Georgina Adam, art market journalist | EP47 Subtext & Discourse - Subtext and Discourse | Art World Podcast

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Welcome to Subtext and Discourse, a podcast taking you behind the scenes of the art world

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with the unique individuals involved in the field. My name is Michael Dooney, director
of Jarvis Dooney Gallery and host of the show. In today's episode, I'm speaking with Georgina
Adam. Georgina is a journalist and author who for the past few decades has written about the
interactions of art and finance. From 2000 until 2008, she was the art market editor of the art

(00:37):
newspaper where she is currently the editor at large. She's a contributor to the Financial Times,
Life and Art section, lectures at Sotheby's and Christie's institutes in London and is the author
of three books, The Big Box, The Explosion of the Art Market in the 21st Century, Dark Side of the
Boom, The Excesses of the Art Market in the 21st Century and most recently, The Rise and

(00:58):
Rise of the Private Art Museum. We spoke about how the art market has changed in recent history,
including the emergence and dominance of contemporary art, how the art world and
art market have been diverging, as well as the various cultural, economic and global political
factors that have influenced both the art world and related markets. We do speak a little bit
about NFTs, so I should point out that our conversation was recorded in November 2021,

(01:22):
when cryptocurrencies and NFTs were still at their peak. Obviously a lot has changed in the
last 12 months, however, I don't believe this makes what we spoke about any less relevant.
With that being said, and without further ado, I hope you enjoy my conversation with Georgina Adam.
First of all, thank you so much for meeting with me. I feel it's quite a privilege actually to
speak with somebody who's had such a long career in the art world, the art market. And I think,

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has taught me a lot about the art market and made a lot of the industry, made me aware of the
industry. Because when I very first started, I never anticipated having to learn about this
thing called the art market. And when you started in the 1990s, it was also a completely different
environment. So after, I suppose, being in the field for 30 years now, how did it start out for

(02:10):
you? Well, thank you very much for hosting me. I'm delighted to talk to you. It's true that the art
market is a very different place today than it was when I started. And I think 30 years is possibly
on the low estimate side. It's probably near a 40th nowadays. And I think the art market was a much
less complex place than it is today. For a start, there were fewer art fairs, definitely fewer.

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And the art fairs that were still pretty fashionable were the ones that dealt in antiques,
old master paintings and so on, which have very much, the prices have gone down a lot in that
field. And they've just sort of faded from view. Whether it'll ever come back, particularly antiques,
I just don't know. I don't think in my generation. Contemporary art was not the sort of thundering

(02:59):
herd that it is today. I mean, contemporary art has absolutely taken over. And it certainly
wasn't the case when I started out. And I think what I'm particularly seeing this century,
and this is a really recent phenomenon, is a sort of parting of the ways between what artists
conceived of, a blurring of its function, a blurring with luxury goods, and a parting of the ways

(03:26):
between the art market and validation through museums. And you have artists now who are extremely
expensive, who have no museum validation whatsoever. And this doesn't seem to stop anybody buying them.
And I think that's really interesting. I think the other thing is that when I started out,
basically, the art market was galleries and auction houses, and each of them stayed in their

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lane, in a sense. Auction houses auctioned, and galleries did, well, primary and secondary. They
sold art, they promoted their artists. Auction houses, of course, have now attempted to move
as much as possible into that field. That's a recent thing, isn't it, with the auction houses?
Not that recent. I mean, it goes back a good 10 years. Oh, yes. If you look at the private sales

(04:17):
of auction houses, that's been going on for quite a long time, but also lending against art.
And in fact, as I said in one of the books, Christie's doesn't even call itself an auction
house. They call themselves the art business. But neither of them want to be perceived just
as auction houses because they offer so many different things. And of course, they sell
directly to the client. And today, what I find really interesting is that you have this sort of

(04:42):
fracturing of the art world. Obviously, you have fairs that came in and grew enormously. There's
a bit of a question mark about art fairs since the pandemic because a lot of them had to be
cancelled. And then when they've come back, people are not traveling so much, so they tend to be a
bit smaller and more domestically focused. But you also have initiatives, a sort of a parallel

(05:05):
market growing up with other initiatives online mainly. And then, of course, technology has had an
enormous impact. And what we're seeing now is the impact of things like Instagram. So cutting out
these traditional gatekeepers completely, going from the artist directly to the collector.

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And of course, the dreaded NFTs, which has been the topic du jour for this year, really, only this
year because they're making enormous prices. But they're very linked to cryptocurrency.
And finally, the other thing that I've noticed is this really increasing financialization,

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commodification, financialization of the market, commodification of art, which is now regarded as
an asset class. And I have to say that as a baby boomer and coming from the traditional art world,
I really regret the emphasis on money that we see today.
Yeah. And when did you see that maybe starting?
There was always the money. I mean, investment in art, if you go back to this famous

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Lapour de l'Ours, which dates from the early 20th century, and this was a group of people who
invested in art and then resold it. And there has always been this feeling that art could be sold at
a profit at some point. So it was always there. I don't think you could say this is new, but I
think what is new is banks establishing art departments, although they're very careful

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always to say that they don't advise their clients on buying, but they will advise on collection
management and so on and so forth. They're very careful to say they don't advise on buying because,
of course, they don't want to be caught out. I think the rise of free ports is also connected
with this because if you buy something purely as an investment, you want to put it somewhere safe
until you bring it back out and resell it. I mean, the financialization, I think, is an

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accelerating trend and I suppose this century. And was that connected to when contemporary art
maybe took over from old masters, from antiquities, and from what maybe we say we traditionally viewed
as art? That's an interesting point. I'd never actually thought about that. I think that just
went in parallel with the growth of the market. And I think it's also connected with the fact that

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interest rates have been very low for a long time and that therefore anybody who's got money,
fund managers, family offices have looked to diversify their investments, but also
to look at something where they could get growth. And the top end of the market has seen growth. Of
course, the overall market, because I think it's always important to emphasize, there's not one art

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market. There's lots of different ones. I tend to write about the very top end, which concerns a
very small number of artists who are perceived really like stocks and shares almost. And that
end of the market, the very top works have done very well. And this is why there has been this
interest. Plus, of course, this whole crypto phenomenon, which that the crypto phenomenon

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is really in the last five years. Yeah. Going back though, definitely I want to talk about the
NFTs, what the impact that has had and how it's being presented and how it's being spoken about.
I guess when you entered as a art market reporter, now contemporary art auctions are like a star
studded event. They're the things that people want to watch. In the nineties, I guess that wasn't

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really the case, was it? I remember when Christie's very first had a sort of headline sale of
contemporary art and they put out what was considered to be rather an edgy catalog, because
instead of being the sort of the usual shiny book that you used to get, I think it had ring binding
on it. I think I've got it here somewhere. And was that 1998 or even later than that?

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I suppose that it comes along with this whole explosion of contemporary art with the Sarchi
Gallery and Boundary Road. That's what I was wondering whether or not is it the YBAs and that
Tate opening. So I think it's difficult to pinpoint a single moment when this happened,
but definitely. And the auction houses, I mean, basically what they were faced with,

(09:27):
they were faced with a declining inventory in traditional art, in art by any dead artist,
because there's no way that you can increase the supply of work by an artist who's dead legally.
You can fake it. So they were casting around. And of course, any book, any historian of the art

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market will talk about the famous Skull sale. Robert Skull was a New York taxi driver who'd
bought a lot of contemporary art. And then to the astonishment and to the outrage of the artists
who sometimes given him big discounts, he put it all into auction and did unbelievably well.
And there's lots of anecdotes about, you know, virtually a fisticuffs between him and some of

(10:12):
the artists concerned. But then between 1973 and really the 1990s, there wasn't much movement on
contemporary art. And it's not as though contemporary art wasn't part of popular culture,
like people like Andy Warhol, Salvador Dali. There's always been big personalities around
contemporary art that people have been drawn to. I think one of the problems was it was the nature

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of contemporary art in the 1970s. It wasn't very saleable. It was minimalist. And then you arrive
in the 1980s. And you suddenly get a completely different sort of art, you get a lot of painting.
And this was a period of economic boom, you get Julian Schnabel, who becomes a bit of a star.
What else happens in the 1980s? And suddenly art, contemporary art becomes more saleable.

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But for the auction houses, and that is, of course, the visible end of the art market,
really, it's not until this. Well, there wasn't exactly a light bulb moment. It was a sort of
an accumulation of things. One was the auction houses realizing that if they were to grow their
business, they had to do two things. First of all, they had to sell art where there was supply.
And supply was not the case as far as on the contrary, museums were buying the best

(11:26):
old masters and impressionist works. So they had to look somewhere else. And then in 1998,
you have Francois Pinot, who is a collector of contemporary art, who buys Christie's
and certainly puts an impetus into it. So it's a gradual process. And the sort of art that was
an offer became much more saleable as well. And it just became more fashionable. Art began to creep

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much more into the public consciousness. More collectors emerged, driven a bit by Francois Pinot.
And others. Do you think as well, then, I feel there is a kind of luxury market of art and people
look at it more for its maybe clout value. But I was wondering before on the way over,

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parallel to the art market and just in society at large, is the rise perhaps of contemporary
art as a commodity also linked to wealth inequality? And that there's more people now,
well, a growing number of people at the higher end of, let's say, the economic ladder, and they need
things to spend their money on. Would that have also contributed perhaps to Christie's and to

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these other companies sort of pushing it in that direction that we need more things to buy? Because
if we're running out of old art, we need new art to move around. So there's a lot to unpack in that
question. But I think that you're almost at the absolute fundamental nugget that was so important
was that Christie's is a luxury goods company. And I think, I believe that the rise of the luxury

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goods is a phenomenon, which didn't when I was I'm a boomer didn't really exist in the post-war period.
Because I guess with fashion and everything, it wasn't really the same.
No, there were a few companies like Hermes that were really catering to a very exclusive
clientele. But this was the tiny proportion of people. And remember that a lot of the world

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was cut off. I mean, Russia was still under communism. China, don't even talk about it.
I mean, the mid 20th century, China was undergoing the throws of the Cultural Revolution and the
Great Leap Forward. So those are two huge, potentially collecting areas. And India, which
is also huge was it's still mired to an extent in poverty, but it was certainly not involved.

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And the Middle East hadn't grown that. So all of those potential markets didn't exist.
Okay, that's a good point.
Think about that. And I personally think that the growth of luxury goods,
the way they're marketed mirrors to a large extent, the art market. And I think that this
is an accelerating trend. It's a situation that suits both sides. For the luxury goods,

(14:14):
if they can sort of hitch their wagon to art, it sort of improves it, doesn't it?
This is not just a handbag, but it's a handbag designed by Murakami. This is not just a dress,
but it's a dress designed by, I don't know, I'm trying to think of somebody who's done,
but there are lots of artists who've designed dresses. So for them, I mean, there's this thing

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about the symbolic meaning of art. And so they're sort of to an extent catching onto that
for the artist, because it gives great knowledge of their work. And then of course, when you have
the end after 1990, when you have the fall of the Berlin Wall, when you have China in which there's
a liberalization, and they're allowed to leave Maoism behind, to leave purely communism behind,

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certainly as far as economics are concerned, not politically. All of a sudden, you have these huge
populations that come into a market who are hungry to have prestige items to show their success.
So the luxury goods market fulfills that desire, this desire to show off. On top of that, you very

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rightly talk about wealth inequality, and that's very, to my mind, extremely important. For a
start, you have growing wealth in places like China, which have got huge populations. But at the top end
of the scale, there are a few things that you can spend an enormous amount of money on that becomes
a trophy. There aren't that many. Apparently, Ferraris, I'm not interested in cars, but

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apparently you have to get on the waiting list, you have to know the dealer and so on. So the Ferrari,
as far as a yacht is concerned, you can have a huge yacht. It takes a while, but you can have it.
But you can't easily get a really top-holy work of art. And of course, the ultimate
example of that is Salvador Mundi. For all its faults, it was the only, I mean, there is one other

(16:10):
Leonardo that could potentially be sold, but there are some question marks about it. I'm thinking
about the Madonna with the yarn winder, which belongs to a Scottish Duke. But there are a few
question marks over it, as indeed there are about Salvador Mundi. But that sort of shows that
something that is totally unique can command a colossal price because it gives you these

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bragging rights. It's a sort of billionaire's playground, isn't it? And it's a way of signalling.
I mean, I read somewhere, I didn't write this myself, I wish I had. It's sort of like having
a check hanging on your wall, isn't it? You put up, for example, a Damien Hirst spot painting,
it's recognisable, it gives you cred amongst those who come into your house. And it also says,

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I can spend a million pounds or whatever, depending on, of course, spot paintings is
possibly not a very good example because there's so many of them. But yes, you're completely right.
I think the growth of the art market does reflect inequality. And we now have this new phenomenon,
of course, as well, of a lot of young Asians coming into the market, who are bringing in very

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different cultural references and a very different attitude to art. But old Europe,
old America, you know, perhaps we have to acknowledge that things are changing.
Yeah, because I wonder as well with the generational shift, even in terms of interests
and what people would be attracted to. I guess one thing that comes to mind is how the art world has,

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for better or worse, struggled to capture the tech market. But when I look at it from a, like,
if I kind of step back from it in terms of a, I have art that I want those people to buy,
they have a lot of money. How come they're not buying art with it? But then if I think about it
from who the people are, they're not families of doctors and architects. They didn't grow up

(18:04):
going to galleries. They don't have the same cultural reference point. And maybe that would
explain why perhaps a lot of these people have jumped onto a lot of digital art, because they
grew up playing video games, they grew up with television, and they grew up with a different
kind of cultural knowledge for what is important to them. So in a sense, I feel like it makes sense

(18:27):
that the tech people haven't really jumped on art yet, or haven't embraced as much as people had
hope, because maybe it's not as interesting for them. Like, they'd rather spend the money on a
car or on a yacht or something else, because why do I want a painting in my house? Even in terms
of contemporary art, they don't have the same cultural reference points or even societal reference

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points. Like, how can I show off to my friends what this is? They don't know what it is, I don't know
what it is. You don't have that same upbringing. And that's maybe shifting now a little bit as
well with younger generations for what they're interested in. But how do you think then that
fits in with the art history and the art market? Because it does feel like they're very separated,

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and now probably more than ever, it does feel like they're two parallel things that co-exist,
but have less influence over one another. Well, you've nailed it again. I think that firstly,
you've got a younger generation. Remember that we're also talking worldwide. So the cultural
references of Europe and America, which often were based on religion, you know, traditionally,

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they're completely different for a Chinese person, an Indian person, a Middle Easterner. I mean,
their religions are different. In the case of Islam, although representation, figurative
representation is not banned, it's often thought, but it's not entirely true. Nevertheless, they're
quite comfortable with quite a narrow range of things that can be done and abstraction,

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which is one of the reasons abstraction has been so popular, because you can put it anywhere,
basically, and it goes anywhere. So that's the first thing. Secondly, one of the things that I
always say, and I think it's very interesting, is that a lot of wealth today is self-made,
and it's made by younger people as well. You know, you've got tech billionaires who are in their
thirties and sometimes occasionally in their twenties, which is incredible. So they didn't

(20:19):
grow up in any sort of a collecting ethos. They probably weren't taken to museums as children.
And I interview collectors quite a lot, and I always ask them about the family background,
and the vast majority say, oh, no, no, my family didn't have the sort of money. We weren't able
to go to museums. It wasn't part of our environment. It wasn't part of our world. And as you say,

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I think that this gaming aspect is really important as well for two reasons. First of all,
because those visual references come from gaming, but also they're accustomed to buying things
in a virtual world. And that's a big change. I don't play, I'm afraid I don't play games.
But I understand that you can say, buy a sword or something like that. So it doesn't seem strange

(21:06):
to them at all. And this of course is the phenomenon linked to cryptocurrencies. And I think we really
need to talk about this because this is important, but this is the phenomenon of NFTs. There are a
completely different group of people who are buying NFTs and who are forcing prices extremely high.
But most of them have never been in the traditional art world and probably are not

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interested. Most of them, not all of them. Now, the big question is, will they eventually,
you might say, progress or you might just say, move on to a more traditional art world.
And I think the jury is out on that at the moment. We don't know. Certainly the traditional art world
looks at most of the art that they buy. You might call it crypto art, you know, or digital art and

(21:52):
shudders because they're baffled that you could really like these often very manga inspired works
of art. But young Koreans, for example, that's what they're buying. Yeah. I think even for me,
I guess, as a child of the 80s and as a teenager in the 90s, like I can kind of see a lot of the
different references, but at the same time, maybe having that interest in traditional arts and even

(22:15):
yeah, from a contemporary standpoint, I really struggled to see what the like what the long term
relevance of a lot of it is. And I think like I see it at the moment the same way that I would see
any kind of collectible like baseball cards or basketball cards or things that you would collect
as a child. Not to say that these are naive objects, but at the same time, what relevance

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do they have in five, 10 years? And even the way that a lot of them have produced, I've seen videos
on YouTube where people say how to produce 10,000 NFTs in under an hour. And then what? And then just
sell them off for two or three cents each in the hopes that you will make a lot of money. Like it
does seem really disconnected from the idea of cultural heritage or any kind of intellectual

(23:00):
exchange. It's just, oh, here's something else that I can sell or here's something that I can buy.
Most of the market, I mean, the market for NFTs is very complicated because it's not one market.
And most of it doesn't concern art. Most of it are collectibles and things like that. And the people
who are buying it on the whole are just looking to make money. I mean, that's the GameStop phenomenon.

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You know, with a very low investment, you can get into this and then you exit and make some money.
And people are sort of looking all the time for these bargains to buy in and out. So the FT art
section is much smaller. I personally agree with you. I think that it's not going to have much
cultural relevance. I think it will be looked back upon and a few will be looked back upon as

(23:44):
being significant because they have broken ground. And after all, technology has disrupted the art
market in the past. For example, photography, you know, that was a big disruptor. And now we totally
accept that photography is an art form. And you do have some very significant artists now making
NFTs. Of course, the NFT is really just, it's really just a certificate of authenticity for a

(24:08):
digital asset. Basically, that's all it is. A certificate of ownership and authenticity for a
digital asset. And we did need something because we do live in a more digital world and we did need
something that said this is mine and of course I can resell it, which is an important aspect of it.
But I do need to come back to this aspect of cryptocurrencies because an enormous number of

(24:31):
people who are buying NFTs are people who have cryptocurrencies. And cryptocurrencies are not that
easy to exchange. So you've made a lot of money on crypto. For a start, if you convert it back to
fiat, to pounds, dollars, whatever your home currency is, so to speak, you will pay tax on
those gains. So people want to avoid that. And also I understand I've never done it myself because I

(24:57):
don't have a digital wallet, but the fees are quite high to actually exchange back. So in a sense,
if you've made a lot of money on cryptocurrency, the ideal is to sort of remain within that world
and buy an asset, which you hope will go up. And since a lot of people are piling in,
I think that it's sort of self-fulfilling. How long will it last? That's the big question. And

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do NFTs have a long-term future? I do think they do. As a facility? Well, as I said, as a certificate
of ownership and authenticity for a digital object. At the moment, the art, most of it is really
awful, quite frankly, really awful. I agree. You can't, I mean, I'm sure that there are some good

(25:42):
things out there, but the other problem is that you have to wade through such an enormous amount
of stuff in order to identify, you know, perhaps a good work of art. I think that man is naturally
acquisitive. Man, as in mankind, men and women are naturally acquisitive and that actually owning

(26:02):
a physical thing will always have its attractions. So I don't think that NFTs and the digital sphere
will take over. I think there'll always be a desire to have the physical object. And I think
we're seeing that in general anyway. Well, I mean, I suppose there is a minimalism movement, but I
was saying even to my wife today that it's sometimes rather than having a lot of average or mediocre

(26:27):
things, just have fewer high value things and just have things that you can really appreciate and that
you can hang onto for a long time rather than throwing them away. It goes both ways because
there is also a movement today against owning things. For example, cars, people will use Zip
cars or Uber. So there's that. There's a movement away from having your own office, you know, shared

(26:50):
spaces, the WeWork phenomenon. And there's an interest in experiences over owning things.
Experiences are very important. In its worst manifestation, in my opinion, are all these
Van Gogh experiences that, you know, have mushroomed all over the place in which there's not a single
work by Van Gogh. It's just photographs that are blown up and move around with music in a tent

(27:14):
somewhere. They've proved to be very popular. This is slightly entre parenthèses, as the French say.
I do think it's kind of sad because if you enjoyed a Van Gogh experience in a tent in a park
and then you want to trot off to a museum and actually look at one, you might be disappointed
because it's going to be smaller than you expected and it's static. And I'm sort of

(27:35):
frightened that in a way that undermines, you know, that when you take away the bells and whistles of
the experience that confronting art. So one hopes that people who go to these experiences,
that will lead them to look at more traditional art, but I'm not convinced it's going to be the
case. No. And have you noticed that? Because I think that's a really good point as well, that
art does seem to be moving towards an experience economy rather than a buying and owning economy.

(28:00):
Like, how do you think that is going to affect? Well, maybe rather than asking that,
when we're talking about NFTs, talking about the market and that the market is a series of
sub markets and we've spoken a lot about what is happening at the higher end of the field. And that
is, I guess, due to its nature, what gets the most attention. If you are an artist that's graduated

(28:22):
from university or from college, or you've been working for a few years or you're a younger gallery,
like how relevant is, or how much should you know about the market itself? I suppose for
establishing yourself to say, this is what I want my career to be, how realistic is it? Or how much
do you need to know maybe to navigate that? There's some quite good books out there now

(28:44):
about understanding. And I would certainly recommend any young artist who's just graduated
to read a couple about the market, just to understand what's going on. I think it's important
that they should understand because if they want to make their livelihood as an artist, they need
to understand what are the structures. As I've said before, there's not one market. When we talk

(29:04):
about the very top end, it's not relevant to most people. It's relevant to a few rich people.
And it's relevant to a very small group of artists who have, to come back to something you said,
some of them really are producing luxury goods these days, rather than, I mean, somebody like
Damien Hirst, Jeff Koons, I can name Tracy Eamon with her video, not videos, with her neon signs

(29:28):
that say things like, I have always loved you. I'm sorry, but that's not art. That is just a luxury
good. And totally neutral, so you can put it anywhere. I mean, who's going to object to a
phrase like that? So these are artists who've made their careers become established and are now
churning out, quite frankly, luxury goods. They're churning out commodities. So let's leave them aside

(29:51):
and talk about the younger artists. And I think there is still a market for the younger artists
who's doing something. But I think it's quite interesting that a number of artists like Carsten
Holler are producing art that you interact with. And I went to the graduation show of a number of
London art schools here at the Saatchi Gallery yesterday. And one person had a video, but she'd

(30:17):
made a little sort of tent to sit in, where it was actually like a little hut, really. So that's quite
interesting because a video, well, there's lots of videos out there, aren't there? But the fact
that she sort of created an experience was interesting. And I think that perhaps that's the
way artists are going to go. That's not about creating an object that you hang on the wall.

(30:38):
Although I was quite surprised how much was flat art hanging on the wall. And the other thing that
I noticed, and I was really pleased about actually, was the use of textiles in a lot of art. There were
quite a few things that were made with textiles and hangings. And I thought that was rather nice.
I liked the fact that it was on the wall, but it wasn't a painting, but it sort of, you know,

(31:00):
it was an art object that was made. And one was made with Vietnamese brushes.
Oh, wow.
Yeah. Yeah. I thought it was quite encouraging.
So when then, like thinking back to what we spoke about earlier, over the, let's say the past 20
years, do you think we're seeing or we're witnessing the emergence of an art industry

(31:24):
rather than like an art world or a market in the same way that perhaps the film industry or the
music industry was transformed over a few generations? Are we just in a way seeing that
happen with art? That it's not just for a select group of people, but it's more that we have an
experience economy. We have large institutions. We have people that want to spend a lot of money on

(31:47):
very exclusive objects. Is it becoming an entire?
Is that the only, what you mean is that the future?
Yeah.
Only.
Not necessarily only, but are we seeing in a sense, maybe a corporatization of the art market and
the art world due to like globalization and being able to serve an international marketplace?

(32:08):
I think you're right and you're wrong in the sense that we are seeing that at the very top end,
but it doesn't mean that it's going to eliminate everything else. I don't think so because
nevertheless, the prices that people are going to be able to spend if they go to some of these,
it's out of most people's. So there's always going to be a need for an art

(32:34):
market at a very much lower level, in the tens of thousands, possibly even under.
And I think that will survive because there will be demand. I think the problem, I mean,
this isn't, I'm not the first person to say that the big danger is really the mid market.
The smaller galleries are fine because their overheads generally are very low.

(32:56):
They can get talent because there are young artists. They just have to have a good nose for
who is likely to do well, but those artists will need at some point to move up the food chain.
Exactly.
So they need somebody in the mid before and those who really make it possibly move on to
the very big boys. So I think you're right. I think at the top end, there is this corporatization.

(33:18):
I think that they're really not selling art anymore in a way. They're selling names,
they're selling prestige, they're selling trophy objects, all the things we've discussed.
But I think let's not forget that most artists, even if prospects are much better today than they
were for artists, say 40, 50 years ago, it's going to be tough for most of them. And not

(33:38):
that many of them will be able to make their living. They'll have to teach or do something
else as well in order to make a living. As far as the art they produce is concerned,
I went to this show yesterday and they're doing so many different things and you just,
it's so difficult to figure out, well, which one of these is going to be, you know, the,

(34:02):
I won't say Damien Hirst tomorrow because that's an insult in my work, in my language today,
is going to be a successful artist. I think also, and I think it's necessary to know, even if
a young artist is not concerned, it's necessary to know that there is market manipulation and
that there are artists who are made for the market, supported by the big galleries and the

(34:24):
collectors who've already got their works. I mean, it's important to know that people borrow
money against their art, that they will need to support that artist's prices in order to justify
the loans they've taken out against that art. There's a whole world going on in there and I
think it's even for a young artist, it's important to know what's going on.
Yeah. I think that's why I was wondering, or what I mean by artists, at least to understand

(34:48):
how the industry or how the marketplace is functioning. Because I know when I do
small amounts of teaching to help artists get their foot in and understand how do I navigate
this world, I think in the last UBS report, the art market was valued at sort of 50 billion globally.
It was 60.
For 2020?
Oh no, no, you're right. 50. Yes, it's gone down to 50.

(35:09):
It has dropped down to 50. So it always sort of hovers between 50 and 70.
Yes, that's right.
Which sounds like a lot of money, but relatively speaking, it's not really a great deal, is it?
Because Louis Vuitton is sort of 15, 17 billion for one company.
Yes, this is the whole market. And it's not grown that much either, which is an interesting aspect

(35:35):
because does that actually mean that despite this huge increase in wealth, the art market is not
capturing much more of it? Of course, overall it hasn't grown. I mean, it went down obviously
in pandemic year, but before that it was hovering between 70 and 60. But in 10 years,
it hasn't grown, which is very curious because fortunes have grown enormously in that time.

(35:59):
So what does that mean? When you look at the composition of sales taking out COVID year,
what's happening is the top end has done very well, but the other haven't done as well. So
you get the same figure, but a different makeup with the high priced works being a higher proportion

(36:20):
of that figure. But it's true. It's not a huge market, the art market.
I think that's also important for a lot of people to understand coming into the market because when
we're only ever exposed to record auction prices and I guess the wealth that surrounds that part of
the industry, that is really only a tiny proportion of it. I guess in terms of the number of people,

(36:46):
it's only a small number of people, but they command the most.
Yes, but they get all the heat and light just because I would have a hard time as a journalist
selling to an editor a story about something that made a thousand pounds, unless you've got a really
good backstory that goes with it. Whereas of course something that sells for $450 million

(37:07):
hits the headlines the world over and continues actually. That's the gift that keeps on giving
because I'm still seeing articles. The front page of the art newspaper this month has got a
Salvador Mundi story. Oh really? The Prado is downgrading it.
Well then just quickly going back to the, or just touching again on the NFTs,

(37:30):
because a lot of the art market, I guess famously people say that it's not very
democratic and it's hard to get into and NFTs are supposedly democratizing the art market.
But I saw, I think Annie Schor had written I think yesterday already about this, that it is
almost reflecting what we already see in the art market. That 16 artists are generating 55% of the

(37:54):
turnover and of the handful of people that are dominating the marketplace, only 16% of them are
women. Absolutely and I wonder how many are racially diverse as well. Because it is,
it's a very, it's a sort of bro thing isn't it? It's white males sitting behind their computers
and that's something that's got to be corrected. But it's curious because it, as you say, exactly,

(38:19):
it's sort of in a way reflecting the traditional art market.
Yeah and when I saw those numbers I thought wow that's really interesting because
yeah for one I guess who is buying it but then even for who's making it and then what is it
that's still keeping it in that same sort of framework that we're trying to dismantle within

(38:39):
the traditional art world and say no we need to have more women artists presented.
More diversity yes.
Absolutely and then in this new all the NFTs will fix everything, it's the same.
In fact it's worse because what we've seen recently in the traditional art world is the work by women
artists and work by black artists and by black women artists have done extremely well at auction

(39:01):
and have gone to 10 times estimate. Whereas the more traditional artworks which are of course much
more highly priced they've tended to stay within you know the established price range that they were
always in. So there is an enormous interest and there's a lot of, I interview collectors and
there are a number of collectors who are collecting in that field. So there are collections of works

(39:24):
by black women, women and black artists that are being constituted which is great it's good.
And there's of course the museums as well particularly in America the new museum in Washington.
One thing perhaps then we could close on is your new book which has only recently come out so I
didn't even know that it was available. I'll give you a copy before we leave. Oh before you leave yes.

(39:47):
So the rise and rise of the private art museum. Exactly yes. We spoke a little bit about how
the art market and the art world are kind of like a Venn diagram that has a very small area
that overlaps. What impact then I guess have you written about or have you discovered with this
rise of private art museums and what impact they are having in terms of let's say cultural heritage

(40:11):
and relevance because if it is just a group of people saying we like this and we're buying it
that's why it's important rather than let's say historians or curators. The validation, the museum
validation. Yes absolutely well this is a whole other conversation but briefly the reason I wrote
this book was having written two books about the art market. I'm very interested in the interaction

(40:33):
of art and money and this is an absolute exemplary example of how these huge fortunes that have been
made this century because we are talking this century. Somebody told me and I don't know how
you can check it that more museums are created this century than all the museums created previously.
70% of private art museums according to a report I've read were created this century. This is the way

(40:59):
that very rich people I mean I think we say billionaires these days because you really do
need a billion in order to establish your own museum. Not always, not always. I interviewed one
or two people who didn't have a huge amount of money and they show their collection in their home
you know sort of house museums but it really is a phenomenon of our century and that is really

(41:20):
interesting and there's a whole chapter about motivations which is really interesting. Most
of these people don't come from a collecting background but what's interesting as well is that
they they want to maintain control of their collection. This is terribly important they want
to control it. They don't want to give it as would have happened in the last century or century before

(41:40):
that. They don't want to give it over to a museum where it'll gradually be watered down, go into
reserves. In America sold off because they do sell it. They deaccession in America not nearly I
mean hardly at all here and when they do a deaccession in Europe there's a great outcry
but in America you can have donated something to museum and down the line see them sell it.

(42:04):
Now sometimes it's sold for good reasons because they want to increase the diversity of their
collections which is good but it might make you stay your hand if you're thinking of giving to
a museum and in fact an example I give is the Fisher collection which is a great collection
built up by the Gap founders. They put very stringent conditions on their donation and in

(42:25):
fact it's in theory shouldn't be broken for a hundred years. A hundred years how can you reach
a hundred years? I mean there's no way that's going to last in my opinion and if you look at
something like Barnes that will was broken those instructions were broken. So people think well
why not have my own museum and they establish it. It's their collection they don't have the

(42:47):
constraints of a publicly funded museum as having to respond to different parts of the public because
if something's publicly funded then your choices are not your personal choices. Your choices are
choices of your creators art history and so on. So you have a very different objective. The big
question I ask and this is the last chapter is what is the legacy of these and what are the

(43:10):
sustainability of these private museums because they're funded by somebody who may use it as well
for promoting their own artists the artists they rate which is also impacts on the on the art
market. But that's also a different discussion is if is a high-priced artist the best artist

(43:30):
and that I think the art market skews us because when for example the Neuer museum in New York
bought that Klimt and paid a huge amount of money and they said this is our Mona Lisa. Well
it doesn't make Klimt the best artist in the world but at the time he was hailed. Anyway to go back
to private museums I personally think that when the founder passes away the private museum will

(43:55):
have a struggle surviving because the children or the successors the heirs whoever they are
may not want to pay the same amount of money to keep it going because on the whole they rarely
cover their costs you know even if you charge an entry fee which a lot of them do but they're
expensive things to have and to run. Who's going to do the buying because it's one thing for a

(44:17):
collector to make his collection and yeah but are you going to delegate it to an employee that's
not going to be the same thing at all. Even if you leave an endowment as Eli Broad did he left a huge
environment he left 200 million that's never going to cover buying at the level that he was buying at.
So I think that a lot of these private museums are destined either to go somehow or other into

(44:40):
some sort of public ownership because the state may need to step in or just gradually to disappear
and in fact a lot of private museums have disappeared. People don't realize this but when
I was writing the book and I was looking around and that's you know I give quite a few examples
of museums that no longer exist. Oh wow. Yeah I know it's a surprise isn't it. Yeah. I think I

(45:01):
call the chapter here today gone tomorrow. Because I mean I've seen it even in my short stint in the
art world with my gallery. A lot of other galleries in the neighborhood that had opened and closed
even within five years and why would a collection not be the same. That you've set up something and
you think this is going to last for however long and then you discover that it's actually a lot

(45:22):
more work than you thought it was going to be. They're much more complicated to run than people
think. In Africa where a lot of being set up you've got such basic things like have you got
electricity all the time? Can you keep the air conditioning on so to preserve the artworks?
You know such a small basic thing people often don't think of that. People don't realize the
costs involved creating well perhaps the collection exists but maintaining a collection and maintaining

(45:46):
the impetus. You know how can you say what's going to happen in 30 40 years? How do you know what art
prices are going to be like? Now you have some collections like Sir John Soanes which is a
capsule of what he bought and it's in the house that he had it in and that's great that works.
So that sort of museum which has gone into state ownership anyway that were and some of these

(46:07):
collections will be so good the buildings but I don't know what will happen to the brode in say
a hundred years time. Will that still be relevant? And remember that contemporary art because they're
overwhelmingly always about contemporary art is a fashion thing as well. In order to stay relevant
you've got to keep buying because otherwise you're just a capsule of early 21st century art.

(46:35):
That's true well we could keep talking for hours. I know I know but I think we should cap it there.
It's been really lovely talking Georgina. Well it's a pleasure I think your questions and your
reflections on the market are very profound. I'm very interested that you understand so much
and you've thought so much about this because not everyone has. I hope you enjoyed my interview

(46:58):
with Georgina Adam and the insights she shared about the contemporary art market. If you're
curious to learn more I'd encourage you to pick up one of her books on the subject and regularly
read articles in the art newspaper. The 12 million dollar stuff shark by Don Thompson is another book
I'd recommend which dispels a lot of myths about the art market and reveals a lot of how the industry

(47:19):
functions. There is also a 2018 documentary directed by Nathaniel Kahn who also directed
my architect about his father Lewis Kahn called The Price of Everything which treads the same
top-end contemporary art market territory and shares similar insight. In the show notes I've
included links to some of the specific things we spoke about together with where you can find
Georgina Adam online. If you have any questions or feedback to what we discussed in today's episode

(47:43):
of the podcast you're welcome to reach out on social media or get in touch via email. Subtext
and discourse art world podcast is streaming on apple podcasts spotify and every major podcast
platform. If the insights shared in this and past episodes have taught you something please leave a
rating or review so others can also benefit from this knowledge. That's all for now thanks again
for tuning in my name is Michael Dooney and you've been listening to Subtext and Discourse.

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Georgina Adam, art market journalist | EP47 Subtext & Discourse

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Georgina Adam, art market journalist | EP47 Subtext & Discourse