A Brief Book Review of “The Value of Art: Money, Power, Beauty” by Michael Findlay
“We know what art is: it’s paintings of horses!” - Jack Donaghy, “30 Rock” (TV Show)
Meandering through the visual arts section of the Strand Bookstore in Manhattan after dinner last Friday, I came across Michael Findlay’s book The Value of Art: Money, Power, Beauty (2014). Briefly scanning the table of contents, I soon realized this was the sort of book I had long been meaning to read. This is somewhat ironic in hindsight; upon finishing this book, you get the strong feeling that reading about art is a very poor substitute for looking at it. Because of Findlay’s persuasive encouragement, you feel empowered to look at art in person as often and as slowly and as quietly as possible.
A Scotland-born veteran art dealer in his seventies working in New York City, Findlay sets out to describe the international art world of the last fifty years. In the process, he is at turns charming, hilarious, sarcastic, biting, democratic, and inspiring in his assessments of the world he inhabits and the individuals, institutions, and cultures within it. It shouldn’t be surprising to glean such understanding from this book. Findlay writes with some claims to authority. He is a Director of Acquavella Galleries and has been the head of the Impressionist and Modern Art Department at Christie’s and a member of its Board of Directors. He also serves on the Art Advisory Panel for the Internal Revenue Service and has been a friend, colleague, and competitor to many notable individuals in the art world. His long, diverse career affords us a book full of captivating stories, such as of art world criminals who used museum donations to facilitate insurance fraud, of unassuming regular librarians who quietly purchased and held iconic paintings which their neighbors thought reproductions, and of artists like Henry Moore, who though reclusive, played the art world so well that his collectors often felt he was doing them a favor when he sold them his sculptures.
The book is segmented into three main sections covering the commercial, social, and intrinsic values of art. Findlay tells us, “The basis of this book is that the value of art is threefold: the possibility of maintaining or increasing its commercial value; the society of like-minded enthusiasts; and the private enjoyment of contemplating the work itself.” Findlay makes the astute point that for any particular work or category of art, none of these three values is constant, as they are “enhanced or diminished by the fluctuating mores and tastes of different times and cultures.”
The first section, on the commercial value of art, is a powerhouse, a thorough and incredibly helpful description of value chains within the art world. As an investor and heavy consumer of various forms of industry research, I only wish more people wrote as clearly and deeply about market structures as what you find here. Refreshingly, Findlay comes across not as jaded or cynical but a wry-witted realist. He tells us that “the price of art, whether sold in the primary or secondary market, is governed by supply, demand, and marketing.” And he dives into each of these three areas in primary and secondary markets with great detail and gusto.
In the “supply” section, we learn about how an individual artist’s total output in their lives is one of the few meaningful empirical variables in assessing the potential commercial value of the body of work he or she produces in a lifetime. This figure is captured in the “catalogue raisonné” (or critical catalogue) and varies greatly from artist to artist. For example, Claude Monet, who is considered prolific, lived until he was 86 years old, painted every day, and produced roughly 2,000 paintings. Whereas Vincent van Goh, who died at age 37, and Jackson Pollock, who lived until age 44, created 864 and 382 paintings, respectively. Other important variables include a work’s Provenance, Condition, Authenticity, Exposure, and Quality. However, before we think an algorithm can be easily used to make forecasts of art prices, Findlay explains how collectors, working in concert, often in private market transactions not covered by journalists or discussed at live auctions, intentionally prop up or diminish the commercial value of art without the public becoming aware. Illiquidity, steep transaction costs, and corruption have front seats in this market.
While it is important that the best artists display “mastery of the medium, clarity of execution, and authority of expression,” we also learn in the “demand” and “marketing” sections how the scarcity principle is employed to the advantage or disadvantage of various parties. Indeed, dealers, artists, collectors, museums, art galleries, auction houses, art fairs, and the general public all play a part, willingly or unwittingly, in increasing the volume of activity, the market price of items sold, and the commissions and fees skimmed from the top.
I said earlier that Findlay is at times biting. That may be an understatement. He reserves special animosity for art investment funds; for listening to audio guides at museums; for feeling compelled to read curator captions of a work of art rather than spend the time to figure out ourselves whether or not we like it and why; for the commissions, preening, and often goofy attempts at prestige of auction houses; for the lack of chairs and benches at museums; for short attention spans and scurrying through exhibits rather than lingering with a few items. Findlay spills the most ink on this lattermost idea. He makes the claim that a single painting can often take an artist as long to create as the full production schedule of a Hollywood movie; yet while a movie is typically digested in a couple hours, a painting might often be viewed for only a few distracted seconds at most, though does not lack versus the movie in its layers of narrative and meaning.
In the end, the third aspect of art, its intrinsic, or personal, value, is what Findlay keeps saying is the most important aspect to weigh. And given “beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” it is probably the most stable; though that isn’t saying much given how deep commercial and social influences often play on our individual tastes and preferences, and how our tastes and preferences can change over our own lifetimes. One gets the impression that Findlay only became a dealer because he wanted to make a living following his passion, which was viewing art, and stumbled upon realizing he also was regarded as a trusted broker. He seems someone who has found a way to be happy with the art world irrespective of the peaks and troughs in the commercial and social values of art. We are fortunate he decided to write about his personal experiences.