Getting rich with art – The sense and nonsense of super-expensive art

Art as a speculative investment: Not for ordinary people

The previous article on the relationship between humans and art, “Getting rich with art – the option for the greedy” , already dealt with the lurking hope of the modern capitalist to be able to capitalize on pleasant things like art – “getting rich” is still one of the most important goals in life for many people in our society.

A brief look into the world of the richest people of today brought sobering realization, especially for those at the top: there is no rosy picture, but rather an unusually high proportion of divorces, scandals, and confrontations with the justice system.

For the most part, these are not jobs that are fulfilling through physical or mental work, but rather trade, and even more trade in whatever it may be, exploitation of natural resources for the benefit of individuals, design and operation of parasitic business models (business models that function at the expense of employees, customers, suppliers, tax-paying fellow citizens, animals, the environment, etc.); not desirable, we will come to the exceptions later.

And getting rich with the art that's currently storming the top of the markets is out of the question anyway; you generally only get into the world of the very wealthy who can afford these top prices if you were born into it. If not, you're not a conversation partner or a trading partner; only extraordinary sums of money open the doors, even if you simply want to bid at the next auction…

When money doesn't determine the meaning of life: The rich art rescuers

There are exceptions, which increase during the heyday of the social market economy and societal trends towards creative, self-reliant living, and which are decreasing again due to an increasingly unscrupulous and sprawling financial world (those who fear for their existence are unlikely to act creatively or responsibly).

In recent decades, the exceptions have mainly been people who have dealt with developments around computers, conceived new hardware, exceptional software or social media environments that open up other communication channels.

These exceptional entrepreneurs are consistently characterized by the fact that they did not pursue their profession or found their company to become rich, but because they had something to offer, wanted to advance a specific development.

As a rule, they don't have all the trouble with divorce, financial scandals and the justice system, but on the contrary, decide to do something meaningful with their money.

In the USA, many of these purpose-driven exceptions among the richest people have participated in the “ Giving Pledge” Bill Gates and Warren Buffett , which invites the richest Americans to dedicate the majority of their wealth to philanthropic causes in their legacy.

Currently, almost a third of US billionaires are among the non-greedy rich who have pledged substantial wealth to the “Giving Pledge”.

We encounter these people less often in the upper echelons of the art market, but when we do, it's not bad for any of us: they buy art to save an irreplaceable work of art by donating it to a public museum, thus protecting it from fellow rich people who would otherwise permanently remove it from public view.

Some of humanity's works of art have been "saved" : Gustav Klimt 's "Adele Bloch-Bauer I" was donated to the Neue Galerie New York by Ronald Lauder (son of Estée Lauder), Peter Paul Rubens ' "The Massacre of the Innocents" was donated to the Art Gallery of Ontario by Canadian businessman and art patron Kenneth Thomson, and Vincent van Gogh's "Crown with Cypresses" was donated to the Metropolitan Museum of Art by Walter Annenberg (American diplomat and art patron).

Unfortunately, these are exceptions in the world of super-expensive art.

To possess and never share: The insidious theft of humanity's art

The idea of ​​owning one of the world's most valuable (and often most beautiful) works of art attracts many of the 100 richest people to the upper echelons of the art market. But they're not primarily concerned with a good return on investment; with fortunes ranging from 12 to 80 billion, they're already more than wealthy enough. They want to own the artwork forever, to possess it, possess it, possess it, and above all, possess it without sharing it with others.

Of the 88 paintings that fetched prices exceeding 35 million US dollars, 42 have already been sold anonymously, meaning no ordinary person has seen them for a long time. Currently, 59 have been purchased anonymously; these 59 extraordinary works of art were buried in the realm of the wealthy between 1998 and 2015, and ordinary citizens can no longer enjoy them.

If the buyer is known, that is sometimes very good for these ordinary citizens; 5 of the remaining 29 world artworks were acquired directly from public art institutions, the 3 exceptional paintings donated to publicly accessible art institutions have already been mentioned.

The remaining 21 went to named and well-known people with wealth; sometimes this is even good for all of us when this person lends their art to publicly accessible museums around the world, sometimes not, when they hang it under heavy guard in their bedroom.

Sometimes it is not good at all, for the public and for the artwork; for the “Portrait of Dr. Gachet” , Vincent van Gogh, 1890, the buyer is said to have stipulated: “Put the picture in my coffin when I die” .

He died in 1996, and nothing has been known about the painting's whereabouts since then…

This means that around 80 of the world's most expensive paintings (90%) have been removed from public view through speculative, purely selfishly motivated art trading – incidentally, 38 via Sotheby's , 37 via Christie's , 3 via other auction houses , 2 via galleries and only 7 via normal private commission-free sales; it looks as if ordinary citizens can forget about the most expensive art in the world.

with Andy Warhol's "Colored Mona Lisa, " available as a poster thousands of times , and perhaps also with the umpteenth version of Edvard Munch's "The Scream" and Roy Lichtenstein's comic adaptations "Sleeping Girl , Woman With Flowered Hat , " "Ring , "Whole Room and Nobody in It," and "Ohhh & Alright," but these most expensive paintings in the world also include truly unique and beautiful works by Cézanne, Gauguin, Klimt , Manet , Miró, Modigliani, Mondrian, Monet , Picasso , Renoir, Rubens, Schiele , Titian, Turner, van Gogh and many other artists, whose special aura cannot possibly be captured by a poster…

One of the world's most expensive paintings , "Les Femmes d'Alger (Version 'O')" (The Women of Algiers Version 'O'), was sold on May 11, 2015, for a staggering $179.4 million to an anonymous art lover. Or perhaps not quite an art lover; by remaining anonymous, he destroys any chance that this painting will ever be seen together with the other 14 paintings and numerous drawings that belong to the "Les Femmes d'Alger" series.

This is not insignificant; the series is a unified whole, Picasso's enraged statement on the Algerian War of 1954–1962, in which Algeria broke away from French rule. The various versions of "Women of Algiers" also form a unity; they all carry the torch of resistance against male war madness, and each of the paintings and drawings in the series reveals a different nuance of this resistance.

This series should never have been separated; shortly after Picasso ended the series with the “Version 'O'” sold here in 1955, the passionate Picasso collectors Sally and Victor Ganz acquired the complete series from Picasso's gallery owner Daniel Henry Kahnweiler in 1956.

Sally and Victor Ganz lived with their paintings – their children would quite naturally ask their schoolmates where the Picassos hung in their homes – but despite their fascinating understanding of art, they were unfortunately more ordinary people than super-rich.

Since the couple could not actually afford the series, they sold versions A, B, D, E, F, G, I, J, L and N to Picasso's representative in New York, the Saidenberg Gallery , and kept versions C, H, K, M and O. Version C had to be sold after Victor Ganz's death in 1988, and the Ganz children had to part with the remaining four after Sally Ganz's death in 1997 in order to raise the inheritance taxes.

The series, which includes the world's most expensive painting, was thus split up because it was bought by overly passionate collectors with too little money. And now, the reunification of this series may be prevented forever because part of it was bought by an insufficiently passionate collector with too much money…

Lina Sahne

Passionate author with a keen interest in art

www.kunstplaza.de