Blacklist for Art Speculators

I hate to say it, but I missed a great article in the NY Times last week.  Thanks to fellow appraiser Francine Proulx for sending me the link.  There is a current lawsuit now involving collector Miami collector Craig Robins who claims he has been blacklisted from purchasing contemporary art by artist South African-born artist Marlene Dumas. The suit also involves confidentiality agreements as the David Zwirner Gallery in Chelsea which sold the painting for Robins was to keep the seller and sale confidential, but word got back to the artist, Ms Duams, and the blacklisting of the collector. Ms. Dumas has seen her work sell for as high as $6 million at Sotheby's, so we are not talking about insignificant sums of money.

As the contemporary art market gains momentum and over past years where the increase in value from year to year was significant, there certainly was the ability and perhaps temptation for a little art arbitrage.Many successful contemporary artists do not wish to see their art used as speculative commodities, and hence the development of blacklists or refusing to sell to certain clients.

As for the supposed blacklist, the lawyers added, as if addressing a purely philosophical problem, “If such a list exists, and if Robins is on it, Zwirner did not put him there and cannot take him off.”

But several dealers, art advisers and collectors specializing in contemporary art said in recent interviews that with the explosion of the art market over the last several years and a sharp rise in the number of speculative buyers entering the market, those who sell art have become much more wary of collectors’ motives — and that they keep, in addition to secret waiting lists for in-demand artists, another even more secret list of buyers suspected of wanting to flip art for a quick profit.

“This is the biggest fear for most artists for whom there is serious demand,” said Allan Schwartzman, a veteran art adviser and curator, who, like others involved in selling work, described an increasingly complex interplay between contemporary artists’ market value, collector base and long-term reputation.

“In general,” Mr. Schwartzman said, “there has been so much profiteering in recent years, even from so many people who are seen as being serious collectors.” (Of course, dealers and auction houses also earn commissions on this kind of profiteering.)

Jeffrey Deitch, the longtime dealer and art world dealmaker who is closing his SoHo gallery this summer to become director of the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, described collectors whom “we have to chase away, who are at the gallery trying to buy, in the primary market, work by desirable artists,” only to end up selling it a year and a half later at auction for a steep profit.

To read the full article, click HERE.