A Red-Hot Art Market?

At least four magazines have published articles recently on the "red-hot art market". Time is the latest; others include Vanity Fair and W Magazine; I forget where I saw the other one. These articles have all talked about the millions of dollars being thrown into art auctions at Christies and Sotheby's. One article had a serious discussion with some art-world bigwigs about how an individual should spend a million or more to build an art collection. There was also a lot of talk about how scouts are trolling art schools to find the latest hot sensation. As a working artist, I have one question:

What "hot" art market?

For most living artists, the art market began a downswing in about 2000, and then collapsed almost entirely over the next couple of years. Good galleries went belly-up left and right. Sales on the art festival circuit plummeted. It appears that the slide has stabilized over the past year or so, but I don't think it has recovered any lost ground yet.

The reason: America's middle class has been under seige for the past six years. Job security is almost nonexistent. Even with the current job growth, people still have fresh memories of business closures, job losses, and pay cuts. Real take-home pay has declined. Consumer confidence is way down. Art is the first thing people cut when times are tight, and the last thing to be restored. And there's no restoration happening yet.

The "market" they're talking about is the tiny tip at the top, where multibillionaires throw money around like it's nothing. It's the same one that the Barrett-Jackson auto auction cater to, where somebody will spend a million bucks on a 1970 Plymouth Barracuda. We saw similar feeding frenzies in the dot com boom of the late 90's and the housing price boom in this decade. So, in other words, the market is being driven by greed, speculation, and the desire to one-up the neighbors. It's not about art at all.

I think the only way to fix this is the same way we fix the rest of America: restore the middle class's security and income. It's the middle class that supports working artists. When people are secure, upwardly mobile, and confident that things will continue that way, they buy art.

Working artists are the canaries in the cultural coal mine. If you really want to know how confident America is, ask a working artist. You can forget about those in the "red hot art market".