Fiac 2013, day one, new collectors and deceptive hopes

From Frieze to Fiac, from plastic tents to a glass palace, from expensive sport cars riding around Regent’s Park to the velibs parked outside the Grand Palais, apparently the art scene doesn’t change that much. Same galleries, same artists, sometimes even the same works. However, by going through the same route it will be hard to grasp the “new”, and that is why you ought at first to avoid what you already know.

 

Dealers who were emerging just ten years ago, are now well-established, and so are their main artists. What is supposed to be contemporary quickly has turned classic. Already traditional are Wade Guyton, John Armleder, Olafur Eliasson, Pierre Huyghe and Philippe Parreno, or Ugo Rondinone, and even artists such as Ryan Gander or Alex Israel soon will be considered like that by a large part of the art public.

 

One could argue that these are mid-career artists, but in fact they are not. They are more likely to be at the end of their career, as stressed by a market that seems to be full of their works. Works which out of the auction house will hardly find the ideal collector. The reason is that the ideal collectors do already own great pieces by these artists, bought when they were emerging.

 

On the contrary, it is where the names are still quite unknown that you find booths entirely sold out and waiting lists of a hundred buyers ready to invest their money. Why? Because art is young and wants to stay young.

 

A new generation of collectors will never flourish by buying the “classics”. First of all because they are most of the times too expensive for their pockets. Secondly, because they don’t have access to the real masterpieces. So they turn to what is affordable, with the deceptive hope that these new works will too become classics as soon as possible.

July 15, 2015