Know what you like. The only way to do this is to look at lots of art. You can look in your phone book or do a Google search for art galleries in your area. Devote a Saturday or two to go gallery-hopping with absolutely no intention to buy. Spend some time browsing on art-related websites. Read some books about art. You don’t need a degree in art history to figure out what kinds of art you are attracted to. Write down the names of any artists you really like. Join art communities. This is simpler than it sounds. Get on the mailing lists of local galleries so you get invited to art openings. Subscribe to the mailing lists and blogs of artists that you like. Read and post on art forums online. Talk to artists. When you see art on someone’s wall, express your curiosity. Lots of people out there are into art. Find the people who like what you like! Doing this will help you learn more about any topic that interests you, and art is no exception. Determine your art budget. You may have to look at your finances to figure out how much you can afford to spend on art. Try to get a dollar amount. For some people it might be only $100/year, for others it might be $10,000. Don’t be discouraged if your art budget is small—it is possible to find something you love in any price range. (If your budget is small, consider buying a small piece, a print or a reproduction to start your collection. ) At this point you’ll start to get excited about the possibilities, but you shouldn’t necessarily buy the first thing you see. Make a plan. I read somewhere that all you need to do to become an art collector is to buy one piece of art once a year—perhaps on your birthday or wedding anniversary as a gift to yourself. Start small. You build a collection one piece at a time. Spend some time thinking about what kind of art you’d like to hang in your home, and how the different pieces will go together. Your collection is yours alone and can be anything you want it to be. You can decide to collect a particular theme, style, or genre of art, but you don’t have to. Buy from serious artists. It is okay to buy work from a young artist or an artist who doesn’t yet have many credentials. Emerging artists tend to have lower prices, and it is exciting to seek them out. Of course your first consideration should always be that you love the work. But you should also ask yourself, “Is this a serious artist?” Questions to ask might include: * How many years have they been working? * Have they received university-level art training? * Do they show in galleries? * Have they won any awards? * Do they have a website? * Has their name been mentioned in any press? * Do they have a recognizable style? * Are they serious about their craft and technically proficient? * Have they sold a lot of artwork? An artist certainly does not have to meet all of these criteria, but it should be clear to you that the artist is serious about his or her work. This will not only protect your long-term investment, but it will also give you the pleasure of following the artist’s career over the years and knowing you are a part of it.
Posts Tagged ‘Possibilities’
How to Become an Art Collector
January 10th, 2010What is Art? – the Eternal Controversy
December 22nd, 2009Since the sixties, the idea of what art is, or should be, has been endlessly debated. After having exhausted the possibilities of traditional forms, modernism ceased to attract newcomers and new attempts to create art took controversial forms. The notion of art became ever more stretched and quite naturally void of comprehensible content. The art of the late 20th century transgressed definitely. Refusing to have work judged by aesthetic criteria, artists made their art ‘conceptual’ and as such incomprehensible to the consumer. The 21 st century, for its part, says that its art is ‘emotional’, an equally singular and sterile idea that will inevitable lead to the same degree of understanding. Maybe it’s time to stop thinking about evolution in art as a path that necessarily leads forwards. Art has entered a blind alley. To get out maybe we need to get back; maybe we need to turn on our own tracks. Art cannot be reduced to an instrument for levelling out social hierarchy. Art can neither be a means for expressing individual psychedelic experiences, nor a vehicle to promote abstract and muddled ideas. Let’s avoid the tendency of confounding art with self idolatry and navel-staring. Even if art is not for everyone, it is necessarily shared by some. If there is no communion between the artist and his audience there is no sharing and, necessarily, there is no work of art. Art is intuitively felt and shared. When art is in need of explanation, you can be sure that there is no Art present. Most of the movements that have dominated the realm of gratuitous creativity these last decades we can thus safely and painlessly forget. What we stamp “art” is as elusive as ‘being’. Not being able to explain doesn’t mean that we can dispense of its reality or its use. As well as we know that we, ourselves, are , and that art is , we know that there is Art. This certainty on art can conveniently be called classicist , as it permeates all ages. It was present two thousand years ago and it is present today, it’s a constant. A contemporary art, regardless of its age, is doing nothing else than positioning itself against the classical undercurrent, always present. The quirks, more or less ephemeral, are the signs of the epoch, of the Zeitgeist . The remarkable thing about art is that it bears witness. But art is not documentary in character; it doesn’t pretend to be objective, exhaustive or true to reality. The ability to discern and appreciate art is a human constituent and a timeless one. A shared perception of art has prevailed through centuries, through millennia, and is today as present as ever. This classicist view of art should not be confounded with having a preference for the Greek or Roman era. We use ‘classicist’ to mark timeless , that is, what has been intuitively shared since time immemorial. The best works of the modern art movement are as classical as a Michelangelo; they are simply adapting the eternally same to current ideas and circumstances. Let’s not be duped by psychotherapeutic activity being disguised as art. Let’s not bother with art that is moral or metaphysical. Art doesn’t need to pass on messages; art just needs to be understood, intuitively.
