Contemporary Art Overload?

Forbes has an article  which followed a recent post from the Art Newspaper about the large number of contemporary art fairs and the growth and commercialization of contemporary art.  I posted yesterday on how a US author and art critic complained about the growth and intersection of art and money is hurting the sector. Here Forbes looks at the growing amount of contemporary art and how it is impacting the market, quality and values.

Forbes reports

It’s great that so much art is available and that there are so many different ways for buyers to gain access to artists, but it certainly has its drawbacks. I spoke to Lisa Schiff yesterday, who is a New York-based art adviser and a contemporary art specialist. She finds the relentless pace at which auction houses, art fairs and gallery franchises currently offer contemporary works, and the sheer volume of art on offer, troubling.

“It changes the nature of the way art is presented. Art works become more like widgets for sale, rather than rare objects,” she says. “I don’t know what the repercussions of that phenomenon will look like, but I think it will really backfire. I think it will devalue them.”

This frantic pace certainly means that buyers have to search that much harder to find the best quality pieces. After all, the market’s insatiable demand for contemporary art exerts a lot of pressure on successful artists to produce more and puts a considerable amount of pressure on dealers, auction houses and galleries to offer more second-rate work.

Georgina Adam mentioned this in the Financial Times this month when she said that with the amount of new art fairs and new outposts of global gallery franchises being launched, “it seems difficult not to believe that many artists might be overstretching their creative capacities”.

Source: Forbes