With the fate of the Cork Street galleries nebulous at best, a feature article in Saturday’s Observer reports on the huge expansion of other galleries- many of them New York based, and seeking to capitalize on the presence of London’s burgeoning population of über-rich expats.
With London as one of my preferred stomping grounds, it has always seemed that, in England, there was London, and then everywhere else. The fact of the matter is, despite a very slow British economy, central London real estate has done nothing but appreciate, driven, it seems, not just by bonuses paid to City types, but also by those ‘traditional’ ex pat populations, driven to London not only for an enjoyment of cosmopolitanism that may be lacking in, say, Baku, but also as safe havens for family, wealth, and personal security. The Observer reports a total of nearly 6,000 London inhabitants with a net worth of more than $30,000,000.
It is surprising, though, that the expanding galleries are those whose stock in trade is so similar to that of the struggling galleries. 20th and 21st century art drives, or fails to as the case may be, both. Traditionally, newly rich oligarchs would collect two things- art from their home culture that had at some time in the past left its place of origin, and quality European fine and decorative art already broadly established in the canon of art and design. Neither of these collecting channels are too surprising- for those newly rich, collecting what was often the court art of their home country brings about an association with a golden age and an aristocracy that, in many cases, has gone extinct. European art and antiques, of course, has long functioned to establish an affiliation with generic wealth, with the archetype for taste and culture in the modern age the European, and most specifically the English, aristocrat. It has always mystified me that, in the last few decades collectors from non-western cultures would be aggressive acquisitors of cutting edge western art. Perhaps it is that so many of the successful contemporary galleries have within their bag of tricks the magical ability to be market makers. The length of their purses is enhanced enormously by collectors whose objective in their own endeavors is to be market makers, who financially assist their pet gallery owners in making strategic high profile (read ‘record-breakingly expensive’) purchases of works by artists well represented in the collectors’ own collection. That, and the occasional monograph by an art historian who is able quickly to adopt some suitably recondite methodology and spit out enough adjectives to fill a volume of requisite size can often result in a successful, by which I mean highly profitable, series of gallery shows.
Canonicity is established in a variety of different ways and I suppose that some conscious manipulation of the art market by salting certain auctions with inordinate prices, is one ever so slightly nefarious way. And I suppose that those high net worth collectors not in on the deal have enough on the ball generally to know what it is they’re paying for. Or do they? I can’t help but think all this is more than a little like the snaky art dealer proffering the work of some minor contemporary artist in Woody Allen’s Small Time Crooks, victimizing the well-heeled but otherwise parvenu wannabes. Did someone say ‘dupe’?