Most “How to buy art advice” is not for you!

This article “How to Buy a Work of Art - The New York Times” is really for collectors who are rich and looking to get richer. Those who offer advice in it are people who can afford to spend millions on a single piece of artwork or work with people spending millions of dollars on a single piece of art. There are very few commonalities between a middle-class collector and a multimillion-dollar collector. 

In one sense, art buying has gotten much easier and more accessible because of online art buying mega sites with click-to-buy business. Like: artnet.com, platformart.com, singularart.com, saatchiart.com, artsy.net, fineartamerica.com, artbrokerage.com, invaluable.com, riseart.com, artfinder.com, artspan.com and god forbid.. Amazon “Fine Art”. New technology has positively impacted the accessibility, price transparency, and streamlined sales of fine art. The proliferation of sites can be hard to navigate, filled with junk, fees, sketchy financing, and hard to understand tax implications. Consumer education is a necessity for all art collectors who are not super rich with millions to blow.

Artsy.net, is great because it allows anyone to follow artists (even the dead ones), read more about their work, it allows for: viewing galleries, art fairs, shows and auctions from around the world. Artsy users can browse through thousand of artists, pieces, styles, mediums, and genres throughout art history. This is important because many people who like art and want to buy it, have never taken Art History classes or even an art class. Sites like Artsy and Artnet are educational as they help to develop taste and preference, like as well as providing and honing formal and contextual analysis skills that are essential for any future collector of fine art.

Knowing what has value over time and what does not, is very important. Often, young collectors spend between $250 to $5,000 for Prints, Multiples and Editions of an artist’s work. Rarely, are there hand embellished details that will increase the value, sometimes they are not even signed by the artist. We have fallen into this trap only once. Unless, those artists become extremely successful, that’s a lot of money to pay for a copy, especially for something that will not hold the value you paid for it! Most buyers do not understand that for a little bit more money and some light communication they could purchase an original artwork instead of a 1 out of 100 copy on high quality printer paper. In a sense supporting up-and-coming artists, is not a gamble (if is something you like and you did not dramatically overpay for it) it is an investment in an artist’s practice which may be a more useful way to think about it.

Time is our best advice

Allowing time: to decide, evaluate, research, discuss, look at, and budget is the best way to collect fine art. It is the only way to avoid impulse buying, having a lot of collecting regrets, and potentially making disastrous financial choices. This seems like simple advice, but it is the one thing that has always worked. If you are buying without browsing widely suspend your buying for awhile and take a look around. Look widely and don't confine yourself to the same art fairs, museums, galleries or wherever you have been already been looking at art wise. Explore art globally and see what is going on at galleries you've never visited and places you only hear about. When paying hundreds or thousands of dollars for artwork, snap decisions can equal very expensive mistakes.

If you can't afford it without destroying yourself financially don't even think about it.

There are a lot of great artworks that the Montague family desires. We would love to purchase or commission artwork from all the artists who we are passionate about. The reality is that we are a very middle-class family with limited assets and real financial needs that we must prioritize before buying art. Art collecting is our business because we have a goal to establish a world-class museum and non-profit arts educational organization that will be our family legacy instead of grandchildren.

The Montague collection is our baby. It commands a portion of our disposable income that could be used to support a child. Which is a lot of money but is still in line with our budget which is very strategically planned out according to our financial goals and potential taxes owed. Collecting to the extent that we have would've been impossible without a budget, and our being financially and fiscally responsible.

Be true to you taste

You should already have established your eye, and identified what styles or elements attracts you to an artwork. Value your taste first! Don’t be influenced by what you think you should like or what is the current rage in either trend or price. All great collectors are true to there taste and don’t mimic other collection it is the major element that makes collections stand out. When your personal tastes and preference is ignored and you buy according to trend, dealer and gallery advise, and invest in the current status quo your collection will look just like the next. Trend setters are a few peoples tastes who dictate, the foolish masses follow, if all collectors are in lock-step and follow the leader the art collection they create are boring and repetitive.

Collections don’t have to fit the taste and preference of the views and exterior audiences, they just have to do this for the collector. Collection of art can educate, entertain, and help to broaden to broaden our definition of fine art.

Do you dream about it?

Time = Fantasy… Often times we decide to collect an artist’s work because we've given enough time to consider overall how it fits into our collection has a whole and to also dream about it.

We believe that every art collector who who collects for the love of the art itself, is a romantic. It sounds ridiculous but successfully buying or commissioning artwork is like a fine romance that hopefully builds into a long-term relationship. The courting, the slow build, the crush/longing, establishing commonalities, creating a shared story, fiery passion, deep attraction, romance, and hopefully eventually a lasting love story. We have been in love with artwork and still are in love with many of the items in our collection.

There is work that we have missed out on that we are all heartsick over and still dream of. Much like a crush that has never been realized. Sometimes that is just the way it goes. It is OK to let an Artwork go, if it is meant to work out then it will. If not, we have realized that you cannot push it.

The original vs. the Fake

We used the image of the Monopoly man on top of the landlord's game to demonstrate the push and pull of art collecting vs. capitalism. The story of the landlord’s game tells the power of an elaborate false narrative as it overpowered the original value and intention behind a piece of work meant to teach a better way. How the repurposing and manipulation of an origin story achieved the exact opposite from what the creators intended. It's important to know why you're collecting artwork what is driving you to do it.

Setting an intention for your art collection, having a vision, determining your motivations, acting according to your ethics and values is really important especially for you if you are intending to create a gallery or museum space.

The dangers of impulse

There is a difference between cool looking Art and Art that you are in love with and never get sick of. We would say that we are pretty well-educated art buyers at this point. One of us has a double bachelor’s degree in Arts Management and Art History. Yet, we have purchased multiple works that looked cool at the moment, which we are very sick of now. We have regrets and a lot of those regrets are because we decide to purchase work that was easily accessible and cheap in the beginning of our art collecting journey.

Initially we were scared to ask how much, for what we really wanted, and we were very intimidated. We had a great eye for quality higher end artists, and now valuable up and coming artist. We tried to do all right things: visited multiple galleries, met artists we were interested in collecting, followed artist careers over time, constantly read art magazines, did academic research, went to multiple art gallery shows and art fairs. Yet, mistakes were made. Hindsight is always 20/20. It is important to keep in mind there is no perfect collector and there are no perfect collector playbook.

Staying up to date with higher quality information, having a plan, a second & third opinion, as well as keeping a firm budget and not going over budget can go a long way in mitigating potential collecting disasters.

We've come to understand that no matter how we try to avoid it capitalism is always a big part of the collecting process and how we collect. There's always an urge to impulse buy and not think an art purchase through. It's very easy to talk to a gallery and have a sense of urgency about an artist work that will leave you feeling pressed. Like this will be the last chance you have to purchase this artist work before it goes beyond your price threshold. This is a risk we've taken and sometimes we roll the dice, and lose. The reality of not being able to purchase an artist’s work after the initial show is something that is proven to be a fact multiple times on our collecting journey.

Following desire and impulse for an Art collector can only lead to potential bankruptcy, buying a lot of duds, or things that you like for five minutes and can't stand looking at for the remainder of the time you own it. Unless you are very rich this is not something that most people can afford to do.

Mourn your loss but don't try to fill the void.

Don’t buy an artwork because you've missed out on another artwork you really wanted, and you want to make up for that loss. You will still want what you missed out but now you'll have spent money on something that you were not passionate about and will have regrets buying.

There can be reasonable alternatives to an artwork you love but cannot afford or missed out on. This is where your collector list can come in handy. Often times you can find a similar artist work who works in the same style or produces works that is visually similar to the original artist you like. Sometimes this is reasonable, other times this is a bad choice.

I found that artists who work in a unique style, who are not derivative, who have a vision that is solely their own are most often the ones that tend to be more successful, and their work more valuable overtime. Having an original voice is always better than being one of 1000 original copies of a great work. You must make sure that you're not buying one of 1000 copies just because you're trying to fill the void of a loss.

Variations on a theme stylistically is different from something that is visually a copy of someone else's style. Subtleties… many artists work at first glance can look similar to each other but have stylistic and creative differences that make each unique.

Art Advisory Services

We are planning to try a free art advisory service, so that we can review it in this guide. We are not convinced that an art advisory is anything more that dealing with a professional sales person representing art platforms but we will check it out and get back to you here.