Afternoon:
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This week, amid panicked reports that an unfinished Lucian Freud sold for only £5.4 million, I began to pray for a full-scale crash of the overinflated art market. What a massive relief that would be. I might even be able to buy a painting now and again.
In my own small way I've been collecting art for years. Not like Daria Zhukova, but if I saw something I liked and had money to spare, I'd buy it. Now I have a few pieces by British pop artists such as Blake, Tilson and Paolozzi, a small Gormley and some sculptures by my dad. Nothing flashy, just a range of objects that give me pleasure every time I see them.
In the past few years, though, I've bought barely a thing. Despite having more money to spare, prices have spiralled way out of my reach.
Perhaps because I was brought up by parents who painted and sculpted I've never been afraid of buying art. Of course, it's a subjective process but my painter mum taught me a simple rule. If you're not sure about a piece, just imagine living with it. It's amazing how quickly I can feel physically sick visualising a life dominated by, say, an amorphous piece of neon plastic.
At the Frieze art fair last weekend I applied this trick and spent much of the day nauseous. After three hours of looking, I hadn't found a single piece I liked. Demand was down on last year, apparently, and no wonder.
Amid the Prada-wearing social X-rays and the trendies in ironic tweed, there were serious art collectors. Even Charles Saatchi stalked the stalls. Yet what was there to buy? The 150 galleries were punting insulting scribbles, half-arsed sketches and studenty, mixed-media explosions galore. Substantial work was hard to spot and if you had the nerve to ask eye-poppingly overpriced, especially considering how sloppy the execution frequently was. Most artists don't make much money just ask my dad so I rarely begrudge them the chance to turn a fast buck. But half the pieces on sale were so poorly made they wouldn't last a decade.
I came away feeling I'd witnessed nothing more than an enormous dirty protest. This wasn't art, it was decadence, a mirror to London's recent insane excesses. Money has ruined art, I thought. It's made the artists lazy and the bloated buyers have lost all sense of taste. An almighty, sobering crash will do us all the world of good.
Reader views (2)
How refreshing to read Charlotte Ross's column, and how true, the hype goes far beyond the talent, and it is about time people woke up, junk is junk no matter how you may hype it, long live good art, it doesnt need be the top artist the million dollar tag, just good art well painted/ sculpted etc., and as we are in the art business so we should know.There is such a lot of great talent about, why be taken in by rubbish.
- P.J.Gell, London UK
A lovely article, Charlotte, obviously from the heart.
As a working artist, I empathise with your parents and reflect on how fortunate you were to be nurtured by two obviously sensible and sensitive people who taught you to discern good art from dross. Now I am considered too old to teach art (or anything else for that matter), I have been free for the past few years to spend my life doing what I always wanted to do - paint! Over the years, I have watched whatever flavour of bright young thing was ascendant at any given moment and the thing they seem to have always had as a species is a love of quickly and badly made, but breathtakingly expensive trash that one couldn't live with for more than a moment, neither do they have any clue about the great sweep of the art history of the world that should inform civilised tastes.
Maurice Saatchi and his ilk are nothing more than snake-oil salesmen, and the poor dummies that buy the stuff you so accurately describe are suffering a very severe dose of the 'Kings New Clothes' syndrome.
- Kiwi Expat, London, UK
