Collecting Art

Here are some tips/advice and thoughts about collecting art.

After you have read Michael Findlay's book, you would have gathered that 3 things drive the art collector. The true love / essential value of art, the social aspect of art and the investment value of art.

So decide which drives you.

If you are into investment, you would want some returns in your lifetime so you should focus on art/artists that are readily trading in the secondary market like the auction houses/ secondary dealers. Make sure the auction houses or these galleries are respectable, have a wealthy cilentele, have an international presence/view and are able to drive up demand. Because art is not a necessity as such (unless you play the Sims) and there is no true yardstick to gauge good art, just supply and demand. So these guys are great at that, talking up and pushing prices up as they earn on a percentage.

If you are into the social aspect, it would be meeting the artists, talking to curators, discussing with galleries and museum people, this to me is interesting as it helps shape your understanding of art and is a good intellectual duel (and you don't need to actually buy art, but be careful of the galleries labelling you as a freeloader, especially if you are those exhibition opening cheese and wine tasters). The extroverts would just love the company of people. While some use it to propel them up the social ladder, then you should buy expensive art (doesn't matter what you collect) from big galleries, park your money/priority bank with the financial companies/banks who are very involved in the art scene, like UOB, UBS, Prudential then you'll be invited to the art exhibitions and launches and hopefully you appear in the Singapore Tatler or equivalent.

The most important category would be for the true love of art. And it's this section that I would focus on that I hopefully will be able to value add.

It's very hard to advise one on how to start an collection, it's often that one stumbles upon it for various reasons. Don't think you wake up one day feeling enlighted and decide your calling is to collect art. But if you are starting off and doing your due diligence, remember to start off very very slowly. That's what we did and only bought a piece a year for the first few years till the understanding and confidence matured and funding too. So thankfully we have no buyer's remorse, although we have a piece that didn't quite fit the collection after streamlining the collection criteria, but would be easy to liquidate to fund more purchases.

So remember to have a collection criteria, as it helps you narrow down what you buy. If not you will end up buying everything and have buyer fatigue. You will run out of space and have to store art, but this shouldn't really be a consideration as most collectors run out of space and have to store art. So don't forget to look into the cost of storing and maintaining the art. And buying randomly will lead you to have a chaotic collection, if you can deal with that. But sometimes it isn't a problem, cause if somebody wants to borrow your pieces for an exhibition you can always select certain pieces from your vast collection and still result in a meaningful exhibition.

Another debated point which I have read many proponents and opponent's arguments is whether to collect wide or deep? Meaning should you collect a few artists within the criteria or collect many artists (One of everything mentality)? You have to decide. Some people love to follow the career of a young artist, others want to own every abstract artist (if their criteria is abstract art). Our solution after much deliberation is to buy within the criteria, buy brilliant works and if the same artist produces such work, just buy more.

Another fun thing to do besides buying the art is writing up on the art you buy as a form of provenance. Also keep all receipts, exhibition material, newspaper articles, magazine or books that your art might end up in. This is because provenance is important if you intend to sell or donate the art to a museum. That's another thing to note, if you have grand plans to build up a collection to eventually donate to a museum or instituition, beware as there are many pitfalls, hence a lot of private collections have opened their own museum. Also remember to check if the art is signed, because as (in 2014) there is a trend for young LaSalle graduates not to sign their art after being told by a lecturer that they aren't famous and shouldn't be signing their art. Or the artist is plain forgetful, in which case you should ask the gallery for a certificate of authenticity.

Remember in buying art, there are both art factors and artist factors. Not only are you buying the art, but you are buying his brand. So do research the various artists that you buy. Ensure they have a least gone to art school for the young artists, but this might not hold for the the street artists. And there are also many artists who are self taught and successful. But I liken it to an engineer, he studies for years to get certified and we pay him accordingly, so if a self taught engineer came along, we would rarely engage his services unless he invented something brilliant.

It's also good to have a good relationship with the galleries and be able to get priority or first dibs on artists which are hard to come by. You also get to choose the better pieces from that solo exhibition/ artist monologues. Generally it's also better to buy from an exhibition series as it lends to provenance of the piece and you can place it on the artist's timeline and you can understand the meaning of the piece and its place in the body of work he is doing at that time. But you also have to be careful, as now with any Tom, Dick and Harry becoming a curator you have nonsense exhibitions and exhibitions for which the paintings weren't meant. especially with many pieces which are unsold are recycled into future exhibitions.

Another important point is that if you have the time to do your own research, attend every exhibition and art event, that would be ideal. However with the amount of art ongoings it's really not practical. So please look for a reputable gallery where the gallerist has a good eye and will be able to source the better works and better artists. Not only that, they are able to get more press time, articles of their artists and exhibitions and also get pictures of the art which they sell (meaning which you buy) into publications too, this leads to the visibility of artist. And if the artist is known even to the non art crowd like Picasso, Van Gogh, that would immensely increase the demand of their works and the perceived value of such works.

Avoid galleries that hard sell. I really hate galleries that do that. Because we have a criteria and stick to it, and even if the piece is really cheaper or really brilliant or whatsoever, if it doesn't fit, it doesn't. The worse is that they try to hard sell you rubbish. And if a gallery needs to hard sell you, it means they don't respect you and your art sense. Exception to this is when the gallerist is totally honest and really pushing you to get something that is really exceptional but yet you are hesitating, this rarely happens provided you have a good relationship with them. Also don't fall for the usual sale tactics, like "this is the best piece". "He hardly ever paints with oil so this is a rare piece", then whips out the artist's watercolour paintings and says that "watercolour is his signature and recognisably his and you must get it", "this is the artist's favourite", "he initially didn't want to put it up for sale" and so on. Don't also fall for the stroking of your ego bit, especially for newbies and especially at affordable art fair where "this piece has been collected", "another collector has just bought the other work" (and the 'collector' happens just to be shopping for something to hang on the wall.)

Buy direct from galleries. They are very important in the Art Eco-system. Try not to buy from artists directly to save money, because in the long run it's not good for the artist. We believe the galleries are really important for the artist unless the artist flies solo and really knows how to market himself (i.e. take over the gallery's role) but most don't know how to do it properly. Typical example is that the artist is mildly successful and gets greedy begins selling to collectors directly. So they save on the the galleries cut and sell with a deeper discount. Initially it's good, the artist gets more and the collector saves money. However, when he tries to have an exhibition with a gallery, nobody wants to buy at the exhibition as they can get it cheaper from him. So the exhibition may be good but flops commercially. No gallery wants to work with him. The collectors shy away because the hype surrounding him fades. So it ends up in a downward spiral. Unless the artist is super successful and has good auction history to support him. Then that hype will support him, but if people know they can get it cheaper, the auction results won't be good either.

Selling art is like selling a luxury product, so don't get caught in it. Collect art for the love / beauty of it. Art isn't a good monetary investment either, there are better asset classes of which the returns are much better and are also more liquid.