6 NOVEMBER 1976, Page 24

Three notes on the art market

Eugene Victor Thaw

The 'Big Bands' are finished On both sides of the Atlantic it looks as if the big art gallery may become as extinct as the dinosaur. The most successful of the big galleries, for instance the international chain of Marlborough Galleries (London, New York, Zurich, Rome, etc) is rumoured to be changing its course. The old, once prestigious firm of M. Knoedler & Co of London and New York (formerly of Paris too) changed ownership a few years ago and has had trouble since in finding a new identity and role. Colnaghi's in London is a less clear but parallel case. Wildenstein has moved towards Henry Moore and other big names among twentieth-century artists but is still searching for a way towards new markets. Conversely, many gallery owners are going 'private', closing establishments with large overheads and exhibition facilities and working from apartments, town houses and storage vaults in warehouses. Whatever the volume of sales is today in the less vibrant post-recession art market, I think it very likely that the private dealers have the lion's share of it. What are the reasons for this ? The subject is too complex for brief analysis. One can mention, however, the growing desire these days for anonymity in the display of wealth ; problems of security; the personal trust required between agent and buyer when sums are vast; the desire of sellers, also, to remain unidentified; the economic power of the successful contemporary artist to control his own market ; the availability to artists in the first rank of museum shows which reduce the need for regular gallery exhibitions.

There are many kinds of private dealers. Some are agents for one or a few marketable artists; some are 'runners' who, for a commission, try anything they can sell; some have great inventories of old master, Impressionist or twentieth-century works and are experts in their areas of interest.

One, in particular, is a European-based firm called Artemis, of which this writer has special knowledge. Artemis is symptomatic of the new wave of art dealing—a public company allied to a powerful bank but the most private of art dealers in its daily business. Artemis works alone or with partners, buying and selling major works of all periods in London, Tokyo, New York, Los Angeles, Munich, Teheran, etc, so discreetly that even insiders have only a vague idea of its activities. Artemis was once thought of as a 'fund', a misconception, since it does not purposely invest only to hold art in vaults. It is an art dealer of a slightly new variety, nothing more.

Modarco, which used to be coupled with Artemis in financial press reports on art market affairs, is the only other survivor of many such entities launched in the booming 'sixties. But, unlike Artemis, Modarco is very troubled these days, reporting a substantial loss and parting from its founder and long-time guide, Mr Il in. It has perhaps suffered from a classic case of boom psychology, buying exclusively in one field at toP market prices and then finding, with too many eggs in one basket, that patterns of spending and collecting change.

The art museum in America When the Metropolitan Museum in New York was revealed as the purchaser of the Radnor Velasquez and put the five and a half million dollar picture on displaY, critical reaction was not one of thunderous approval. Time magazine's art critic, in a special 'boxed' editorial, summed UP adverse opinion when he asked, 'What will "Juan de Pareja" on its draped wall in the Metropolitan mean to an intelligent eighteen-year-old from Spanish Harlem when he

sees it and remembers the price?

That the Met collection was lac-Acing a great example by one of the greatest painters

in the history of art seemed an insufficient reason to spend so much money for a work of art. What sort of acquisition might have been relevant to the hypothetical youth from

Harlem? It is difficult to be sure, but spending an equivalent sum on cultural events such as the Metropolitan's Harlem on MY Mind photographic-sociology show (a nearcontemporary event with the Velasquel

purchase) would seem to be the palliative required.

The two attitudes towards art institutions which are inherent in the Velasquez affair became further polarised in the years that have passed since 1970. Today, 'quality' Is a dirty word among the young and eager curators in America who give papers at conferences. It is 'élitist', almost the worst thing anyone can be called. A museunl. which is concerned primarily with 'quality is anti-black and ultimately anti-people In general. Any talk about the private response to a work of art which is supposed to haPPen in a museum is antiquated and aristocratic.

What is the role of the museums in this new or at least changing situation ? The new-style museum is a community centre. first of all, with events of all kinds to choose among. Jazz concerts, lectures, perfor mances of modern dance, film-shows. fashion shows, charity balls, are only a few, of the most obvious possibilities. Nil. bitions must either be 'spectaculars' like Russian loans, the Mona Lisa, or Andrew Wyeth and Van Gogh ad nauseam again and again. Alternatively, they are apt to .be 'information' or didactic shows which eschew works of art for displays of multi', media techniques, with audio and visua' aids, explanatory captions and reading material on the walls, blow-ups of photographs, but with hardly any works of net at all. Finally, museums have become vtisAt retailing businesses with book, gift art' reproduction sales counters turning the former entrance hall of many an institution into a mini-department store. There are, of course, strong arguments--; economic as well as educational—in favott, of these trends, but an old-fashioned rnion, rity deplores these developments and feeisf something essential—the unique power 0, an original work of great art to speak to arILY or all of us who are willing to approach wItn open eyes and open mind—has been lost' The patronising attitude of over-selling afl. over-simplifying is insulting not only to tills writer but to that intelligent eighteen-Year old from Spanish Harlem who deserves the best and would find it 'relevant'.

Pollock after twenty years Besides so much else, 1976 commemorated the twentieth anniversary of the violent death in a car crash of Jackson Pollock, the American painter who, more than any other, has come to epitomise modern paint ing since the Second World War. It would not be unfair to claim that, after Picasso, his is perhaps the best known, if least under stood, reputation or 'name' among the general audience which is even vaguelY aware of contemporary art. Through the agony of his life and early death, Pollock has become our generation's Van Goghalready the stuff of legend and mythology.

I will never forget the day after his death in East Hampton, Long Island, where mY wife and I were spending the summer of 1956. We knew a small number of the artists in Pollock's world, and I can remember the little knots of parked cars at each of his friends' houses as the news spread that Jackson was dead. The furtive gatherings and the hush over the whole communitY created an unmistakable sense of catastrophe.

Now, twenty years later, with his reputation still soaring and his prices astronomical, what has been done to mark the anniversary? Nothing, absolutely nothing.

The Metropolitan Museum in New York, which was perceptive enough to Purchase 'Autumn Rhythm', one of Pollock's major paintings, just after the artist's death, has boarded it up this year so that it cannot be seen at all.

The Museum of Modern Art, which acquired important Pollocks posthumouslY and expensively instead of directly from the living artist, organised no manifestation, not even a small show of its hidden holdings.

The New York Times art page with its taste for essays, particularly in the summer when news is light, came out with nothing. Only the Village Voice in an excellent piece by David Bourdon on 9 August remarked on the occasion and official forgetfulness.

However, an anniversary event of 3 stunning and unplanned sort has just taken place. The National Gallery of Art 01 Washington, DC, preparing for the opening of its new modern art wing in 1978, has announced the purchase for more than twd million dollars of 'Lavender Mist' fro' Alfonso Ossorio's collection. Half the size of 'Blue Poles', the previous high-price record holder at just two million dollars, 'Lavender Mist' has always been acknoW‘ ledged as one of Pollock's best paintings. In view of critical neglect, the lack of 3 dealer (the Pollock estate has long since left the Marlborough Gallery) and the general absence of 'bandwagon' psychology, this sale and this price must be a tribute to the National Gallery's perception of qualltY and rarity. The sale, which incidentally W95 made by a London-based private dealer, owes nothing to the 'manipulation' of the market so often implied by journalists.