Artful Dodgers: Fraud & Foolishness in the Art Market

By Bernard Ewell

Who really knows how the art market works?

Here, for the first time, art detective, veteran appraiser and international art expert Bernard Ewell opens the door and gives you a tour of the worlds most unregulated market, one unlike any other which does not even follow the rules of modern economics. There are actually two art markets, with one operating as if it was the other, while both depend on The Six Myths That Drive The Art Market. Perception is everything and pervasive secrecy is the unbreakable rule.

The players, the con men and the larger than life personalities are better than the characters created by novelists. Youll meet the crooks and their victims and realize that both are actually our creation. We all participate in the fraud and foolishness that props up an art market that buys and sells civilizations greatest treasures and most horrible junk.

Be prepared to put aside everything you think you know and have heard from art dealers and read in the press. The international auction houses, the big name galleries, superstar artists, and the museums are haunted by fakes and forgeries which collectors usually buy for all the wrong reasons.

Arrogance or ignorance? Its both. The art market is where the intent to deceive meets contributory negligence and willful ignorance and most of those who have been defrauded dont even know it. This book will entertain you as it gives you the tools to more fully enjoy and safely buy art.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Abbott Press
• Release date: May 2, 2014
• ISBN: 9781458215376

Bernard Ewell

Senior Appraiser of Fine Arts with over 42 years of experience, Bernard Ewell is known as the international Salvador Dali expert, art columnist and blogger, lecturer and professor of Valuation Law. A famous art detective, he has been expert witness for law enforcement and regulatory agencies in federal and state courts.

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Copyright © 2014 Bernard Ewell.

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ISBN: 978-1-4582-1536-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4582-1537-6 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014906732

Abbott Press rev. date: 5/1/2014

Contents

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Introduction

Chapter 1:   What People Don’t Know About the Art Market

Albert and Sylvia, a Much-Too-Typical Story

What Gives Art Value?

In Art, Perception Is Everything

Why Do People Collect Art?

The Two Art Markets

The Fine-Art Market

The Decorative-Art Market

More on the Two Markets

The False Market

Chapter 2:   The Six Myths That Drive the Art Market

The Role of the Auctions

The Role of the Dealers

Myth No. 1. Art Has Value

Myth No. 2. Art Values Always Go Up

Myth No. 3. Art Is a Good Investment

You Cannot Invest in the Work of a Living Artist

Myth No. 4. You Can Always Resell Your Art and Get Out Of It At Least What It Cost

Myth No. 5. The Bigger the Name of the Artist, the Higher the Value

Myth No. 6. When an Artist Dies, the Value of His Art Goes Up

Toppling Markets Demonstrate Myths

Chapter 3:   Art Fraud: The Third Largest Crime

The Art of the Con

Have I Got a Deal for You

Documen(con)tation—False Provenance

Elastic Words

The Good Old Tax Shelter

Cyber Cons and Fraud

Dealing from the Bottom of the Deck

Knowledgeable … or Not

Games Dealers Play

Those Who Know More Win More

The Dealers and the Con(vent)

Another Case of Which Hat Is He Wearing?

Selling Art on Float

Float or Conversion?

Strengthened Attributions

A Cautionary Tale for Travelers

Dealers Screwing Dealers

A Pillar of the Market Topples

One More Time

A Hill of a Situation

Chapter 4:   And the Games Continue

Marketing Hooks

The Celebrity Factor

The Religion Factor

The History Factor

The Certificate of Authenticity

Advertising Art as an Investment

Some Youthful Revelations

Opening the Eyes of a Twelve-Year-Old

Opening the Eyes of a Fourteen-Year-Old

Art Theft, Briefly

Drug Lords Laundering Money with Art

Chapter 5:   Confessions of an Art Detective

Becoming an Art Detective

The Scientific Method Applied to Art

Doing It

Seeking Assistance

Scientific Tools

The Devil Is Always in the Details

Magnification Metriculation

Art Dealers Just Don’t Look at Art

Grandmother’s Surprising Paintings

Leaps of Faith, Not Scientific Method

Finding Flawed Images

Chapter 6:   Connoisseurship—It’s Critical, and Not So Hard

Connoisseurship Is the First Line of Defense against Art Fraud

Learning to Look

Total Looking

What’s Wrong with Art Historians?

Getting Started—For a Lifetime of Rewards

Expanding Our Connoisseurship

Should you trust your own taste?

The Vision of Artists

Preparatory Drawings

The King of Tory Island

Doing Your Homework

Chapter 7:   Is It Is, or Is It Ain’t? Authenticity

Are Fakes Much of a Problem?

The All-Important Matter of Authenticity

How Do You Know It Isn’t Right?

What’s Wrong with This Picture?

It’s the Chimney, Stupid!

Is It a Goofy Dufy?

Too Many Pictures

Where Do Appraisers Fit In?

Appraiser or Schlockbuster?

Confronted by the Dealsters

With the Help of Others

And the Con Goes On

An Appraisal Guarantees Authenticity, Doesn’t It?

Who Needs an Authenticator?

Do Authenticators Face Legal Liability?

Is an Appraiser an Appropriate Authenticator?

Where Can an Appraiser or Collector Turn for Help with Authenticity?

What Are the Roles of Catalogues and Provenance?

How Do I Use an Appraiser before and after Purchase to Be Sure an Object Is Authentic?

What Conclusions Can We Draw?

Official Authentication Committees

The Underground Army of Terra-Cotta Fakes

Originality as It Relates to Bronzes

Dalí Sculpture Scams

Conclusions

Chapter 8:   Art Law, Briefly

Legal Concepts Then and Now

Warranties and Guarantees

Express Warranties

The F Word

Implied Warranties

Warranties and Art Dealers

Statutes of Limitations

Laws Addressing the Sale of Art as an Investment:

The Consumer Protection Act

Copyright

The Visual Artists Rights Act, 1990 (VARA)

The Definition of Art

The Concept of Droit Moral

Charitable Donations

IRS Art Advisory Panel

False High Values for Donation

Other Tax Shelter Considerations

Los Remedios de la Gente

Alternative Dispute-Resolution

Some Suggestions

Some Other Strategies

Finally

Chapter 9:   What’s Wrong with Appraisers?

It’s Probably Too Late for Appraisers

Doing It Yourself—Badly

Art Fraud and Appraisal Fraud

Some Useful Questions

Safeguarding Yourself

The 800-Pound Forensic Appraiser

Appraisers and Appraisal Societies: An Ongoing Disappointment

Significant Consequences

Negligence, Willful Negligence, or Appraisal Fraud?

Appraisal Fraud Close to Home

More Appraisal Fraud

Devoid of Details—Laundry Lists

The Whole Nine Yards

More Disappointments

Making His Own Rules

USPAP—What an Appraisal Should Be

The Botero Bounces

The Neighborhood Appraiser

Online Appraisals

Hope outside the Professional Societies

The New Bible

Keeping Up-to-Date and Connected

Chapter 10:   The Dalí Dilemma: Where It All Comes Together

Introduction to the Salvador Dalí Market

The Perfect Storm

The Two Markets Yet Again

The Six Myths Unquestionably Do Drive the Dalí Print Market

Two Scatalogs and a Price List

The Price Guide and Another Scatalog

The Scope of the Problem

So Many Experts—So Few Experts

What Is the Extent of the Illegitimate Market?

And the Beat Goes On …

Games Dealers Play (Reprised)

By the Numbers

Celeste’s Story

Signatures, Good and (Usually) Bad

Just One Image of over 1,700

Such an Opportunity!

Sound Familiar?

The Incomparable Salvador Dalí—A Difficult Landscape to Navigate

Did Salvador Dalí Use drugs?

The Land of Onirus

Unique Opportunities

Final Thoughts

Addendum A   Facts for Consumers from the Federal Trade Commission

Addendum B   The Personal Property Appraiser Minimum Qualification Criteria

Addendum C   Components of A Professional Appraisal Report

Bibliography

Acknowledgments

Letter to My Readers

About the Author

If you don’t take pocket-hankechers and watches, said the Dodger, reducing his conversation to the level of Oliver’s capacity, some other cove will; so that the coves that lose ’em will be all the worse, and you’ll be all the worse too, and nobody half a ha’p’orth the better, except the chaps wot gets them—and you’ve just as good a right to them as they have.

—Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist

Introduction

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The middle-aged couple sits on the couch in their living room looking at the appraiser with shock, trying to understand what they have just been told.

The pretty airline hostess yelps and whirls around, her hands pressed to her temples, then stands staring out the hotel window at the city below while she works to control her emotions.

The dentist gets up to close his office door and returns to his desk to hear again what he doesn’t want to believe.

With a four-second delay due to the distance and satellite lag, the civilian worker at the end of the Aleutian Islands chain repeats the words that destroy his plans for early retirement.

Staring numbly at the carpet, the secretary struggles to comprehend how all of the long hours and hard work over several years to save her family following her divorce could suddenly bring her only to face ruin.

These people all have something in common. They are victims of art fraud. Their experiences, with some variation, are repeated every day in all parts of the country, and when we try to understand who they are, we must accept that they are us.

While no tally has ever been—or probably could be—taken of the number of victims of this almost invisible crime wave, there is little doubt that in the United States, if known, the numbers would be staggering. There has developed a crisis of confidence in the last thirty-five years that has taken literally hundreds of thousands of buyers out of the market. As an FBI special agent pointed out in 1987, I assure you, Bernard, that the third largest crime in the country in dollar value, after sales of illegal drugs and firearms, is art fraud. Someone should tell the public.

Victims of the widespread cons that have seriously tainted the art market have generally been unsophisticated first-time buyers. Lee Catterall of the Honolulu Star Bulletin, as quoted in a 1991 article in The Journal of Art, referred to those individuals as ordinary people who bought not necessarily for the love of art but rather for investment to support their children’s education or to bolster their retirement. The result, in my experience, is that when they discover their investment is worthless, they adamantly declare, I’ll never buy art again!

The greatest art scam of all time—the production and sale of fake Salvador Dalí, Joan Miró, and Marc Chagall prints—is only symptomatic of the parasitic problems that pervade, and are destroying, many strata of the host on which they feed.

Unaccountably, there has been no point at which legitimate art dealers have said, "Stop! We must clean up our nest and salvage whatever credibility remains while we educate potential buyers to be smart consumers. We must regain, then retain their confidence. One dealer even had printed on the back of his business card, People Get the Art They Deserve."

Victim demographics cut across socioeconomic lines and include a widely diverse group of people. Statistics, however, are abstract and impersonal. Cheated buyers are people of many different types, but they do have several characteristics in common:

1. Enough greed to propel them into a market about which they know very little and in which they must rely totally upon the promises and representations of others.

2. Sufficient available capital to invest from $1,000 to $60,000 in the expectation that they will eventually realize a substantial return.

3. An interest in art, but naiveté about the workings of the art market.

4. A basic belief that no matter what they have been told all of their life, somewhere there is a free lunch.

Added to this formula is the desire to believe several other things: that people are good, con men prey only on the weak and old, and somehow it always happens to someone else.

In a New Yorker cartoon, the jury foreman stands facing the judge and reads from a slip of paper in his hand, Your Honor, we the jury blame the victim. This reflects the experience of investigators who so often find that those who are cheated by con men wanted to believe they were making a wise investment when they bought art. Or, as a veteran of the street once told me,

There are no victims. Cop-talk. It’s a thing we’d say. Guy walks down a dark street alone in the wrong neighborhood and gets mugged. Some shmo cries a river ’cause he lost a hundred thousand bucks hoping some con artist could make a car run on potato chips. People get what they’re asking for. There are no victims.

Isn’t it heartless and unfair, however, to ignore the anguished cries of fraud victims and simply pass them off as not only ignorant but also greedy and therefore deserving of their fate? I believe so and have therefore spent over four decades trying to educate art buyers and help collectors develop their connoisseurship. In my experience with art fraud victims, I have found that very few of them were repeat mooches or terminally gullible. Most just fell for a scheme that was constructed in such a manner as to make sense to them and promised rewards far beyond any perceived risk. Such people do deserve protection and help. Law enforcement agencies can do little more that focus attention and inadequate resources on the frauds de jour in hope of alerting consumers.

Fraud is a crime that hurts people. It violates their dignity and robs them of their money and options. While it will never disappear from our society, those who get rich at the often painful expense of others should be exposed. In some small way it is hoped that this book will raise public consciousness and play a part in making it more difficult for purveyors of fraud and avarice to victimize art buyers.

Chapter One

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What People Don’t Know About the Art Market

I have been telling nice people over four decades that artwork they own and are proud of is fake, and their investment is worthless. Fortunately, they always believe me, probably because I then explain all of the clues that led me to that certainty. Sometimes they have lost a great deal of money that they were counting on to educate their children or cushion their retirements.

If there were a major domestic and international market trading in securities, investments, or frequently extremely valuable personal property, wouldn’t you expect it would either be regulated by a government agency, such as the Securities and Exchange Commission, or at the least, its repetitive unethical and often criminal activities would be the target of a congressional investigation? Somehow, the art market has avoided scrutiny. There are some professional associations of artists, dealers, and appraisers, but there is nothing that can reasonably be called regulation. Many thousands of people—possibly including you—will become victims of the art market this year.

Albert and Sylvia, a Much-Too-Typical Story

When I approached the sprawling, one-story ranch house in an affluent neighborhood, I knew little other than that that I was to look at a collection of about thirty-five pieces of artwork in a walk-through consultation and appraise those that the owners and I agreed justified the process. We were all in for a surprise.

The door was opened by a pleasant couple in their early forties—he a dentist and she a schoolteacher. Albert led the way as we toured the house and the art collection, and he and Sylvia kept up a running commentary about each piece and the artists. Mostly they had expensively framed color prints attributed to some of the best-known artists of the twentieth century, plus a few watercolors and four oils.

Albert told me, Sylvia got us started when she showed me an article in a magazine that said collecting limited-edition prints by the great artists was a good way to invest without having to pay the huge prices of original paintings by the same artists. It made sense, because after all, we could add to our collection at any time, and it would just build and build, and the values would keep going up.

Sylvia stepped in and said that they had talked about how much they could budget for their new investments and how they had found an art gallery in a nearby upscale shopping area that sold just what the article had talked about—limited-edition prints by the great artists, especially Joan Miró, Salvador Dalí, and Marc Chagall. These were names they didn’t know when they started, but the dealer was really good about educating them and showing them how the values had continually risen.

They also read some exhibition catalogues and books about the artists so they could better understand why Marc Chagall had a blue cow floating over a church and Salvador Dalí had a picture of a bowl of fruit that, when you looked at it a second time, magically turned into a marble portrait bust. That, they thought, was especially cool, and it was one of their purchases that they’d had framed so they could show visitors to their home the neat trick. That’s also why they framed and hung right over the fireplace Dalí’s picture of Abraham Lincoln that was also the backside of a nude, who, they had learned, was the artist’s wife and muse, Gala Dalí.

The more they bought, the more they learned and the more fun they had. After a while, they had a lot to tell friends, and they became known in their group as knowledgeable about art. It was even something they found they could do on vacation. When they went to San Francisco for a dental convention, they visited several galleries near Ghirardelli Square and Fisherman’s Wharf.

They bought an Erté silkscreen of a statuesque woman in a killer gown and a bronze by Erté of an almost identical figure, but the dress was a different color. They had also purchased a big, beautiful book with pictures of not only their artwork, but also pictures of the lavish birthday party the gallery’s New York branch had given the artist when he turned ninety. He’s actually the Baron Romaine de Tirtoff, you know. Albert went on to tell me a lot more about him. They seemed very proud to be able to speak with such knowledge and authority with a well-known art appraiser. It would be fun to tell their friends about my visit and, in a few weeks, exhibit my appraisal report. I had shown them a sample report, and they were excited that they’d have so much information about their collection and the official guarantee of its value.

There was also a nice California coastal scene in oil that they had bought on a trip to Carmel, an Andy Warhol print they purchased on Madison Avenue when they visited their eldest son, a freshman at Columbia University; several landscapes of Texas bluebonnets in the spring; and a watercolor of a bronco rider defying gravity and good sense.

I’ve always especially enjoyed clients who knew about their art and were involved with it daily. Albert and Sylvia were such collectors, but they were also something else. They were the victims of the greatest art fraud of all time, and it was going to be my job to encourage them to enjoy their collection but not expect it to ever be worth what they had paid, let alone to appreciate in value.

This was something I was called upon to do frequently, but in this assignment, I also faced parents who intended to sell their artwork at the right time to fund their kids’ college educations. Instead of saving the money, they’d invested in what they were assured over and over were safe and very good investments that outstripped the stock market appreciation every year.

My appraisal report eventually demonstrated that most of the art pieces they had bought with such excitement and expectations were either fakes with forged signatures (especially the Chagalls, Mirós, and Dalís) or were worth only a fraction of what Albert and Sylvia had paid for them—sad, but very, very common.

They, like almost everyone else who buys art, were purchasing in a market they knew very little about. They were about to learn a lot—including that the art dealers they had trusted were merrily leading them along while taking what amounted to a great deal of money, none of which the buyers would ever recoup.

What Gives Art Value?

The simple and best-known answer to this question, of course, is that art has value if someone is willing to pay for it. That is true of everything that changes hands commercially. Many commodities have value because they are needed by someone. When a market is created, it becomes subject to all of the basic laws of economics, and more than anything else, the level of value—the prices paid—is established by the law of supply and demand. When a cavewoman discovered that her neighbor had three men in her family group while she had no one to hunt or protect her own family, she found something the neighbor would want in exchange for one of the men. The man was needed and so became a commodity, and a market was temporarily established.

Not all commodities have markets that are established through need. Many are established through desire. It can be argued that no one really needs fresh-cut flowers; yet flower markets thrive in almost every country that has an economy above the lowest subsistence level.

In general, the arts fall into the desire-driven sector of the economy, even though many strong and compelling arguments have been made that art is necessary to the living of a fulfilled life. Most of us find this is true but are not surprised when art is the first sector of our culture to come under the knife at the time of economic downturn and budget cuts. Nowhere has this been more apparent—or tragic—than in American education. Studio classes, art history and appreciation, and creativity training are largely a memory in most schools. The disturbing effects of this cultural shift are, I believe, apparent throughout society.

The art market will be addressed in this book primarily in terms of the visual arts—painting, sculpture, printmaking, etc. This is a market that is, as will be seen, every bit as affected by the laws of economics as any other, but to a far greater degree is driven and ruled by many layers of perception. When necessity does not drive desire for a commodity, then it is up to the sellers to create and manipulate the perceptions that will support and legitimize the desire and the purchase. That, more than any other consideration, is what gives art monetary value and supports the jewelry, couture, and luxury-car markets.

Everyone knows that there is a massive quantity of diamonds in the world; the market perception of scarcity was totally the creation of the DeBeers Consortium. Even so, we still parrot the sales line that a diamond is forever and feel guilt if we cannot mark the most special occasions with a bit of sparkle.

On a 60 Minutes segment broadcast on April Fool’s Day in 2012, Morley Safer visited a major art fair in Miami to reconsider a topic he had reported on several years earlier: why contemporary art has value. He noted that there was a terrific and apparently inexplicable boom in the prices being asked and paid for contemporary art—or, as he said, art about stuff and stuff about art. None of it looked like what people traditionally expect art to look like but did qualify as conceptual art. He pointed out that as the stock market fizzles, the art market sizzles. After talking to curators, dealers, and collectors, he seemed no closer to an explanation for the astronomical prices. Clearly, the only answer is perception, which is the result of branding—the branding of artists, dealers, museums, and even collectors.

This perception is transferable too. If you have several pieces of artwork by a currently hot artist and a guest in your home does not instantly recognize them—and the taste, knowledge, and wealth you know they represent—you can educate them so that they go away and tell others about your impressive art collection. The phenomenon of conspicuous consumption has been with us since the dawn of civilization. That’s what palaces, gold-plated armor, diamond necklaces, and expensive cars are all about. It was not until the publication in 1899 of Thorstein Veblan’s The Theory of the Leisure Class that it was given a name, however. Nonetheless, ownership of art has always been a symbol of wealth and suggested taste, sophistication, and superior values.

Of course, some art owners don’t quite understand this and are forever prisoners of who they have always been. A client of mine in Scottsdale, Arizona, comes to mind. He made a fortune as the king of marketing-your-product-and-yourself seminars. He actually made more money on the videotapes and books sold than on admission. He took me on a tour of his fantastic mansion (with the gold Mercedes in the garage) and pointed out his extensive collection of artwork. I might have been impressed with his suggested taste, sophistication, and superior values if he had not told me what he had paid for every object.

In Art, Perception Is Everything

Since it is almost impossible to quantify art or evaluate it using the empirical tools with which we measure so many other things, all reasonable opinions about a work of art are equally valid. While I might bring more knowledge and experience to the process of evaluating the technical success of a piece in an exhibition than might another viewer, in the end, to like or not to like is a totally individual decision. That’s why the Romans declared, "De gustibus non disputandem est." Tastes (and lusts) are not disputable. Tastes are based on many things: experience, knowledge and certainly a whole bundle of perceptions.

There are always discussions and arguments about what is art and what is not. People walk into a gallery or exhibition, take a look at the display, and walk back out saying, If that’s art, I’ll eat my hat. Another viewer will be intrigued or moved by the same works and have no trouble thinking of them as art.

Is it valid to glue tea cups and saucers to a canvas and call it art? Is it valid to immerse a crucifix in a beaker of urine and call it art? Is it valid to project a video of a chicken on a dusty village street being hit by a truck and call it art? How about a stuffed tiger shark that costs twelve million dollars? Is it even valid to take a photograph of a flower, print it out from a computer, touch it up with acrylic paint and call it art? Is it valid to answer all of these questions with a paraphrase of the tired old Shakespearian phrase: art is in the eye of the beholder?

My own personal and professional answer is that in art, anything is valid—except misrepresentation. In other words, I don’t care what artists identify as their work of art, as long as they are honest about what their intention was, what they have done to create it, and what they believe its value (monetary or otherwise) is.

This is just an extension of my motto:

If a person has integrity, nothing else matters.

If a person does not have integrity, nothing else matters.

When I walk into the Whitney Museum Biennial exhibition in New York, I know that I’m in for a couple of hours of challenge, and I will not be prepared for much of it because I have not done the work required to be up to speed with the latest conceptual art. Some of the concepts I won’t get because my knowledge, experience, and perceptions have not evolved to that level yet. In many areas, they never will, because I am not interested enough to make the effort. On the other hand, if the curators, working in conjunction with the artists, have done a good job of introducing the concepts and explaining how the artist has developed them and what his intentions are, then I’m available to make the effort to catch up. I’ll work on developing my ability to perceive all the information the artist, through his work, can give me.

In a market so dependent upon perceptions, it is especially important for a consumer to develop a level of knowledge and understanding that permits purchases to be made through a balance of emotional response to an artwork and the ability to evaluate the value being received for the money paid. Kirsten Ward, a physician and psychologist, notes that art has the greatest impact when it makes the thinking part of the brain talk to the feeling part.

When one enters the art market at any level without this degree of sophistication, one becomes fair game for the market’s agents, who stand ready to create the purchase-motivating perceptions the client lacks. That is, giving an art viewer all the reasons why this subjective artwork must become a part of that person’s future. It’s salesmanship. We expect it in the automobile showroom, but in the art market it seems that few people listen to gallery salesmanship as such. In effect, they use the statements and representations offered as blocks in building the edifice of reason that will justify the purchase. The great danger, however, is that the salesmanship may actually be delivered by a con man or woman and the collector will not find out for years, if ever, that the art purchased does not carry the value and monetary-appreciation expectations promised at the point of sale.

Another way to look at it is as the increasingly pervasive process of branding. The role of the art dealer has evolved over the past 150 years and, in large measure, whether selling in the primary (first time) market or the secondary (resale) market, the dealer’s role is to assure a prospective buyer that an artwork is highly desirable as an acquisition. In both markets, the price of art is governed by supply, demand, and marketing. Branding is a critical technique in marketing.

In his fascinating book about the economics of the contemporary art market titled The $12 Million Stuffed Shark, Don Thompson observes, In the world of contemporary art, branding can substitute for critical judgment … He is writing here about the upper levels of the international market, where people with tremendous amounts of money buy art at astronomical prices that actually represent only a few days’ income to them.

He further says,

Since art collectors cannot always fathom the value code, they understandably do not trust their own judgment. Their recourse is often to rely on branding. Collectors patronize branded dealers, bid at branded auction houses, visit branded art fairs, and seek out branded artists. You are nobody in contemporary art until you have been branded.

As we shall see, this is pervasive at all levels of the art market all the way down (and perhaps especially) through the various levels of decorative art. People frequently buy because they have been provided with the perceptions that support their decision and those perceptions are based on the recognition of brands that assure the purchase is a desirable decision.

This topic has been well covered by several recent books, and even after reading them, talking to many of the players, and observing the development of the high-end contemporary art market for decades, I am as clueless as ever as to what really explains the unbelievable phenomena we frequently see reported with great fanfare. When asked about the ever-escalating prices paid for art created not by Andy Warhol, Damien Hirst, and Jeff Koons, but by cadres of artisans in their studios, my practice is to remind people that 75 percent of the word contemporary is temporary. The remaining 25 percent is con.

In an interview, Damien Hirst, whose works command prices of many millions of dollars, revealed that his artworks were produced by teams of assistants. Each painting, for instance, is done by several people so no one is ever responsible for an entire work of art. Hirst adds a few brushstrokes and signs the work, a technique developed by Peter Max. He also said that he cannot paint. A buyer would get an inferior work if it were painted by him. Buyers of Damien Hirsts are apparently driven not by the desire to have an original creation from the hand of a genius, but are content with the perception that what they buy has great value.

Speaking on condition of anonymity to Will Gompertz, the BBC’s arts editor, on October 27, 2012, one curator said, Money and celebrity [have] cast a shadow over the art world which is prohibiting ideas and debate from coming to the fore. He added that the current system of collectors, galleries, museums, and art dealers (and auction houses) has colluded to maintain the value and status of artists and has quashed debate on art.

Dave Hickey, a curator, professor, and author known for a passionate defense of beauty, says the contemporary art market is calcified, self-reverential, and a hostage to rich collectors who have no respect for what they are doing. They’re in the hedge-fund business, so they drop their windfall profits into art. It’s just not serious.

Why Do People Collect Art?

Art historian Sir Kenneth Clark once answered the question by saying that it was like asking why we fall in love, the reasons are as various.

In Great Collectors of Our Time: Art Collecting Since 1945, James Stourton quotes collector Pierre Rosenberg as saying both that collectors will surely go to heaven and also describes collecting as an unpunished vice.

Stourton also points out that there are as many types of collectors as there are collections: Some are happy, some are tormented, some buy very little, while others can’t help themselves. I have a client in Florida who falls into this last class. He keeps buying Salvador Dalí prints and is not all that concerned about whether they are authentic or not. Certainly some portion of his collection of more than a thousand prints comprises fakes with forged signatures.

Peter Ludwig, after whom at least eleven museums and institutions are named, says, Art collectors are no saints. Their motives are noble as well as base, greed, and vanity to show off and achieve immortality, but also to support creative genius. Thomas Hoving, director emeritus of the Metropolitan Museum (now deceased), said, Collecting is chase and capture.

Sigmund Freud hypothesized that collecting is a redirection of surplus libido onto an inanimate object. Dr. Shirley M. Mueller, a collector and psychiatrist, rejects Freud’s untested theory and writes extensively about the relationship between collecting and several functions in the human brain. In Fine Art Connoisseur magazine (January/February, 2010), she states that a search for rare objects is rooted in our neurobiology and explains how both the thinking parts of the brain (the cerebral hemispheres) and a sort of pleasure center named the nucleus accumbens (which provides an expectation of reward) work together. At the same time, the amygdala in the midbrain is providing caution. In other words, the various parts of the brain are talking to each other and saying, This appears to be something of value that others have not spotted. Wow, perhaps I’m about to strike it rich … and What if it turns out not to be what I think it is?

The psychology of collecting, Dr. Mueller’s work notwithstanding, is a complex and not-fully-understood phenomenon. It’s also sometimes quite entertaining.

Many people buy art just because they like something. For instance, one who purchases a printed copy of The Poker Game, an 1894 painting of dogs playing poker, painted by Cassius Marcellus Coolidge (American 1844–1934) probably does so for the amusement the image provides. The original was commissioned by a cigar distributor and reproduced as posters, calendars, and prints by Brown & Bigelow. It is still well-known and popular, but does not hold an important place in the history of art and even an old or original copy does not have significant collectability potential. Nonetheless, it rewards the collector with its ironic image and internal messages.

While I do not consider myself a collector, I do own a great deal of art for two reasons: because an artwork speaks to me and I want it in my life, or because I want to support an artist’s efforts. Other than the many artist gifts, most of the pieces in my