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What To Look For When Buying Art Apart from those buying art to invest, the strongest advice we can give when looking to buy is to resolve 2 questions to yourself:- Here are some pointers which you might want to think about. Look and Think about Art whenever you see it You will stand a better chance of deciding to buy something when you have spent time looking at art wherever and whenever you see it. There is an abundance of art and artistic images everywhere – from magazines, offices, friends houses, shops, TV. When you see something, make a judgement about it and then analyse why you formed that judgement. It will help you understand what you like looking at and why. By practising this, like anything else, your mind will gradually start to instinctively recognise that which truly gives pleasure to you. Most importantly, it will allow the art to talk to you before you impose your judgement on it. There is of course a downside to this. Although an imprecise science, the more you become aware of what you like, when you do discover it, you are likely to find that other art lovers will also have shared that admiration. And that means higher prices! However the market is very imperfect giving a mass of opportunity to discover good value in an artwork. Find Your Own Way to Learn For some, immersing in an art history book, watching TV and reading magazines is an invaluable way of developing the knowledge and judgement to understand better what you like about art. This can pay real dividends in the end. However, it is not absolutely necessary in order to find and appreciate the art you like. The only way to do this properly is to get yourself close to real art and to see it for yourself. In the words of Thomas Hoving (Former director of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art), “saturation” is key. See Art up close before you Buy Seeing art up close blasts the buyer’s senses in a way that can’t be achieved from any other approach. Viewing online can never capture the true essence of a great picture, colour and life are sanitised whenever digitisation occurs. Another reason for seeing before you buy is that no obligations return clauses, whilst essential when buying online, are rarely used even when sthe picture does not quite live up to expectations. Sales people are very aware of the moral pressure on us all to doggedly support a bad decision than to acknowledge mistakes to others. Appreciating Art is like Sport Although appreciating art is ostensibly very simple, good perception, analysis and judgement usually takes regular practice to achieve and maintain. Therefore it is important to apply those looking skills on a regular basis to keep them in tip top condition. Talk and Look at Art Talking about art can, for many, give even more pleasure than the act of actually looking at it! This is not necessarily a bad thing, because if talking knowledgeably about a subject is what turns you on then why not use it to engage in your pleasure! Talking also helps to assemble thoughts and ideas in your mind in a coherent way. So it is good to converse and doing so regularly and often can give you the best of all worlds! Visiting galleries with companions is fun, as is perhaps playing games that invite subsequent discussion and debate. All can further your understanding, your perception and your enjoyment. How about selecting your favourite pieces in private and then discussing each others choices afterward. You could make your games specific to answering particular questions such as finding the artwork that best juxtaposes contrasting colours or that which has assembled a most unusual selection of objects within a single composition. Look, Study and Think about all Art Our brains are oriented to examining things we enjoy. However, we can often hone our skills by spending a little time examining, reflecting and concluding on art that we do not instinctively enjoy. Thinking about why you dislike a piece can be as useful as analysing why you love it and should help you enhance your skills at differentiation between the good and the great. It may also flush out some preconceptions that you may have had and open an opportunity to appreciate yet more strands of art and therefore additional sources of appreciation. Buy Periodicals There are many art magazines sold – find ones whose style you enjoy and absorb over not only what they are discussing but the way in which they are describing them. Getting inside the minds of art journalists is a good shortcut to finding some hooks to art and of helping provide an orientation before actually seeing any “in the flesh”. Bring your Personal Music Player Hiring a recorded guide when visiting a public gallery is often a useful way to glean interesting facts surrounding the context of a painting. Listening to music (provided of course that it doesn’t disturb others) from the same period as the art, can also be invaluable bringing in a flavour and connection to the times at which the art was developing. Art in general emerges with influence of other events and movements. It is no surprise that Pop Art was transforming art at the same time as the Beatles were revolutionising popular music, contraception via the pill was revolutionising relationships and youth culture, fashion and hedonism had taken hold in Britain from a baby boomer, war baby generation. All these factors had been working in tandem and all generated their own particular brand of innovation and creativity. Specific Examination of an Art Piece When looking at art in a gallery, the following might be a useful checklist to consider. Obviously, were you to do this for everything you saw, you would need 1000 scribes to keep up with it. However it might provide some pointers should you want to record your viewings for some reason, whether to help you make a final decision from a shortlist of exquisite pieces or as a basis for research and cataloguing. It is especially useful when intending to buy an older piece. 1.Artist Name, title of work, nationality, period, material, dimensions 2.Full visual description including any marks, flaws or other distinguishing aspects 3.Condition 4.Art Movement / Style 5.Provenance 6.Your Initial Observations thoughts and impressions from your online inspection Well, in art there is no such thing as being right, but practice in looking and thinking about art will help you find the confidence you need to make the right choices. And having made them, you may be amazed at the amount of joy a spectacular piece will give you, thus further developing your confidence in art!
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