In his article "Can an Economist's Theory apply to Art ?" published in the New York Times 2014, Scott Revburn explains how buyers look at art auctions through a capitalistic lens. The author focuses on a new player in the art market: the "investor-collector" who buys artworks for colossal sums to sell them even higher in a few years.
[...] Romans from the elite gathered magnificent collections of Greek art in their homes. Through this display they could give a visual testimony of their refined taste and erudition. The colossal amount of money spent at art auctions give an insight, not only on the buyer's financial situation but more broadly at the society's power structure and disparity of wealth. Art history examines the correspondence between artworks and their historical milieu, which encompass all forces social, cultural, political, economic, philosophical or religious at play at a particular time and place. [...]
[...] Conspicuous consumption: The acquisition of art as a public display of power As in Antiquity, the acquisition of globally acclaimed art works reflects the buyer's wealth and social power. In 2015, the painting Les Femmes d'Alger (The Women of Algiers (Version by Pablo Picasso was sold for almost 180 million dollars to Hamad Bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani, a billionaire and former Qatari Prime Minister. This acquisition is interesting because the painting, depicting naked women, cannot be displayed in public in the Middle East. [...]
[...] Moreover, contrary to other market goods, artworks can be copied but these copies do not hold the same social value. The social value is the prestige that the buyer acquires with the artwork whose fame and status reflect on its owner. The consumption of prestigious artworks, like luxury goods, is in itself an ostentatious way of showing one's wealth and by extension one's power. The social recognition coming with a media-covered purchase gives the opportunity to the buyer to become counted among prestigious collectors. [...]
[...] This public recognition in turn, will increase the price of his or her other artworks when the buyer decides to sell them. As of today, the most expensive painting ever sold at an auction is Leonardo da Vinci's Salvator Mundi (Savior of the World), which was bought for $450 million by the Saudi Prince Bader bin Abdullah bin Mohammed bin Farhan al-Saud. Contrary to other market goods, works of art are unique. Indeed, there is only one example of each work which cannot be replaced. [...]
[...] Conclusion This article highlights how the prominence of the so-called "investor collectors" in the present day art market underlines the relation between art and power. Indeed, through the acquisition of renowned works of art for enormous sums, buyers display their wealth and inadvertently give us an insight on the economic, cultural and social forces at play in the society. Owning an internationally acclaimed work of art sets the investor apart from the rest of the population and can increase his/her own wealth if he/she decides to sell back. [...]
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