Freakonomics Episode 1: Revisited

 “A Fascinating, Sexy, Intellectually Compelling, Unregulated Global Market”

And that it is. 

To typify the problem of art: the numbers and the language don’t add up. 

A notable part of the Alice Neel conversation, taking place between Alex Dubner (host) and David Zwirner:

Dubner: So What would you say a median Alice Neel painting would have sold for, let’s say, three years ago and maybe three years from now? 

Zwirner: I’m gonna take a raincheck on that question, that’s too speculative for me.

Dubner: You want to give me a rough percentage?

Zwirner: I can tell you where we’re coming from, I don’t want to tell you where we’re going. Paintings by Neel were sold between $500,000 and $1 million a few years ago. And now, we’re selling pictures between $2 and $3 million. So there’s been a clear upward trend. But again, a very logical trend, very defendable trend.

The issue I take is with the operative word median. When asked to typify a median work by Neel and it’s going price, Zwirner is able to quote numbers in regards to trended, typified sales of the past and present (how one would constitute any median quantity or quality) and yet he is unable to answer the question. He avoids the question. In any array of numbers, particularly those found in finance, an imaginary number would never appear, unless doing some astronomic calculus (literally of NASA proportions). However, with such solid numbers on the table, in his own words, “very defendable,” the conversation is cut short because Zwirner has run out of room of his own making. As a gallerist of “sterling reputation” he is unable to answer the question because to do so would be to run into the speculative nature of the art world. And yet, his job is to speculate as a means of protection. 

See his remarks in regards to the secondary market, which deals with the auction house (take Sotheby’s for example):

Zwirner: We are selling art, of course, in the primary and secondary market, but you also have to think of us as talent agents.

And later: 

Dubner: So I recently heard of a gallery for an up-and-coming artist in New York who’s already changed galleries once in the last few months because she went from warm to very hot very fats. And the new gallery said they would sell a piece by this artist if the buyer were to first agree to buy another piece by that artist and get it placed in a good museum as a donation. 

Zwirner: That’s done a lot. I personally don’t like it and we don’t do it. It’s our job as gallerists to get artworks of our artists into institutions. That’s always difficult; institutions very often don’t have the funds, so you need private money to help purchase the work. And a quicker way to do it is, if you have a long waiting list and you have a high-demand artist, to say to somebody who really wants one, essentially you have to buy two, one is yours and the other one a gift. I always am a little wary of that because it creates a strange dynamic around the work you sold free and clear to the collector. It’s not something that we like to do. 

How to get to the institution and why? And why would I mention a gallerist, such as David Zwirner, as a protector of sorts? Well as Tom Sachs will note and Tschabalala Self implies, the gallerist is the front line between the artist and the museum. 

Oh, just a quick aside: Who cares about museums? Are artists that concerned with posterity? Yes. And also Tschabalala Self notes the importance of her works making it to the museum space below: 

(Self: [My work is] now part of the community of other works that are meant to reflect a certain kind of history. If the work goes into a museum, it’s there, and it’s not an issue of me wondering will this work be resold? Will this artwork be moved to some other part of the world? Will I never see it again? It can be in some storage unit in the basement of a museum, but at least you know where it is.)

The Alice Neel example will further elucidate the dynamic between galleries and museums, but first this point. The issue of the private buyer, the billionaire for example, is the buying power that affords this collector to take any work to auction. And as Self later notes, 'no artist' wants their work to go to auction. For a litany of reasons it’s scary and as episode two notes, the markups are garish and all money pocketed goes to the seller and auction house, not the artist. 

But as our gallerist has noted, “we sell to the primary and secondary market,” the primary market being galleries and buyers, while the secondary market being the auction house– Sotheby’s. So presumably, your protector-gallerist must assume the role of the speculator to “grow a career” and keep themselves and their artists competitive. 

Hmm.

Now what is the role of the speculator and what is that exactly? 

Definition: Speculation involves trading a financial instrument involving high risk, in expectation of significant returns. The motive is to take maximum advantage from fluctuations in the market. Description: Speculators are prevalent in the markets where price movements of securities are highly frequent and volatile.

This episode is one long cluster fuck, but as I pull in Steyerl, Durham, Mouffe and potentially Raunig, the artists out there might get a belly laugh out of it tears aside. 

Thank you and stay tuned into the series. Episode three comes out this week. 

Thoughts on Episode Two coming. 

Tschuss.