LPDM Fine Art Consulting

I may be biased, as Giorgio Morandi has always been among my favorite artists, but his current retrospective at the Met entitled Giorgio Morandi, 1990-1964, is outstanding for the breadth of work it shows and for the understanding it provides of the progression of this incredible artist’s work through time. Tackling the very large questions of perception of space and light, Morandi moved in delicate, quiet steps from one interpretation of a still life to another, often making nearly imperceptible shifts in the “landscapes” he composed. The subtle yet astonishing variations of his work act together in this exhibition almost as a murmur of his effect and of his style. The variations in texture, handling of light and shadow and perspective lull the viewer into his world, where he gently builds to a crescendo and then begins to tackle a scene again from a different angle. His landscape paintings (though fewer of them in this show, echo the erroneous public perception that he was more of a still life painter than a landscape painter) also seem to become manipulated or arranged space in the hands of the artist. The swaths of grass or sky or trees become almost objects in his landscape still lifes. Take your time as you walk through the exhibit to notice the subtle changes in perspective, background, the texture of his surfaces and the solidity of his objects. Through December 14, 2008 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

I recently had the chance to view Van Gogh and The Colors of the Night at MoMA following a lecture on the exhibit given by one of my favorite art history professors, Professor Vivien Fryd of Vanderbilt University. The artist, whose active career as an artist lasted only ten tears, produced 1250 paintings and 100 drawings of himself, his neightbors and his French environs. This exhibit, small in scale yet large in impact, displays the artist’s nocturnal work as divided into scenes of peasant life, sowers and wheatfields, poetry of the night (town) and poetry of the night (country). The colors of the works are often jarring in their intensity and the thickness of Van Gogh’s impasto gives the works strength and content other artists could only dream of conveying. The works are drawn from many collections and it is a vert rare treat to have access to them together like this. Don’t miss it. You can also see the exhibition on-line at www.moma.org The show is on view through January 5, 2009 at the Museum of Modern Art.

Fredric Koeppel of the Memphis Commerical Appeal recently interviewed LPDM for an interesting article on the state of art buying in recent weeks. The article addresses the concerns of collectors who are passionate about their art yet hesitant about the financial turmoil of the times. To read the piece please click here to be redirected to their site.

Now on view at the Frist Center in Nasville, Tennessee is an exhibition entitled Rodin: A Magnificent Obsession, Sculpture from the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Foundation exploring the work of the beloved 19th century French sculptor, Auguste Rodin (1840-1917). The show’s title is a reference to Mr. Cantor’s “magnificent obsession” with Rodin’s work, of which he and his wife collected approximately 750 works, some 450 of which have since been given to museums. This exhibition has been traveling around the country to various museums since 2001, and it will remain on view in Nashville through January 4, 2009.

Rejected three times by the esteemed French art school, the Ecole de Beaux-Arts, Rodin trained in Belgium as an ornamental sculptor under French decorative artist Albert-Ernest Carrier-Belleuse and studied the work of Michelangelo on trips to Florence, Italy. His work was also rejected on numerous occasions by the Salon, the traditional French annual art exhibition and art establishment. In 1876, however, Rodin scored a victory with The Age of Bronze, a sculpture accepted into the Salon of 1877. Rodin’s work caused an uproar as the sculptor was accused of having cast his sculptures from live models, a trick a true sculptor would never use, for the figures were so naturalistic and lifelike as to be startling to their viewers.

In addition to his individual figurative sculptures, Rodin pursued public sculptural commissions as well. In 1880, at age 40, Rodin received a commission to sculpt the entrance portal for a Parisian museum of decorative arts — a museum that would never be built. Rodin conceived of the doorway as a sculptural model of the Gates of Hell from Dante’s Inferno, part of The Divine Comedy, replete with squirming figures and anguished, tortured souls. In this exhibition, there is a maquette (a small scale sculptural model or sculptural sketch) of the Gates of Hell which allows a sense of scale and proportion of the gates which he also modeled on the church portal of the Florence Baptistry. Rodin would work on this piece for the rest of his life.

The individual figures in the Gates of Hell became works in their own right, individual, freestanding sculptures, including The Three Shades (the figures atop the Gates of Hell), Rodin’s iconic The Thinker, and The Kiss (which was not included in the final monument.) Casts of these sculptures play off one another proudly in this exhibition. It was during this period that Rodin gained notoreity as a sculptor.

Another of Rodin’s monuments to take up much of his life was his Monument to Honore de Balzac, a French writer. After seven years of work and perhaps fifty studies, Rodin unveiled his monument to Balzac in 1898. The sculpture, which Rodin created after studying photographs, literature and even a suit of clothes fitted to the deceased Balzac, and with which he attempted to convey the sense of the man moreso than his physical likeness, was rejected and criticized by the public. Outraged by this reception, Rodin refused to cast the sculpture in bronze during his lifetime.

In addition to these public monuments and studies of the figures are some of Rodin’s partial body sculptures. Rodin’s interest in ancient scultpures, which have not remained intact over the years and have perhaps lost arms or legs, spurred the artist’s interest in using body parts to represent the whole body. His highly emotive large sculptures of human hands convey emotion as much as many sculptural faces ever could. These hand sculptures depict pain, drama and even grace. His Monumental Torso of the Walking Man is another exceptional example of these sculptures based upon ancient models. Throughout the exhibition one can see Rodin’s incredible ability to model his figures so as to capture light in just the right way to make a strong impact and be emotive despite their being made of bronze.

Also included in the exhibition is a detailed step-by-step guide to the lost-wax bronze casting process by which bronze sculptures are made.

The show presents the professional struggles of the sculptor in the face of exclusion from the art establishment and public criticism as well as his artistic triumphs and highly-atuned skill as an artist.

What happens to the value of art collections during a downturn in the economy such as we are seeing now? The answer to this question comes in two parts, buying and selling.

Buying
Are there bargains to be had in the art market these days? Despite the fact that television pundits and financial commentators seem to be urging investors to use extreme caution in entering the stock market now there probably are some good deals to be made in the art market these days despite the fact that there have also been some record sales recently (for example, the September Damien Hirst sale at Sotheby’s London.) That is, if you can afford to spare the cash. Many art dealers will tell you, if they are being candid, that business is off though quality investments in high end, blue chip works are still being completed. I would suggest that one way to look for a bargain this fall would be to attend the art auctions in categories of interest to you and follow the estimates and hammer prices being achieved. You might just find that a particular work of art by a quality artist, though not perhaps the star attraction, has few bidders, and you may pick up a work for lower than its estimate. In the private market, you should ask the dealer for some price flexibility (or perhaps more favorable payment terms) and you might just get it. If you are buying unknown artists’ works be sure you are paying only what you are comfortable living with over the mantlepiece as it could be there for a long time.

Selling
There is no easy answer to the question of whether fine art values will fall just as there is no easy answer to many of the questions being posed on Wall Street these days. Fine art, like antique cars and furniture, fine wine and other collectibles is often used by investors as a means of diversifying their investment portfolios which they believe will hold or gain value either in the long or short term. It is often the case that quality fine art will retain its value despite downturns in the stock market. Other times, however, where there is a lack of buyers art prices will decline. The value of a work of art may also decline where the prices were highly speculative to begin with - let’s call this a market correction. This is not a common circumstance, but one should be aware of it.

The difficulty with fine art is that even the best works of art are illiquid assets and are often difficult to sell to raise cash in an economic downturn or malaise. In addition to the illiquid nature of artwork, there are generally significant transaction costs involved in trading works of art, such as auction house or art dealers commissions as the market for artwork is diversified and expansive and it takes much work to match a buyer and seller. Add to this equation the element of personal taste and preference in buying or selling artwork and you can see that it is not an easy task to liquify fine art assets - but it can be done. In fact, it is done successfully every day.

Fine art could be a very good investment. The values of many categories of art such as photography or American paintings, for example, have risen significantly in the past fifteen years, and there will always be a category with such growth in value. Most importantly, there are always big names and time-honored artists whose work will sell and hold reasonable value despite turmoil on Wall Street and abroad. There are also those ultra wealthy art patrons who will continue to collect in times of economic distress as they are less effected by day-to-day economic troubles than the average or lower-level investor. The key is to purchase quality works of art and to use caution and smart buying skills whenever you buy, as opposed to speculating on the next big thing, in order to have a solid art investment portfolio.

As is the case with other investments, no one knows for sure which works of art, if any, will turn out to be goldmines for their owners. Buy what you love without overpaying and enjoy it. Investment returns are an added bonus.