The Storm Hits the Art Market

> I'm amazed that the article doesn't discuss the end of ZIRP.

I'm not sure this particular phenomenon can be explained this way. For example, antiques auctions are doing quite well, with prices rising quite briskly year after year. There's still plenty of money chasing the kinds of long-term investments you can hold in your hand, put on a shelf, and show to your friends.

Jewelry sales are doing fine too.

There are other reasons why going to a fancy gallery in London to buy some decor for your mansion just isn't as enticing as it used to be a decade or two decades ago.

Someone in the space told me that China were big buyers of art but suddenly they stopped.

This could be because of capital controls, financial stress or increasing sense of national pride - take your pick

Yes and no - 2022 also drastically changed taxation of software development

https://www.resourcefulfinancepro.com/news/irs-section-174-c...

The US stock market and cryptocurrencies are both going gangbusters. You don't need ZIRP to be awash in cash. Money can print itself when rich people are optimistic.

I don't know what causes bubbles to pop, but I don't think it's directly related to US monetary policy. I suspect that the bubble just moved elsewhere.

2022 is also when the wars in Ukraine and Gaza started in earnest

When wars are going on, most people in affected countries are thinking about heavier things than going to an art exhibit and boosting their collections.

2020 and 2021 was when the pandemic happened. Businesses started feeling the crunch all over the world from the lockdowns. Supply chains got bullwhipped. People weren’t exactly interested in going to buy artworks after their one-time UBI checks and PPP funds ran out. And other countries didn’t send those out at all.

Oh yeah, and AI has now sent a supply shock to the whole art industry. But we can’t say that on HN, there will always be someone popping out of the woodwork claiming AI is a non-factor and saying things were always like that.

If I was going to buy art as an investment I would only buy the absolute best - old master, Picasso, ancient artifacts with absolutely no question to their authenticity or provenance that would restrict its resale.

Collectibles are very tricky. You want to buy something that isn't a fad. Like a movie prop, you'd want to buy the 100% most legendary movie that is timeless, like something from Casablanca, that has been appreciated decade-after-decade as worthwhile and valuable across many generations and fads. I wouldn't buy an expensive sports or trading card. Something related to Western culture is much safer, like the Magna Carta, or a founding US-related historical document. It's very hard to predict what will remain valuable decades or centuries out, so if something is still valuable now after centuries, it is likely to remain valuable

> I'm amazed that the article doesn't discuss the end of ZIRP.

There's a bigger culprit: NFTs. They sucked away a huge portion of art spending, with a promise of a fungible growth asset that you can just sell as needed. Art has always been considered a safe long-term investment (along with a means of conspicuous consumption), but it has always been non-liquid.

You can also just commission the art you need, a few hundred dollars is damn good money in much of the world( even in the US, if a small painting takes a few hours to make, 400$ can be a fair price).

That said, I feel this article is really about our active recession. Rich people are cutting back too it seems.

Hi, Can you plz tell me the places where you lurk around for the beautiful art pieces. I have a friend who does amazing "slice of Life" photography. I want to showcase it somewhere that can sell their work. Also please let us see a photo of your art pieces from Denmark. Thank you

Any good account suggestions?

The "art as speculation" fad is just a consequence of "inflation is good" economic theory, the same as "real estate as an investment".

If you don't let people hold onto cash, they will just find something else to replace it (and of course, it is always the lower classes that have to suffer the secret taxation that is money supply inflation targets).

I agree - a lot of art is sold via artists having a relationship with a stable of a few hundred people via insta. Completely bypasses the galleries and is far more compelling for the buyer because they can develop an emotional connection with the creator. Galleries can’t do that without having the artist present and even then they’re overwhelmed and buyers can’t make a connection. So this isn’t necessarily an art thing, it’s a gallery thing. Disintermediation strikes again.

It's speculation, but tax avoidance too: https://naturalist.gallery/blogs/journal/understanding-the-f...

NFTs were about transparency in provenance, using public, tamper-proof records, that replace jurisdictions/authorities with the type of math that enabled cross-border digital payments. Sure there was a spin-off scam industry but there remains a kernel of legitimacy in the concept.

That reminds me that I looked up gold custom iPhones once.

They had various payment methods, including cash (highest price on their list was 300k usd) at their office in Dubai.

Whenever you see a company trying to hawk ownership in itself to the general public you know it's going down the tubes. Unfortunately a lot of people believe in this and lose real money they couldn't afford to lose to these scams.

I am always find concept of fractional ownership questionable. Unless very well controlled. And extremely so when you are dealing with physical non-fungible assets like art or collectibles. Maybe I am just too risk averse to see the money...

I have heard, and believe: successful galleries are a location thing. People with deep pockets will pick up a piece by anyone in Aspen, Colorado, and probably not look twice if they (somehow) saw a Koons in a Topeka gallery.

What do you think the market is for this kind of digital art? Do you see this style of work attracting an audience elsewhere? How much is it selling for?

I'm far from an expert, but I do occasionally buy original artwork. The sheer multitude of works you are displaying (more than one a day!) devalues what you are doing. It suggests that these can be churned out with relatively little effort.

If you are really posting this for other people, and not just yourself, try posting fewer pieces. If you had to pick the single best work from July, which one would it be? If nothing stands out to you, then how is a potential customer supposed to pick you out from the crowd of similar artists?

I personally like the Persistence of Structure series, but they're each pretty interchangeable.

I have no idea how it works, but if you sold/licensed/created your art to fabric patterns, theres almost certainly a small market there. Clicking through your site (others are right, you could present your work better), I see plenty of “I’d buy a decently priced cool shirt of that pattern”. Sample size of one and all.

Your site is very much letting the work down.

You dropped me onto a page with no sense of range or scope. Clicking around results in some very "odd" perceptions about what it is your putting out.

Categorize them so they can be filtered (colored, geometric, organic), load randomly by those tags or at least put a breadth of samples out front.

I like your stuff, but you need to have a better introduction and better access for it.

Many local businesses in my neighborhood (there are very very few chains) post art for sale from community artists and the chamber of commerce for the neighborhood sponsors art walks. In that situation you don’t even need the overhead of the gallery. Local shops, bars, and restaurants are the gallery.

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Take this as a additional point of reference: I don't have formal education in art and not an artist, but I find your work interesting enough that I would stop at a store to look at and probably buy something (printed and fabric) if I can afford to (especially the cover art on the home page).

Reading your comment, it sounds like you are actively sabotaging yourself by convincing yourself that you shouldn't just try (perhaps due to a subconscious fear of rejection). How do you get an audience if you don't actively promote your work and/or try to sell them?

There is no guarantee that you will "succeed" (whatever that looks like to you — success could mean having a lot of people appreciate your work and/or selling your art for lots of money) if you try your hardest but if you don't try you will never succeed at all. I'll break down the second last paragraph as an example below.

> I'd love to sell it online, but without an audience, no one will visit.

Audience don't just suddenly appear because you have created something. You need to put in the effort to create an audience to begin with.

> I could sell it at https://www.saatchiart.com, but they don't really market most of what they have. You have to drag people there.

You need an incredible amount of luck for people to just "discover" your work and just suddenly like it (especially with abstract art?), so having need "to drag people there" is just what you should do if you want exposure for your work whether or not you host them on saatchiart.com.

Don't fall into the trap of "if you build it, they will come".

Focus on creating a compelling narrative behind your art and keep iterating to attract a small, loyal audience first (1000 people is already a lot).

> Plus they take 30% or 40% (50% is normal for galleries).

This is irrelevant if nobody knows your work and would buy them to begin with. It's just another excuse to not try. By the time this is a problem you can migrate to something more personal. Many people that support independent artists want the artists they like to get more money from them.

> Locally, in the right location, people see your art, and stop by. It's just the pain of setting it up, and then sitting there while you wait!

I enjoy engaging with artists at markets because the personal connection with them is actually the most valuable thing for me and the most compelling reason for me to make purchases. I also appreciate the artists who show up consistently at related events particular those who remember me well, which also becomes a reason for me to introduce their work to my friends.

Good luck with your work and I hope you will find success with it! ^^

When you're rich enough to live in what's effectively a post-scarcity world, scarcity itself becomes a valuable commodity. After all, we are the product of natural selection, a process shaped by scarcity. It is therefore such a fundamental part of our lives that its absence drives some to artificially recreate it.

I collect rare books (and memorabilia related to them), and it is not about vanity at all. I consider them historical objects (in their niche, of course) in the sense they changed the industry, or affected a portion of society somehow. I consider myself a keeper and guardian of them.

There is going to be an element of affordability. I doubt someone worth $1bn would spend it all on art but maybe they would spend $10m or if you prefer the growth of $1bn invested in SPX for a month. So a month's "work". A bit like $10k to many of us (I bet many of us have $10k of furniture)... which seems rediculous to someone earning $50k/y. It's all relative.

Collecting big-ticket art is a weird hobby in that it's very passive. For most collectibles, you're supposed to go to garage sales, scout eBay, walk around with a metal detector, or even dumpster-dive. And if you find something unfamiliar, you form a hypothesis, do research, share your findings... and maybe get other folks excited about your find. It's all very make-your-own-adventure.

For mainstream "rich person" art, all of this is outsourced. Curators discover the artist, promote the work, and set the price. Glossy trade journals tells you what the artwork means and how to talk about it to others in a way that's more erudite than any thoughts you can form on your own. Your function, really, is just to show up with money and then hang the piece.