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NEW
MONEY PUSHING OLD GUARD ASIDE AT AUCTIONS
By JOHN
AIDAN BYRNE
October 21, 2007-- Art's new
superstar investors - Wall Street's hedge fund
titans and overseas industrialists looking for
bargains thanks to the weak U.S. dollar - are not
exactly endearing themselves to the art world's
old guard. They've elbowed their way into the
auction houses' best seats, inflated prices with
a buy-at-all-cost mentality and are turning the
once quiet, genteel art world into a rowdy affair,
art scene observers, artists and other critics
charge.
Despite the
extraordinary sums being paid by the nouveau
riche - David Rockefeller this year sold a Rothko
for $72.8 million at Sotheby's, beating the pre-sale
estimate by more than $30 million -many artists
and veteran alike are steaming mad. And even some
artists are bristling at the attitude of these
new-to-the-art-world investors, saying few of the
new crowd care for art and simply buy and flip
pieces of art as they would stocks, bonds or real
estate.
"There is
a lot of bad feeling about the smaller art
dealers being pushed out by the large Wall Street
tycoons and financial types," said New York
art strategist Kevin Radell.
(This is how
the above journalist quoted Edward Longo)
These
new people just want to invest and make money on
art, complained
Edward Longo, a New York abstract artist in his
70s whose pieces have sold for $10,000 apiece. They are fly-by-night
people with plenty of money and they don't know
the first thing about art, Longo complained.
Longo says, many artists would never
agree to sell their work to high rollers and
novices who are clueless about light and color
and fine lines. We want people who appreciate our
work, he said.
Another
critic, Michelle Senecal, the executive director
of the International Fine Print Dealers
Association in New York, said, "If a gallery
is developing the career of an artist, the last
thing they want is people flipping their work."
The contemporary art auction season kicks off in
a couple of weeks and the young Turks and
overseas money promise to be front and center -
with their wallets wide open. Radell, at artnet
World, tracks data and prices on art sales
worldwide.
Total
sales in the fine art market for auctions and
private sales worldwide last year are estimated
by artnet at nearly $40 billion, an increase of
21 percent. Still, some Wall Street pros don't
know what all the fuss is about. "Art is
another asset class," said Jing Lerch, an up-and-coming
investment banker from China now in New York.
"With the real estate market in trouble and
volatility in the market, art is the next new hit."
RESOURCE: NY POST
http://www.nypost.com/seven/10212007/business/new_money_pushing_old_guard_as.htm
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