Tagged: art

Lies, damned lies, and investment indices

While researching a piece for the Currensee Blog about contemporary art as an alternative investment, I came upon an excellent piece on the Reuters blog from last year with the excellent title, Artnet’s silly indices.

In this post, Felix Salmon opines that Artnet’s desire to legitimize fine art as an investible asset class has gotten ahead of their ability to build a usable, meaningful index, which is unfortunately the showpiece of said legitimization strategy.  Artnet has released the C50 index of contemporary artists, which they say “combines performance data from 50 leading Contemporary artists, who best represent the Contemporary Art auction market.” They proudly display a chart of this index beating the snot out of the S&P 500 since 1988. Salmon cuts it down to size quickly:

The performance of the C50, then, is largely a function of the fact that hot artists keep on getting added — after they’ve become hot. It’s a classic case of investing with hindsight: if you only bought things which performed extremely well, then you would have made lots of money. Well, thanks for that.

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Finally, it’s no coincidence that Artnet’s first public index is its contemporary art index — the one part of the art world which has been on fire of late. It’s the third level of survivorship bias: if and when Artnet starts publishing its Old Masters index, say, you can be sure the numbers won’t look nearly as impressive.

The whole idea of an index is that it boils down a whole universe of stuff into a single figure that you can use, over time, to compare the performance of that universe to itself, and ideally, to other indices. We all know that the components of the S&P 500 change, but it’s still a petty good benchmark on big business in the USA. In fact, it’s pretty highly correlated with many stock indices around the world. Artnet chooses a new list of top 50 artists every year and adjusts the divisor much like the S&P does. To its credit, Artnet’s selection of artists for the C50 is purely rules-based, while the S&P 500 has some subjectivity that a committee works out.

So what’s the big deal? Salmon says it’s selection bias, and he shows a few layers of it, from the backward-looking selection of artists to the selection of contemporary artists as a period of focus to the weighting of each artist and each kind of work for each artist. For me, the big deal is that you can’t invest in art the way you can invest in markets, so the whole idea of comparing the C50 to the S&P is dangerous.

Artnet’s data come from auction sales (I wonder if the buyer’s premium is taken into account), and that’s not the only way to buy art, especially the art of living (contemporary) artists. Artnet is aggregating (and I’m not saying that their method is good or bad as method) the prices of many works of art by a given artist, each of which could be quite different. By contrast, a share of IBM is a share of IBM, so the market cap or share price of IBM is a figure equally meaningful to all investors. Shares of stock are fungible financial assets, works of art are frequently unique.

Sure, a record-setting auction sale of a piece by a given artist can boost the value of other works by that artist, but the only way you can expect to achieve the chart of the C50 is to buy – and sell – all the works by all the artists in the index at all the auctions.  Maybe the law of averages would be on your side if you could afford just one (properly-weighted) piece by each of the 50 artists, but the easiest way to achieve results very similar to those of the S&P is to buy a share of an index fund or ETF, and you can do that for $160 or so today, plus a modest commission. There is no C50 index security to buy, and while some stocks pay dividends and none have storage costs, buying actual art has substantial transaction, storage and preservation costs, and unless you charge admission to see the work, it will not bring any dividends.

I sure don’t mean to say that the stock market as embodied by the S&P 500 is the best of all possible investments, I just mean to say that somebody with a point to make and a thing to sell can probably craft an “index” that outperforms by using hindsight, selection bias, and an artful disregard for the different mechanics of the markets and assets.

So the next time somebody shows you a chart that shows that contemporary art – or Boston real estate, 2000 vintage Bordeaux, action figures from the 1970s, or any other not so liquid commodity – has outperformed the stock market, think hard about how they figured that out, and just as importantly, how you as an investor could reasonably hope to achieve those returns without either an infinite amount of money or a time machine.

At Nave Gallery Annex, the door to summer is a jar

I am sitting in a room probably very different from the one you are in now. I am sitting on a metal glider swing in the front parlor of a Somerville home facing two intensely bright lamps and listening to recorded sounds of nature. It’s artist Lyn Nofziger‘s installation, Home, at the Nave Gallery‘s new Annex on Chester Street, part of the group show, Picnic.

I’m too stuffed up to know if there’s an olfactory component, but except for the temperature, Home does in fact deliver on the promise of Picnic, to glorify “the lush serenity, the ripe thriving growth, the vibrant color of what’s living in these sultry days of summer.” In January and February, of course.  It’s a bit like a sunset but maybe even brighter and yet it makes you want to linger.

There’s almost too much going on the four or so rooms of an otherwise typical apartment that the Nave Gallery has taken over. The card lists 16 artists and there are almost certainly more if you count the dozen or so conributors to the open call to “preserve summer” where local artists were asked to “capture the endless and invincible season of summer in a mason jar.” This is at least as cool as when you could seal anything you wanted into a can at the now-gone Museum of Useful Things.

In an awesome three-part sink next to the jars of summer you might notice Sophia Sobers’ installation Abandoned Nature, a series of organic forms whose shape recalls coral or some kind of fungus, but whose location and color also remind you of flora that flourish in the dark corners of some ill-attended kitchen or bathroom.

The lith prints of photographer Adam Gooder are sprinkled around the galleries (and some prints in a bin are for sale at criminally low prices, by the way) and depict flowers in closeup with a delicate sunshiney tonality and delicious grain.  I don’t know if Gooder has a stash of old Kodalith paper or has an alternate chemical or digital method, but it works for me.

There’s a tremendous amount more work in this show, it could take you till summer to digest it all, but since the show closes on February 8 with a reception and mason jar auction, I suggest you get over there soon and join me in welcoming this art space to Davis Square.

Accept no substitute giant rubber duckies

It’s been some time since we had some decent ducking news around here, and drought was offically broken by @fartingduck with his retweet of this item:

BREAKING: THERE IS A MASSIVE YELLOW DUCK FLOATING DOWN THE TH... on TwitpicBREAKING: THERE IS A MASSIVE YELLOW DUCK FLOATING DOWN THE THAMES

I retweeted too, because, well, who doesn’t love a massive duck?   But I didn’t think much more of it. Yeah, yeah, I said, that’s Florentijn Hofman at it again, he’s been floating giant ducks down rivers for years – Jonathan Hoefler turned me on to him back in 2008 when I noted a large (oh, how little I knew then) inflatable duck on the lawn at Cambridge City Hall.

Later on, I sat down to write this post and started looking at more pictures of the London duck. Something wasn’t right.  I checked Hofman’s website – no London duck.  In fact, the London duck is nothing like Hofman’s.  It’s clearly being pulled by a barge, and it has a vapid open bill and creepy Clockwork Orange eyelashes. Compare this pic from 2009 in Osaka, from Hofman’s website:

Clearly, there’s a lot more going on inside that inflatable head.  It turns out the London duck is part of the launch of a quarter million GBP ”Facebook FUNdation” designed to “grant funds to people who have good ideas to make people laugh.” I can’t argue with that, but compare that to the mission statement of Hofman’s duck:

The Rubber Duck knows no frontiers, it doesn’t discriminate people and doesn’t have a political connotation. The friendly, floating Rubber Duck has healing properties: it can relieve mondial tensions as well as define them. The rubber duck is soft, friendly and suitable for all ages!

Hmm. I smell derivative duck in foggy London town. I guess the more giant friendly rubber ducks in the world the better, but if it were up to me, I’d have an original Hofman duck here on the Charles.  And if it accidentally ran over one of those duck tour things, I think I’d be ok with that too.

Keep on duckin, Florentijn.

OBEY museums

Despite Professor M calling Shepherd Fairey some bad names, or perhaps because of it, I ventured to the ICA again this weekend.  Adjectival museum buddy L joined me.   I went prepared to really love or hate the work, but ended up feeling left a little cold by it, and instead all fired up about the way the museum put it on.

The wall text and publicity around this show has been breathless to the point of annoyance with none of the ironic flair of the “OBEY” campaign or even the authoritarian exhortations of the socialist posters Fairey appropriates.  The precious brochure opens with “How to go from arty prankster to worldwide cultural phenomenon (without losing the rebellious spirit that started it all)”

One of the first quotes on the wall text is Andy Warhol, “Art is what you can get away with.”  That should pretty much sum things up.  Whatever you think if Fairey, I can’t blame him for lapping up every bit of PR he can get and for pursuing or accepting this and any other shows that might present themselves.  I think he’s a skilled graphic artist although I find his political statements pretty bland and obvious so far, but I certainly admire his record of getting his images posted in odd and interesting places, whether he does this himself or it’s done by his posse.

And whatever you think of the ICA, they sure look like blockbuster-seeking trend-followers for mounting this show.  Maybe if they had included Fairey in a show before his Obama poster made it big, things might have looked a little different.  But it’s the same Shepherd Fairey before or after HOPE.

Either way, in my opinion, somebody – the artist or the museum or somebody – has missed a major trick in mounting this exhibition.  The exhaustive, almost exhausting, exhibition displayed almost exclusively fresh, clean, perfect silkscreens, prints and even paintings, framed, glazed and cleanly arranged on pristine white gallery walls.   I don’t mean to ghettoize Fairey and say he can only do stencils and paste-ups, but isn’t that part of what’s interesting about his work?  Why frame a picture by a street artist when you can paste it right up on the gallery wall, or better yet, show it pasted up on a real wall in the real world?  To be fair, there was a large montage of photos of Fairey’s work in-situ, and a display case of some actual stencils, silkscreens and even a pair of paint-covered sneakers, but that was a fraction of the totality of the show.

Wouldn’t showing this work be an opportunity for the museum to allow the artist to infiltrate the space, pasting his work directly on the walls, stickering museum signage, maybe even invading the other galleries and spaces of the museum?  Sure, there’s a giant Andre sticker on the side of the museum, but it’s preciously placed and small relative to the space available.  By comparison, look at this installation near South Station that I spied on the walk back.

Or this little treasure I spotted in a corner of the ICA’s railing – is it part of the museum’s holdings, or a guerrilla installation?  I have no idea, but finding an OBEY sticker in a spot like this would not have been out of place.  For the record, you can buy a pack of Obey Giant stickers for $10 in the ICA shop.  Perhaps I should have done so and applied them directly the museum itself.

In some large-format works, Fairey worked in collage, using newsprint and other patterns as texture or background underneath the primary imagery, but those felt like contrived version of the effect you get when stenciling or postering over existing texts or textures.  I have to think that the art-school Fairey (and maybe even the current one) would find this artificial and suffocating, perhaps in need of being stickered or stenciled over itself.

For those – like me – who know little of Fairey’s work beyond Obey Giant and Obama Hope, there was a little more worth seeing here: posters using a diversity of poster styles and influences beyond the socialist look, and a range of real and imaginary subjects covering musicians as much as politicians.  I laughed out loud on arriving at Obey Flavor Flav although I was rather more engaged by Obey Chuck D.

Around that time, a man walked through the gallery carrying his toddler daughter on his shoulders.  She pointed at something and squealed, “daddy, what’s that picture?”  He looked up and said, “that’s the exit sign sweetie, it tells us where to go.”  Indeed.

So, in summary, I give Shepherd Fairey high marks for self-promotion and middling marks for art, but I give the ICA F+ for imagination.  In the lobby there were two Boston Phoenix boxes covered with Fairey stickers.  On closer examination, I noted that they were covered with nothing but Fairey stickers and that the stickers left the Boston Phoenix logos exposed.  The Boston Phoenix is a media sponsor of this exhibition and the boxes were not street art brought into the gallery but rather simple advertisements.

As if you needed more Shepherd Fairey news, I have to point out this item from Big Red & Shiny, wherein we learn that the Assistant DA attempting to prosecute Fairey moonlights as a bartender at a new & trendy Tory Row which is decorated with artwork by none other than Shep himself.  Look for a review of their pizza on Grow Cook Eat soon.

PS the other work at the ICA – photos in Momentum 13 by Eileen Quinlan and the group show of video work called Acting Out – are both well worth a look and might be blogged in the future.

More delayed art peeping: Somerville Open Studios

I set out with intrepid museum buddies A and L last rainy Sunday for the tenth annual Somerville Open Studios. Like us, the SOS has expanded with age. There were 350 artists and 120 sites across Somerville. We chose to start with Vernon Street Studios, two large buildings with about 75 artists between them, and then meandered around Highland avenue, dropping on on Jade Moran Jewelry, Ruchika Madan’s pottery shop and Beads Without End in vain search for the perfect mothers day gifts. (As usual, I sent a novel to mom, hoping its not the same one she intends to give my for my birthday)

Back to Vernon Street. We saw a stunning array of work from inspiring to insipid, but almost all of it quite fresh, and even affordable as original art goes. Here’s my top five in alphabetical order:

Ariel Freiberg – Large paintings of lascivious women with a wicked sense of humor and great hot colors with surprising passages of white. She writes, “My work has developed by observing women who express their sexuality in the most candid and explicit fashions. So superficial and promiscuous are we, so determined to drag into the light what might thrive better under the bushes, that sex has lost much of its relish. But what we see in the beautiful bodies paraded in front of our eyes isn’t sex but the shadow play of sexiness. At its fullest, sex is erratic and raw, truly mind shattering.” I’m a big fan of anybody who pairs nudes with cake. Freiberg was also the friendliest studio hostess, greeting people much more enthusiastically than most open studio artists.

Colleen Kiely – Creepily sweet kitsch-inspired dog portraits, intricate pencil drawings of semi trailers on paper doilies, and more peculiar juxtapositions of vernacular with disciplined technique. “Working with imagery from vernacular visual culture, these paintings investigate aesthetic and class boundaries, contradictory definitions of beauty and the complexity of sentimentality in painting. The sources of inspiration for this work are found in drugstore gift items, greeting cards, the devotional imagery of Catholicism and the history of western painting.”

David Palmquist – Operating from the other side of the brain from Kiely and Freiberg, Palmquist appeals to my cartography fetish with neat paintings inspired by satellite photos of suburban sprawl and the grids of urban design. “I enjoy a certain predilection for order; this tends to carry over into my paintings in the form of graphing, pixilation, and exaggerated definition. I am drawn to images that lend themselves to being segregated into smaller divisions or to images that when taken out of scale, reveal a more dramatic and surreal reality. Further, I enjoy working with abstract geometric forms, am drawn to the purity of modern design, and am fascinated by observations on how well or poorly manifested ideals exist within reality.” But he’s not all square – check out the droll work called “Terms of Use Kitty” on his site.

Heather Pilchard – Arguably the most traditional of my five, Pilchard makes landscape paintings that are all about the special light of Cape Cod. I don’t see what must be her newest work on her site, but at open studios she showed several works that used audacious strokes of seemingly unmixed orange to great effect in sunset skies. “I like to think of my work as a place where careful observations of the natural world and inner vision meet. Through color and patterns I hope to recapture a glimmer of recognition of a moment. The challenge for me is to create an illusion of space using color and minimal detail. By layering the paint in thin undercoats, the painting surface glows with life. On one hand, finding formulas to make an illusion of topography is what I am doing, but until I invest an emotional connection to the work it doesn’t have the spark. If it were otherwise, than why not just take a photograph? The paintings tend to have a certain amount of vagueness of actually geography, which gives the viewer space to add their own stories and meaning.” We also love her white birch box frames. I wonder where she gets them.

Tova Speter – The hallway outside Speter’s studio was hung with two huge wooden doors. If you had the guts to open them (people are generally averse to touching what might be “art” on the walls) you’d see her delightful overpainting of the wood grain, a simple but surprisingly engaging method. She writes, “I am drawn in and mesmerized by the artistic process through which the imagination is visually realized. Seeking to expose the obvious that is often overlooked; I use color to offer a glimpse into the amazing natural beauty that may otherwise remain unseen. In my current work, I utilize found wood as a conduit for an exploration of the energy found within. The grain serves as my guide on a journey into the lines, shapes, and flow of the composition of the wood.” Sorry I almost stole the only copy of your price list, Tova, but I’m still thinking of commissioning a work, if I can just find the right plywood.

It’s almost a year to the next Somerville open studios, but don’t let that stand in your way. Check out artists websites, get in touch, invite yourself to their studios, maybe buy something. You won’t be sorry.