Once more up in the morning and over to Ruislip to let a dealer into my friend’s house. Her dad blew loads on art before he died. This old guy was one of the people he was buying from. Less of a cutthroat than many of the other people who’ve been going round, but he really only wanted to buy back the stuff he’d sold for a bit less than he had sold it for.
This again though really blows into my feelings about art as an “investment”. I don’t know where I inherited the notion that art was a good investment but it was unquestioned for decades. I’ve never personally seen anyone selling a work of art that they bought for more than they paid for it, even despite them owning it for decades and inflation. Things that cost £750 in the nineties are going for £120 now. I’m sure it must be because of all the interruption between artist and purchaser. The above theoretical nineties picture probably went to a dealer for fifty and then to a gallery for £250 and then from the gallery at £750 with £1200 on the price tag crossed out. The art is still appreciating, but as with music etc etc the creator isn’t the one profiting, it’s the people with money and space and the sheer balls to ask for all that dosh.
They are attractive paintings that are being sold. Someone will love them. But her dad was buying them to stack up, probably thinking he was making clever investments. He’d have to live forever. He was not the sharpest tool in the box.
I discharged my obligations and then spun home, power nap and then off up to Camden to be an accidental revolutionary chewing gum. One more day of that tomorrow and then nothing in the diary until Japan. I’m enjoying the focus. Always nice to work with clever actors like Milo, and genuinely refreshing to be the youngest of three practitioners when I’m pushing fifty.
AlBarclay 