INVESTING IN ART

WHY ART MAKES A DIFFERENCE

I always thought everyone had art. It didn't matter how rich you were or how sophisticated your eye it was unimaginable to me that people could live without art. I'm finding out that my assumption isn't completely true and I'm stunned.

Even the earliest cave dwellers decorated their walls with art. Civilizations throughout history have made art an important part of their visual history, a way to document their lives, a means of bringing comfort and joy to their surroundings and a way of confronting issues and provoking imagination.

I'm no art historian and documenting ordinary households in early history isn't an easy task to research but my assumption is no matter how many rungs down the financial ladder you are standing on at any point in history art will have somehow found its way onto your walls.
Even during the depression of the 1930's people made due with what they could find and decorated their walls with scraps of wallpaper and discarded advertising signs.

Sooo, I'm stumped with a client who has no art and no apparent need to acquire any. My client is a financial whiz kid. He knows numbers and money and investments. It made me do a little more research to see what the experts had to say about art. What I found out didn't make me happy. The money analysts said art is rarely a strong financial investment. Art is fickle, like in fashion one day your in and the next day your out.

At first I tried to argue the investment option on the argument of financial return but it was a losing battle with someone who knows how to count beans. He countered with art isn't liquid.  It needs time, the right auction or gallery with a hungry client to show a profit and it can't be sold off in pieces like stocks and shares. The big sales and profits you see at auction houses isn't for the faint of heart and doesn't revolve around mid-level artists.  If you happen to have a Van Gogh in your closet or a Picasso in your attic you're in good shape. All this information made me extremely depressed about my own meager collection until I remembered why I collected the art we have.

Try to imagine any of these rooms without their art.

We're furniture designers, as well as interior designers and I can't imagine a space with our furniture that wouldn't be enhanced by the addition of art.

Walls need art. That's why I still see art as an investment. It's an investment in your soul. It's beauty. It's provocative and at the least it makes your walls look better.















THE GALLERY

Sidelong glance, 1948
Robert Doisneau, photographer