tag right. So I mean, I do think it's a terribly interesting phenomenon and I think it it challenges our notion of what is art and what is value and for that reason I think that it is interesting. But I do think that Jason Justin, justin Sun, has got himself a colossal amount of free publicity for cryptocurrency.

Lisa Cooley 39:31

Yes, well, I think that people used to collect art for that reason. It wasn't necessarily the investment value, it was the status, the elevation in society, all kinds of other reasons. There's so many other motivations besides investment and I want to talk about all of them over time on this podcast. Okay, so back to galleries.

Georgina Adam 39:58

I mean art is a positional good and when you think back once again, if you go back in time, if you think of Tosco e Serlo, which was the palace built by Catherine the Great and which she filled with art, or Versailles by Louis XIV, you know these were positional goods. Of course, they were using the contemporary artists of the time. We always forget that.

Lisa Cooley 40:20

Yes.

Georgina Adam 40:21

That was contemporary art at the time.

Lisa Cooley 40:23

Yes, Okay, so we talked about big galleries, and so there are lots of small galleries. How are smaller galleries adapting to this economy of scale?

Art Fairs - galleries strike back, growing the art market

Georgina Adam 40:38

Well, I think it's. I would have said that, the very smallest galleries. It's not quite so difficult because they're basically mom and pop stores, aren't they? Yes, probably, their overheads are not that high. They're selling, probably at not very high level of price. I think the big problem more is the ones in the middle. Yes, I think that it's more is the ones in the middle. Yes, I think that it's much tougher for the mids. There are a small sort that have got eight or nine employees already and they, you know, they're in danger of the artists moving on up. The very smallest galleries and in fact here in London, a number of very small galleries have actually opened recently, although we have seen closures as well. Yes, but to come back to what you said earlier, yes, times are very tough and I have noticed that I'm getting more emails. I get a lot of emails anyway, from people saying oh, you know, please come to my show and just contacting me. They're obviously having to work harder.

Lisa Cooley 41:32

Yes, so another phenomenon I've noticed for maybe not the smallest galleries, but the galleries that are trying to grow to the midsize they have been opening multiple locations. I think when I started it was very unusual for a gallery like under 15, 20 years old to have another location, years old to have another location. And, um, it seems much more common now for, uh, if you have been around for 10 years or less, that you and you're in new york you open an LA location and vice versa. Or if you're in europe you open a New York location.

Lisa Cooley 42:09

I know I spoke to one european gallerist who opened a New York location and they said well, we just can't get the attention of New York curators any other way unless we're actually physically here. And I think that contains an acknowledgement that the curators here are very, very important. But then I also think that that mirrors maybe New York collector, New York gallerists, are thinking the same thing about, um, Los Angeles curators, because really in the past 10 years, Los Angeles has just absolutely exploded in importance um or they're just trying to um maximize and um take advantage of an economy of scale where they, you know, just like a restaurant, has, you know, two locations um where

Lisa Cooley 42:58

they can, um, take advantage of efficiencies of having like one management and two locations. But the thing that I see is a danger is if artists only shows with two, um, only shows with one gallery, and that gallery has like three or four locations, on one hand they're giving the, the artist, exhibition opportunities, and you know three or like maybe an exhibition opportunity every every year, but then they're only within that one gallery and that gallery only has one set of clients, um, and then the worst example I've seen is I had a client who wanted a young painting by a young artist and I told her she should wait. But she didn't want to wait, which is fine. So I diligently went to go get it and I looked at the artist's CV and the only thing on their CV really was an exhibition in each one of their galleries for locations every year, and um, the, the work just seemed to be getting worse and worse and worse. So I just I think that there are a lot of complications with that and um, that's all speaking from my experience.

Georgina Adam 44:16

um well, I would have said that, actually, this is a segue into the phenomenon of the art fair. Yes, because the phenomenon of the art fair is how you can go to Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Seoul or wherever, and yet, at the same time, only have your main gallery, and this is exactly why gallerists, do you know, do art fairs is that it gives them that international extension that they can't possibly afford to do otherwise. You know, you've got two halves of the art market. You've got the duopoly, well, perhaps, quadropoly. You've got Sotheby's, Christie's, Phillips, perhaps Bonhams, Bonhams, not so important for fine art and then you've got a huge number of galleries.

Georgina Adam 45:12

So the galleries, it's a very fragmented scenario, and how can they join together and produce an event which is a sort of you must go to? Well, that's going to be an art fair, it's going to be a Basel, it's going to be a Frieze, it's going to be, you know, one of the other, the Armory show, Expo Chicago, all of those different ones, and that enables them, you know, to see. Also, it gives them a snapshot of what's going. But particularly it puts the client in a situation of it's now or never, which is as near as they can get to emulating the auction experience, which is, if I don't bid on this now, I'm not going to get it. Um, and if you're in an art fair, you're seeing a work of art you're interested in, somebody else is looking at it. You think, oh, I better pull the trigger right away, otherwise I won't get it monetizing.

Georgina Adam 45:57

FOMO yes, exactly so. Um, I think that you know, and I've said so in my book, art fairs is the way that a very fragmented, uh, number of dealers can get together, you know, and from the client's point of view it's kind of brilliant because you can go and see a number of works by the same artist you know on the same visit, instead of having to schlep all the way around I don't know Chelsea in New York in order to see what's available.

Lisa Cooley 46:25

I really thought that was one of the many insights in your book that I loved. I lived through the expansion of art fairs. I grew up in Houston and I worked for a small gallery there and we were invited to do the very first NADA art fair in 2003. And so you know, like my journey as like a little baby gallerist, and then I moved to New York in 2005, which just like really mirrored the growth of art fairs, and I just kind of thought like oh well, it's always been this way, um, and I just had never conceptualized them as the dealer's way to strike back.

Lisa Cooley 47:05

Um, yes, um, at the you know, sort of yeah, time-based urgency that, um, that auctions had created yes, absolutely yes so the I also um I love, I, just I love all the history in your books. Um I did know that art cologne was the very first fair yes, and it was started by the father of David Zwirner. Rudolf Zwirner, yes. So many great stories.

Georgina Adam 47:36

One of the slightly rare cases of generational, because there aren't that many generations. You know who you know passing on. There are some cases, Lisson Gallery, but there's nobody for Gagosian.

Lisa Cooley 47:49

He has, you know, no children who are going to take over, and I also loved the insight that art fair participation is really the main credential for galleries. It's not like it's not. There is the Art Dealers Association of America and I don't know if there are similar organizations in other countries. I assume there might be.

Georgina Adam 48:09

Yes, there are. We have the Society of London Art Dealers, for example, here in London you have well in France they have the Société des Antiquaires, but that's really more for antiques, which is not a strong section at the moment.

Georgina Adam 48:22

But yes there normally is some sort of a trade association. But I think if you say to somebody oh, you know, I show at Basel, Maastricht, wherever it is, it shows that you've been selected, you've been selected, you've been selected. Now there are problems with selection, you know. That's definitely yeah, because the selection is done by your peers and so there are questions of professional jealousy that can come in, yes, but nevertheless it is. You know, if you show at one of these fairs, it does show that you are of a certain level there's also um in my experience like dealers are the people who see the least artwork.

Lisa Cooley 49:04

So it's very rarely that they have been to your gallery, you know, having run a young gallery and you know desperately wanted admission to these fairs, like it's just so rare that the your fellow dealers who are sitting in judgment of you have actually like been to your, been to your gallery um multiple times. Frequently they live in other, in other countries, um, but it it still happens. I mean, they're it's it's fine, but it is uh, it is always like a fraught psychological um experience for a young dealer.

Lisa Cooley 49:35

Um, I've also. It was great to sort of through your book like step back and really understand that art fairs are responsible for growing the entire market for art, that they're just like the galleries, the events that individual galleries have around fairs, museum programs around fairs, parties sponsorships dinners, vip talks, collection visits they're just all create additional touch points where um people are um engaging with the event, and then it gets reported on and it just becomes like a snowball effect that gets like bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger, and I think like, yes, I, I really I love music.

Lisa Cooley 50:17

Music was my first love and I got an alert from this app that um called dice, where, like I buy tickets for events, and it asked me if I wanted to make plans to go see music events during Art Basel Miami Beach. It blew my mind.

Understanding the auction house landscape

Lisa Cooley 50:35

I've never gotten that, they've never sent me that for like any other event, so it just is reaching into parts of the culture that I think you know. Like that. I don't really think auctions do it's. It's a really different kind of like infiltration and it I've also had um clients, um, and actually friends who maybe like work in PR, like adjacent to the art world but not in the art world, and they will go to Miami and like go to all the parties but like never go to the fair and they don't, or like working at the fairs um, you're trying to connect people with like incredible um outputs of like human creativity and they're like sorry, I gotta go to the Moncler party.

Georgina Adam 51:37

Well, there's people in the art world who do it for the lifestyle. I mean that's one of the big attractions. Actually it's the lifestyle going to biennials and exhibitions and artist studios and so on that happens.

Georgina Adam 51:51

Um, I would like to say, actually, when you talk about that's one of the things that's grown in the art market. It's quite interesting phenomenon happening at the moment with the auction houses who are selling many more things like sneakers that they didn't sell before and which are they call it I mean, they don't call it, I call it a gateway drug Handbags. You know that's hard, but that is apparently the entry point particularly handbags for women, sneakers for men. These are a way of people of starting people of buying at auction. So it's, you know, the auction houses are also fighting back, you know, and they're changing their shift.

Georgina Adam 52:31

There's a big shift in the way art is sold. I mean, the auction house is used to auction and now they do lots of things that are not auctioning. They lend you money, you know they'll. They'll as I say they will they'll sell a far broader range of things and they will actually sell directly. Now Sotheby's has just opened up something it calls Salon in Hong Kong and you can buy things immediately, you know. You don't have to wait for an auction for them oh, like buy it now.

Georgina Adam 52:58

Speaking of eBay, it's like buy it now, exactly exactly taking the lead from eBay.

Lisa Cooley 53:16

We're slowly getting to talking more about auction houses, but they're like at the art fairs, like further encroaching on the dealers' territory. And I loved an anecdote from your book where Mark Spiegler, who is the former director of Art Basel, sent a letter to the three main auction houses asking them not to indulge in activities like previewing consigned works. You know, drawing. Like seeing somebody, like looking at uh, like a Rothko in somebody's booth and going, hey, come over here, I got another one for you to look at. Um, am I remembering that anecdote correctly?

Georgina Adam 53:53

Yes, absolutely, he certainly did. He sent sort of a cease. It wasn't exactly a cease and desist letter. That's what lawyers send.

Lisa Cooley 54:00

It's a little more polite.

Georgina Adam 54:01

Yes, yes, absolutely, and it's true that auction houses have increasingly, you know, they give advice. I mean, they've even experimented at one point but it didn't really work out with trying to run artists estate. Do you remember that they um chrissy mclean or mclean, who was the yes, who was in head of head of the Raushenberg estate, as I remember, and then she went to Sotheby's for a while. It didn't work out, I think they wanted to, uh, run an artist estate. Didn't really work. And um, also, Christie's at one point had an operation here in London. Um, that also didn't work out. It was called Haunch of Venison.

Lisa Cooley 54:47

They bought an existing blue chip gallery right? but like no artist wants to show with an auction house?

Georgina Adam 54:58

No, they don't want to and also you don't get the personal attention. You know what a gallerist. You know he has the interests of that artists at heart. That's what they're there to do. They're to help them with their career and promote their career. Auction houses have got a different agenda. You know they sell secondhand art. It's not the same.

Lisa Cooley 55:19

Right, it's just. Is their agenda more than making money? It's just making money right?

Georgina Adam 55:26

Well, they wouldn't say so. Well, what would they say? I'll put it like that I don't think they would say so, but yes, yes, I mean ultimately, although they don't make that auction houses are not that profitable. But, um, because everyone thinks, you know, they imagine if something sells for 100 million, that 100 million goes to the auction house. Absolutely not, they're just taken. They've probably, in order to get that consignment, they've had to give away a lot, of, a lot of the of the commission that they would earn. So they're not making that much. They're not highly profitable firms.

Lisa Cooley 56:08

Well, so I really just say that to contrast it with the gallery side of things, where the gallerist functions as really I describe it as like a record label, where they do everything for the artist they do promotion, they do long-term planning. There's a lot of like personal hand-holding, um and um you know, developing a this like deep personal relationship um archives, um production, financing, exhibitions, in a way that really everything that a record label would do for an artist?

Georgina Adam 56:43

Yes, I think that's a very good analogy.

Lisa Cooley 56:48

And then the gallerist also has a challenge, because they have to balance the interests of the artist on one hand with the collectors. And, speaking personally, the most stressful experience I've ever had was when, um, we had a sold out show. We sold it out before the exhibition opened and I had so many angry collectors like well you didn't sell me one.

Lisa Cooley 57:11

I thought I was going to get one this time and you know, the artist is very young and the artist is not in that in demand right now. She could be in the future, because everything goes through waves and cycles, but, um, that was it's, and some like far more stressful because I really felt like I was letting people down. It's just, it's very, very complicated. So, um, yes, just going back to what we said at the very beginning of the conversation, like it's um, it's perfectly understandable why that gallerist may not sell you something immediately, because there are a lot of factors going on um but I would like to add something else as well.

Georgina Adam 57:50

You were very upset as a gallerist because you weren't able to help your clients. But there's another thing which can be very upsetting for gallerists is if they lose an artist, and I've known gallerists who've said to me it's really traumatizing when somebody that you've worked with and promoted and probably carried in a financial sense for quite a long time and then they finally decide to go to another gallery, that can be lived very hard as well by a gallerist.

Lisa Cooley 58:16

Speaking from experience, I strongly agree.

Lisa Cooley 58:18

Yes yeah, yeah um, I actually I think that gallerists make really great parents because you spend all this time like taking care of and giving care. It is a lot about care. Um, you know, there are variations in personalities, of course, and I really think it made me a better parent and I enjoy being a parent more because I just get so much love back. The return on the investment is just like exponentially greater. Okay, but so back to auction houses. Back to auction houses. Who are the major auction houses and you know, can you maybe share a sentence or two about, like, maybe, who owns them or how they differ? Just so you know, for a long time, in my mind, like Sotheby's and Christie's were interchangeable

Georgina Adam 59:08

Well, Hertz and Avis, right right, sometimes one's bigger and sometimes the other, well, they both.

Georgina Adam 59:16

Interestingly, they both now belong to French people. Christie's is well, there's this old joke is that Christie's a gentleman pretending to be a salesman, and Sotheby's are salesmen pretending to be gentlemen. Christie's belongs to François Pinault, who, incidentally, and this is why I do think that luxury goods is a very important element in all of this is also Pinault also is holding his family, are holding companies Kering, which has Gucci and many other luxury brands as well.

Georgina Adam 59:55

Yeah, it's almost surprising that Bernard Arnault, who's the other major luxury mogul, LVMH, he doesn't actually own the auction house, although he did at one point, but it was during a time when things were going very badly and he did actually divest of it. So Sotheby's was a publicly quoted company for a long time, but it was bought by about three, four years ago by somebody Patrick Draghi , who is French, israeli, Swiss, Portuguese. He's got a number of different passports, for sure, and he particularly has. Interestingly, he has an absolute mountain of debt, sixty billion, I think, is the latest figure and he bought. He has a very large collection of art as well. I think it's worth virtually a billion dollars. I'm speaking. He took it private, so it's no longer a publicly quoted company. I think Sotheby's last year's figures were better than Christie's but honestly, some years one's ahead, some years the other ahead. They sell about $6 billion worth of art each year. As I say, it depends, they are surprisingly.

Georgina Adam 1:01:17

Christie's is sort of headquartered in London. That's where they both started more than 250 years ago. Sotheby's initially was a book auctioneer's library, some big business, before the internet. If you were very rich and you had a beautiful library, somebody asked you a question how tall is Everest? And you went and looked in your library. It was like a sort of internet of before and libraries when they came up for sale they were sold for huge amounts of money.

Georgina Adam 1:01:46

Of course those times have changed and we're going 250 years forward, in fact more, and I think it's really Peter Wilson of Sotheby's who was the person who really took auction houses from being an operation for dealers a wholesale operation. Sotheby's and Christie's auction rooms were full of dealers but Peter Wilson back in the 1950s transformed it. He had the vision to transform it into something that was a retail operation, bringing in the collectors to buy at auction. So that is potted. There's also Phillips, which belongs to a couple of Russians, and then there's Bonham's, which has actually been very successful. It's a smaller sale room but it's been very successful. But if you look at the lineup of auction houses you will find amongst the top 10, you will find at least five or six Chinese ones. Now never heard of um and that I have never heard of that sell essentially um, cultural goods um jades, porcelains, scroll works furniture um and within the chinese um, within mainland china right and, of course, Hong Kong.

Lisa Cooley 1:03:16

So when we hear um about, about the Chinese market, do figures frequently take into account all of those antiquities or cultural goods?

Georgina Adam 1:03:30

The figures are problematic. A because any figure coming out of China is problematic. You know, I don't think, quite frankly, we believe entirely. You know the official figures, for you know the Chinese economy and so on. So and the way they report is difficult. I believe that when the Chinese auction houses report results, they report hammer whether the goods have actually sold or not.

Lisa Cooley 1:04:02

Right.

Georgina Adam 1:04:02

OK, ok, okay, good to know. You know, I think they must always be taken with a pinch of salt. I think what is always interesting is perhaps not the exact figures, but to see the trends. And um, we have a report that comes out every year in about March, which is done by UBS and Art Basel with an economist who's called Claire McAndrew.

Georgina Adam 1:04:24

And while her methodology is as good as she can make it, it's not perfect. None of these figures are perfect, because we have to remember that dealer sales are secret. None of these figures are perfect because we have to remember that dealer sales are secret. Auction is not secret, but then you do have to trust the source in some cases not Sotheby's and Christie's. They're obviously trustworthy, but you're also not getting what their private sales are. You're only getting what are public sales. But nevertheless, I mean, what is interesting is to look at the trends, to look year after after year, and that does give you an indication of how the art market is doing okay um, okay, so we talked a little bit.

Lisa Cooley 1:05:02

We talked about Christie's and Sotheby's and yes um, uh, I want to talk about Phillips, and then I. I just want to say a surprising thing to me about Bonham's is that they are. I didn't, I just I really knew their name, I didn't realize how big they were, but they are, have a large British presence and a large California presence.

Georgina Adam 1:05:22

Yes, yes, well, they keep buying, but they keep buying smaller auction houses.

Georgina Adam 1:05:27

They bought they must have bought one Butterfield American auction. Yes, yeah, they bought. They bought a couple of Scandinavian ones, they bought a French one, Cornette de Saint-Cyr, but they have venture capitalists who own them and they are, I mean, in theory. I should think all four auction houses are probably for sale. If somebody came along with the best offer. Sure, possibly not Christie's, but certainly Bonhams would be for sale Philips. But Philips' problem is that it belongs to Russians, and so many Russians not necessarily them, but so many other Russians are under sanctions. So it's very difficult at the moment for any Russian asset to be traded at the moment. Fascinating, of course.

Lisa Cooley 1:06:18

Yes.

Georgina Adam 1:06:18

And Drahi. Well, he's just got an injection of a billion dollars from Sotheby's yes, Drahi. He got an injection of a billion dollars from a Middle Eastern wealth fund yes, Emirates.

Lisa Cooley 1:06:37

But he still has a huge debt, not for Sotheby's, but for other companies that he also owns, notably in the telecommunications field auction houses were uniquely poised to drive the expansion of the art market in the 21st century because they were uniquely poised to reach into emerging economies they had the largest advertising budgets. How else have they really driven the expansion of the art market in the 21st century?

Georgina Adam 1:07:16

Well, let's just talk about the expansion. In the last 10 years the market has not actually expanded that much. The figures are not that different If you take a longer term. Obviously, yes, enormously. But I think it's because they realized that selling firstly, they enormously emphasised contemporary art, modern and contemporary art and indeed the ultra-contemporary art, although that particular sector has fallen back quite severely. But they've also moved into dealer territory. You know they lend money against art. As I said, Sotheby's now you can buy it. Now you can go in and buy it immediately. They will advise you on what artists buy and how to run your collections. So they are constantly moving into what was previously dealer territory and all they were doing was just selling second-hand goods. And they've moved into the luxury goods field. Sotheby's again has got um. Now they have a division for what's called luxury goods. They've moved into car sales, uh, real estate, all of these things. So what they haven't entirely moved into yet and is, I think, very important in today's economy, is what is experiential you know producing experiences.

Georgina Adam 1:08:40

We have these immersive installations, for example, things like the Van Gogh experience, which I'm sure you have probably more than one of in New York. We have all kinds.

Lisa Cooley 1:08:50

Yes and yeah, how could you even auction that? It's like that's not a thing that you could necessarily auction. They haven't actually moved into those, they haven't actually moved into that.

Georgina Adam 1:08:57

That's not a thing that you could necessarily auction. Well, they haven't actually moved into those. They haven't actually moved into that, but this is something that I think has a future in the art market as well. I'm not quite sure how they're going to exploit it. David Hockney you can visit a David Hockney experience here in London. So I think that that is more the future. At the moment, they haven't moved into experiences, but they have moved into other areas that used to be the gallery's domain.

Lisa Cooley 1:09:27

But they did like in the first part of the 20th century, they really did drive this expansion.

Georgina Adam 1:09:34

Absolutely. And they went into I mean I can't remember which book, but I went. I was invited to go out to Azerbaijan and it was Christie's first sale in Azerbaijan, in Baku, and I went out because I was fascinated. And how do you break into a new market? And that's exactly how they do it.

Lisa Cooley 1:09:51

By, like having a big event, a big dinner. They had had an event, it was in the best hotel.

Georgina Adam 1:09:57

They invited all the local notables. You know, they had the daughter of the, of the ruler, who, who turns out to be an artist herself. Um, you know, they create, they create a buzz, they put themselves on the map, they sell off. They sold, I think, a picasso. I can't remember they had something for sale. They sell luxury goods, probably against it. That's what they did in China when Christie's had its first sale in China, a standalone sale. They had it certainly had a Picasso, but they also sold some jewelry. You know, they mix it up right and that's how they establish themselves and that's how they extend their markets.

Exploring art market misperceptions

Lisa Cooley 1:10:34

Yeah, and I think that the last thing that I we've done so well, we've covered so much ground. Thank you so much. I think one of the last things I want to talk about is auction price databases and things like Mei Moses index, Artprice, Artnet databases and things like that. Transparency, I think, is generally always good, and so, um, these databases of auction sales I think are, um, they really help you, like I um have, uh, some work by an artist who just had a show at Dia and but hasn't really been sold and we don't know how to set the price. So we can refer to these auction databases to at least get some guidance of what a good price should be to resell this work. However, on the other side, the databases are incomplete and don't you think that they like reinforce the idea of art as a commodity?

Georgina Adam 1:11:44

Yes, but I do think if you're spending a considerable, what is for most people a considerable sum of money, I mean you are entitled to know. You know you would be entitled to compare If you bought a car, if you bought a piece of real estate you are entitled to know what comparable work sold for, comparable assets sold for. I mean, I think there is a problem is with there are two problems with the auction prices, because those are the only prices that are that are official. But remember, if somebody buys a work of art to resell it to a client, uh, you're not really seeing the true price because he's going to put a commission on top, so for. So, for a start, those prices are not really accurate.

Georgina Adam 1:12:25

Secondly, Mei Moses, for example, although I think he has now corrected it a bit, but originally he only took works that had a track record of being sold more than once, twice, three times and four times. But that means that only works of art in a way it's backing the winners only, because it's only works that are resold a number of times that enter into his database, into his databank, so to speak. So that also skews the picture. A work that has not sold at all won't reappear, but it's still relevant. It's still relevant that this green Picasso didn't sell but it won't appear on the database, whereas a red Picasso did sell, because red is a more attractive color than green Very often.

Georgina Adam 1:13:15

So that's a second issue. Very often they don't take account of of B. I. bi's, of bought-ins, so works that have not sold at all have not found a buyer, so they disappear from those databases. Although now, I was speaking actually just recently to Michael Moses and they do now include the biIs. So there is some. But of course the auction houses themselves they're very cute as well because they will not when they put the provenance of a picture that they're selling or a work of art they're selling. If it has been BI'd elsewhere, they may well not include that in the provenance, which is sort of relevant. So they're not perfect, but they're the best we've got right, right.

Lisa Cooley 1:13:59

But I also just I think, if you're, if you're looking at some of these indexes, there's a lot of context that you need to take into account. For instance, this this one older artist that I've been looking at, um, one of her works, just um, finally came up to auction. And I was speaking with a curator just last night who told me that, um, that particular work um had, um, it achieved a really good price for her, um and for the track record, but that particular work, the museum had decided not to lend it into the show because, um, it had a lot of condition issues. So that's a thing that you can't necessarily see when you're looking through the work.

Georgina's favorite artwork

Lisa Cooley 1:14:40

And then I, separately, I had another conversation with a collector who we were talking about, a younger artist, and I had just seen a work come through in the previews for Miami and I sent it to him and I said you know, you may not like this, you may like this. And he said well, I have actually been looking at the artist, but, um, a work came up for auction in the last round and nobody cared, nobody bid on it, so I lost interest and walked away. So then I went and looked at that work and, um, it was just a bad work, they're not it's like not very rarely like comparing apples to apples.

Lisa Cooley 1:15:15

This is another case where you really need an art advisor. Yes, absolutely yes I, I like they're, they're sort of, and some I think, uh, auction price databases are where a lot of like the gallery work and the auction work and all these threads sort of come together yeah, yes, yes, no.

Georgina Adam 1:15:33

I think that you, that I think that you make a very valid point. You have to look at the condition as well, and that's not something that a database will tell you.

Lisa Cooley 1:15:42

Okay, my last question for you is to ask you is there artwork, d o you remember an experience where you saw an artwork and immediately fell in love with it? Or maybe like the first time you knew that you wanted to work in art?

Georgina Adam 1:16:02

I wouldn't have said that. I would say, however, that I've had two recent experiences here in London in which I went into exhibitions of two incredibly well-known artists who I both know and love, which is Van Gogh and Monet. Right, we know Van Gogh, we know his work. Monet, we know his work. I went to both because you know I always do, and each time I thought, oh my gosh, you know, I got another revelation of how wonderful these artists were, despite knowing their work. You know it wasn't anything new. And then you think, oh my gosh, yes, the Monet is incredible. It's all painted from a single place in London and it's his views of London, and he made about 100 canvases because he was trying to catch the smoky, foggy light over the Thames. And there's only three subjects there's the Houses of Parliament and there's a couple of bridges, and yet it's just an incredible exhibition.

Georgina Adam 1:17:06

So I would have said that I mean, there are other works of art that I absolutely love, but what I love was the fact that, an artist that I know, you can still get that shock when you go in, when you see a well put together, well curated exhibition Very big in the case of Van, gogh, not so big in the case of Monet, and it's not that I particularly even love the Impressionists, because I don't. I'm, you know, like everybody, bored Right, but it only goes to show that great artists, do you know? They transcend really everything. But I would like to say as well, and this I think when we discussed this before I had said it don't forget that there is a colossal amount of art available for free. Here in London, we're so lucky because our museums, the permanent collections, are free. That's not the case in new york, but you can go into galleries and see wonderful exhibitions for free all over town. Yes, all the time.

Lisa Cooley 1:18:11

Yes, there's so much art for free

Georgina Adam 1:18:16

And don't forget that you do not have to spend a lot, you do not have to spend hundreds of millions. You can go and see all these great exhibitions for free in art galleries. Okay, you have to put, you know, you have to put work in and you have to walk a lot, but, you know, wear comfortable shoes and off you go, um. So I think that, and the other thing that I would say is that it doesn't cost much to join a museum, to become just the sort of the foot soldier member, and then you can probably go to those museums as well for free. You're helping the museums and you're getting, for. I don't know how much they cost, but probably the entry level is $100 or something like that.

Lisa Cooley 1:18:54

Yeah, like the entry level membership is a hundred dollars or something like that usually. Yeah, like the entry-level membership that I think um MoMA was at that, and maybe a little bit more now, but that's that's it, but that's it.

Georgina Adam 1:19:04

and then you, you probably get invited to a lot of things free and you can go in there and you are supporting museums and I think we need particularly since the pandemic, it's been tough for museums and with a small amount of money you can really support museums and I think that's a really great thing that people tend to forget about the art world. It's not only about $100 million paintings.

Lisa Cooley 1:19:30

No, I don't think you can democratise that owning of art. But the experience of viewing a lot of art is already democratized. Um, it's at at museums, um, at galleries. Gallerists would love for you to come and see their work. I think frequently that's what artists want more than anything, is they want people to see what they've made and to experience it. It's a kind of like extended human connection. Um, and there is a movement in the United States to make galleries sorry, to make museums freer, to have more free days, more free weekends. I know Whitney just made a big announcement about that. I think the Dallas Museum of Art has a big chunk of time that they're free and hopefully that movement will continue to grow. But they almost all have a time where entry is free.

Lisa Cooley 1:20:26

So go see a lot of art, so take advantage of these things.

Georgina Adam 1:20:30

Yes, yeah, go and see them.

Lisa Cooley 1:20:32

You don't have to buy from our fairs or auctions, you can just enjoy it.

Georgina Adam 1:20:37

Yes, and probably you can wangle. If you haven't got a lot of money, you can probably wangle an invitation to get in or, you know to, to an art fair, because I do think art fairs are terribly expensive now they are very, very expensive.

Lisa Cooley 1:20:48

I think they're too expensive. You you can, if you are, have any kind of relationship with an art gallery. You can usually get a pass for an art fair.

Georgina Adam 1:20:56

They want you there of art that you can see in the same time. Yes, so all of that is. You know all. So never forget that that the art world is not only about the 100 million dollar paintings. They get all the publicity. There's a lot more going on there that you can access for free.

Lisa Cooley 1:21:14

I couldn't have said it better. Thank you so much, Georgina. It was a great pleasure. You have made my day.

Georgina Adam 1:21:20

You did a lot of work today. Okay, well, have a great day, you too.

Lisa Cooley 1:21:26

I hope to speak to you again soon. Yes, speak soon. Thank you, Georgina. That's our show. Thank you for listening, and check out our website at askokocom that's ask-oko. com. You'll find lots of resources to help you become an art expert. You can also support the show on Patreon. When you become a member, you'll get all sorts of special bonuses and you'll help the show grow. Join us next week when I'll talk to Marion Manecker, another incredible art journalist who currently writes the art newsletter for Puck. See you then.