This is not your first time at the rodeo. Oh, wait, perhaps it is.
If you’ve made the decision to take the plunge and buy art,
congratulations. As you’re likely overwhelmed, we asked art dealers,
auction-house officials, and collectors to suggest strategies for
picking “entry points”—relatively inexpensive ways to collect pieces by
name artists, or by lesser-known artists of good repute (or with a cult
following), in various schools and movements of art.
We got an earful. The resounding message was, as summed up by
Acquavella Gallery director
Michael Findlay,
is that it’s always better to buy a great example of something by a
not-quite-superstar, or a work that’s been overlooked due to its subject
matter, than to buy a bad “autograph”—a work that has mostly the
artist’s fame to recommend it.
Look for the Cults, the Teachers of the Great Artists, the Formative Scenes of Art History
When I advise entry-level collectors, says Dan Lienau, director of
the Annex Galleries in Santa Rosa, California, “I suggest looking at the
incredible array of printmakers who worked at Stanley William Hayter’s
Atelier 17 in Paris and New York” in the 1930s-'50s. The subject of a
current show at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, “Breaking Ground:
Printmaking in the US," with other museum shows in the works, “they
influenced every printmaker working today,” he says.
Hayter, first a Surrealist and later working in abstraction, founded
the Atelier in Europe and then moved it to New York. Hundreds of artists
went through Atelier 17, according to Lienau, “from the big names like
Miró,
Picasso,
Motherwell—who
were there and did their own printing at this point, they didn’t just
come in to sign the prints—to the teachers who went on to found
printmaking departments in universities” throughout the world. A color
etching by Hayter himself might sell for as little as $1,500.
ARTSPACE RECOMMENDS:
Fill in the (Female) Blanks in Art History
MoMA didn’t buy many works by women artists early in the last century, but in 1946 the institution purchased
Liquor Store Window by
the charmingly named Fannie Hillsmith. Many pioneering women artists
are being given a second look as art history is re-sifted with less of
gender bias, and Hillsmith is certainly one of the artists being
reconsidered, having shown early in her career at Peggy Guggenheim’s
legendary Art of This Century Gallery, and with the influential dealer
Sydney Janis. An American
Cubist from New Hampshire, later in life she taught at Cornell and could count
critic Clement Greenberg as a fan. New York’s Susan Teller gallery carries circa-1940’s drawings by the artist for less than $1,000.
ARTSPACE RECOMMENDS:
Hedda Sterne's Untitled, 1950
Choose a Lesser-Known—But Not Uncharacteristic—Work by a Great Artist
Albrecht Dürer was the leading figure of Late Gothic and High
Renaissance German art, and “he remains after 500 years—like Rembrandt,
Goya, and Picasso—one of the superior masters of printmaking,” says New
York dealer Pia Gallo. Dürer’s engravings, particularly his three
Meisterstiche (“master engravings”)
Knight, Death, and the Devil; Melencolia I; and
St. Jerome in His Study,
have been collected for centuries, adds Gallo. And it’s the case that
almost every major art museum has an impression of at least one of his
three best-known prints.
“But to purchase an early impression of any of Dürer’s three master
engravings in very good condition would cost hundreds of thousands of
dollars today,” says Gallo. Dürer’s
St Paul had been engraved
the same year, maintaining the same level of technical virtuosity,
imagination, and skill. A very fine early impression can be acquired for
less than $10,000.” The lesson here applies to contemporary art as
well, such as with the much-lauded but still lower-priced photography of
Ed Ruscha.
ARTSPACE RECOMMENDS:
Don’t Be Scared Off If the Artist Is Already Too Expensive for You; Have a Strategy
If you can’t afford a work you like, keep an eye on the artist. His
or her work may show up elsewhere, says New York collector Emily Rubin,
who owns small works by
Tom Otterness, among other artists.
Other experts advise that, if money is a concern, don’t make your
first art purchase at a live auction, where bidding fever can kick in,
and where estimates already reflect secondary-market prices.
ARTSPACE RECOMMENDS:
Look to Museums for Clues
One of the most buzzed-about public art installations of recent years
(or at least outdoor-art installations) currently sits atop the
Metropolitan Museum of Art:
Transitional Object (Psycho Barn) by
Cornelia Parker.
Her recreation of the spooky film set from the 1960 Hitchcock movie
prompts London’s Alan Cristea, of the gallery that bears his name, to
suggest works by the artist. Her 2015 print series, “one day this glass
will break,” in small editions of 15, cost about $3,700 apiece.
ARTSPACE RECOMMENDS:
Look West
As the West Coast scene becomes more influential in the art world,
so does its history.
Senior advises collectors to bet on Bruce Conner. “An iconic figure
and influential artist on the West Coast and beyond, he’ll be the
subject of a traveling retrospective” organized by SFMoMA and opening at
the Museum of Modern Art in July, she says.
While Conner’s drawings can easily reach $50,000 his "#100" prints
series, published by the artist in 1971 and “relating to the felt-tip
drawings he was making at the time,” are “very accessibly priced.”
ARTSPACE RECOMMENDS:
Buy Work by Artists Trying to Say Something Timely and Important—Especially If Important People Are Listening
Art with passion and politics is rarely dismissed as decorative. Barack Obama collects work by
Glenn Ligon. Why not you?
“Glenn Ligon’s paintings, drawings, prints and sculpture explore
cultural and social identity and draw freely from literary and
pop-cultural sources,” notes Betsy Senior, founder and director of New
York veteran print shop Shopmaker and Senior.
The pick: His text-based etchings. “Phrases are repeated until
eventually dissipating into obscurity. Smudged and broken type
interferes with legibility, suggesting the viewer’s liberal and
intellectual struggle to read the [text] and understand its
implications.”
ARTSPACE RECOMMENDS:
Find 20th-Century Artists Likely to Remain in the Art History Books, and Buy Their Current or Late Works
Late works are almost always cheaper than ones done in what is
considered to be the artist’s prime, sometimes for good reason. The
artist may be repeating his or her own ideas, or producing work with
less skill and energy.
But once an artist is firmly in the canon, scholars start looking at
the whole career, and late works by Picasso, Matisse, and de Kooning are
now embraced.
A pick: Andrew Witkin, director of the
Barbara Krakow gallery, notes that 1990s prints by
Sol LeWitt and
Bob Mangold, “iconic within their work,” are available for in the low thousands.
ARTSPACE RECOMMENDS:
Finally: Do Your Research If You Want to Find Deals
Findlay, the director of Acquavella Gallery, is experienced in
selling eight-figure art but reels off a host of “cheap” works he found
when he was researching his upcoming book on collecting art, including
"small paper sculptures by Isama Noguchi and Polaroids by
Tina Barney for under $100; sculpture by Rebecca Warren and good prints by Max Ernst,
Jean Dubuffet, and
John Baldessari in the $250-$1,000 range.”
There were “under $5,000, small paintings by Ray Parker,
Christo
collages, and multiples by Jean Arp; under $10,000, a unique wall
relief sculpture from 1969 by Gerald Laing, granite sculpture by
Brazilian Iran do Espiritu Santo, and photographs by Jim Naughton,
paintings by
Jules Olitski, and Leon Golub. Obviously you are not going to get large major works but you can get good examples, not atypical.”
He concludes that, even without a lot of money, “You
can collect art.”
ARTSPACE RECOMMENDS:
![Ed Ruscha's Little Mexican Church on a Windowsill [2007 NYABF Fundraising Edition], 1970/2007](http://d5wt70d4gnm1t.cloudfront.net/media/a-s/articles/1949-655885912868/entry-points-expert-strategies-for-making-your-first-art-buy-900x450.jpg "Ed Ruscha's Little Mexican Church on a Windowsill [2007 NYABF Fundraising Edition], 1970/2007")
