An (A)lte(R)na(T)ive investment

Investing in any market or scheme is undoubtedly unpredictable and comes with a great number of risks. Stocks and shares are volatile, and with this to consider some investors are now focusing their assets on alternative forms of investment, perhaps most interestingly in works of art.

Pros in the field of art investment, or the ‘investment of passion’ as it is often referred to, have a few rules when it comes to buying and selling art. Firstly, as with all types of investments, you shouldn’t expect a fast return on your buy. Art insiders would recommend holding on to the artwork for at least 5, if not 10 years, to allow for the artist to develop in the industry. This brings us to the second rule; ensure you purchase an artwork which you enjoy. When at art fairs or auctions buy what catches your eye, not what you think will impress others. The work is going to be with you for up to (if not longer) than a decade, so you want an artwork that you can look at on your wall and take pleasure in. 

An excellent example of how art investment works is the case of Peter Doig’s The Architect’s Home in the Ravine. The huge oil painting was bought for a mere £280,000 in 2002 by Charles Saatchi, who then resold the artwork in 2007, after the artists reputation soared, for £2.7 million. The buyer from 2007 put the painting in Christie’s February auction this year and it sold for just under £7 million. That’s an unbelievable 2300% rise in value in just over a decade.

Peter Doig’s The Architect’s Home in the Ravine

However with the positives you also get the negatives, as with all investment there are substantial risks involved. Taste in art changes over time, so what is popular one year may not be the other. As well as this, if the artist’s reputation is badly damaged, the price of the artwork will subsequently tumble. Take for example well-known Australian artist Rolf Harris who has a large contract with Whitewall galleries.  In spring when sexual allegations against him were first released, people started selling his work on eBay for low prices because they feared if he was charged the art would be worthless. Now Harris has been charged, it is still unclear what Whitewall are going to do in reaction, but price slashing will almost certainly be the first step, if not removing his art from galleries nationally altogether.

One of Harris' paintings

 To wrap up, art investment can absolutely reap the benefits, but it requires a lot of research, as well as the equity to invest in the first place. But with the correct amount of planning and in a decade or 2, perhaps you could be the next Saatchi?

Art and About 4 - Trip to the Saatchi gallery!

Yesterday I met up with my Art History friends who live around London and we went to the Saatchi gallery in Chelsea. The gallery was opened in 1985 by Charles Saatchi and has occupied many locations in London before opening in its current location in Sloane Square. The art in the gallery is contemporary and often chosen for display because it provokes strong reactions from visitors. The artists who have artwork displayed are relatively unknown, Saatchi scouts new artists and displays their work to help them succeed in the art world. Artists who have had work shown there before they were famous include Jenny Saville and Damien Hirst.

Damien Hirst - 'The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living' - 1991

Jenny Saville - 'Reverse' - 2002

The Saatchi gallery is set up to make the prime focus the artwork, unlike more traditional galleries with extensive decorative features, the Saatchi Gallery has big rooms and plain white walls with wooden flooring, forcing your attention to the displays. 

The first room in the gallery is filled with photographs taken by Sergei Vasiliev, an artist from Russia. Vasiliev worked as a prison ward and photographed the criminals who had tattooed themselves. These homemade tattoos, inked on the skin with melted book heels, urine and blood, contain coded messages against the Soviet regime. The photographs were taken between 1989 and 1993.

One artist who's work is perhaps the most controversial is Boris Mikhailov. Mikhailov, from the Ukraine, photographed post-Communist poverty in ex-Soviet countries in 1997-8, displaying the harsh conditions of society, called 'Case History'. The photographs are certainly striking, when first entering the room you are confronted with crude images of nude men and women, either with strange deformities or exhibiting their naked bodies, unbothered by their nudity but enjoying it instead. Mikhailov said of his photographs:

“I am not trying to take pictures of sensational things, but rather of those things which are in excess. I am trying to find the unique in that manifold reality itself. Maybe that is exactly what people like, first of all.”

Take a look at what else is on at Saatchi