Artworks are something close to sacred objects. We put them on a pedestal, shine a spotlight on them, handle them with kid gloves. Though very much mute and inanimate — “static” may be the most apt word — they hold and convey the deepest meanings, activated by and contained in the world that prizes them as bearers of history and murmurings of the human aspiration.
Which is why, to think of them as commodities to be traded, as blue chip items part of a financial portfolio, seems to smack of philistinism and coarseness of spirit. The values, however, that we accord to artworks change.
“What has been happening in the art scene lately has been about the commoditization of art and the transformation of how we interact with artworks,” said Wang Zineng, senior specialist and head of sale of Southeast Asian Art for Christie’s Singapore, during his talk, “Risk and Rewards: Collecting Asian Art Today,” at The Peninsula Manila recently.
Artworks, in fact, have always been considered as luxury goods and, before the advent of Romanticism, were almost always commissioned by the rich, the state, or the Church, churned out in ateliers by master artists and their assistants who never saw themselves as more than noble craftsmen. But what is happening, including on our very shores, is something else entirely: artworks are seen, firstly, as investment.
As part of its Culturati Series in celebration of its 40th anniversary, The Peninsula Manila, together with Town & Country, presents Wang Zineng, senior specialist and head of sale of Southeast Asian Art of Christie’s Singapore, who talked about the risks and opportunities of collecting modern and contemporary art.
A majority of people, Zineng said, wearing a sharp navy blue suit over a baby blue shirt completed by a tie with multi-colored diagonal stripes, “care about where the art collection is going, how much its value is right now, that they are not losing money on their art collection. You don’t want to buy something you like and then lose money on it; not that fun.”
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These people are not just those, say, who bid in auctions, such as those I saw when I dropped by Christie’s Hong Kong early this year, who held paddles to their chests, waiting for something that they would catch their fancy — perhaps a Warhol or a Nara — as the screen rotated numbers to reflect the latest bids done via telephone or online. They are your art fair regulars, stockbrokers, academicians, celebrities, politicians, business owners, those who want to diversify their portfolio. “There are more and more people becoming involved (in the art market) in all manners,” Zineng said.
What a beginning collector should know, before embarking on a mad hunt for pieces with a view of creating a collection, is that an artwork has “no great liquidity that people would associate with equities. It is, in a way, more like property. If I wanted to sell something today, it won’t be that easy. Transactional costs are rather high. Collectors do understand that instinctively from being involved with properties.”
But unlike, say, a pile of stock certificates, an artwork is something you can hang on your wall, admire in deep thought, turn into a conversation piece in the presence of company. It is wise, Zineng said, to “buy something that you like, that you think you can live with as safeguard against the vagaries of the market. Say you buy a Ronald Ventura today, you like it very much. You like visually how it hangs…If I were to tell you that, in 50 years’ time, it has no value anymore — you have to decide whether you want it right now so badly even if it costs $50,000.”
In answering this kind of question, it would be prudent to keep one’s emotions in check, Zineng advised. One of the pitfalls of a beginning collector is simply relying on what he feels, or listening too much to the opinion of others, instead of making a cold-eyed assessment of an artwork’s investment potential. “I would advise that you only buy what you like but at the same time keep a sensible perspective on it as an investment,” he said. “If you’re interested in the works of Ventura and someone is telling you, ‘Don’t buy a sculpture but buy a painting,’ he is doing so because the painting generally does better as an investment, so you decide for yourself whether you want to listen to that advice or not.”
Collectors nowadays are afforded “a larger art market mechanism that allows you to buy more and sell in the shortest possible time.” For instance, Christie’s, whose Philippine consultant is Eva McGovern (who used to run the gallery Manila Contemporary), welcomes collectors from the Philippines who are ready to let go of their pieces.
“Most people go online and look for information,” Zineng said, when asked how one can go about it. “If you have, say, an Amorsolo, you send to the specialist the image of the work, the details, or send a general inquiry via email and we respond to you and tell you what you need in order to gain a full appraisal of the artwork. If you decide you want to sell, we’re going to take over the process.”
It is in auctions that reputations (specifically, price benchmarks) are made and affirmed. (In this year alone, Christie’s saw record prices for Arturo Luz and Alfredo Esquillo Jr.) Investors and collectors will naturally gravitate to works that did well. And from here the art market moves as though with a will of its own and the deepest cuts are made: only a handful will make it. From this handful, the next auction superstars will emerge, some of whom we haven’t even heard of yet.