This little survey of financial innovation would be incomplete without notice paid to the ease with which nearly anything can be absorbed into the circuit of money. On shutting down his family’s 172-year-old London art dealership, Charles Leggatt observed, “When I started in art, what mattered was being able to spot a good picture. What counts now is to have a first-class financial brain. What I came into was the art trade; what I am leaving is a financial service” (ARTnewsletter 1992).
Doug (quoted) ----------
Note the date. That's just about a decade late. While the rich were always the major patrons, their own cultural preferrences changed into investiment strategies and auction house value estimates. Buying art was essentially the same as buying antiques. After watching Antiques Road Show for awhile I started to get the hang of evaluation. Sometimes the appraisal was both good work and valuable investment. Sometimes it was a surprize, usually because of some fad I never heard of.
The trouble was that Tom Wolfe's Painted Word, a trashing of the mid-century NYC art world was too early. It became a self-fulfilling prophecy. Clifford Still and Wilhelm de Kooning aged well as did Elaine de K and Jackson Pollock's wife Lee Krasner. Pollock himself less well. Yet I am pretty certain Pollock would still pull in bigger bucks at auction than either woman painter.
CG