Type or masterpiece? When the size is the main variable

A couple of days ago, Christie’s international head of postwar and contemporary art, Brett Gorvy, told to the French financial newspaper Les Èchos that the most of the people who are spending millions at post-war and contemporary auctions were unknown to Christie’s three years ago. He said also that these new collectors, most of them from Asia, are advised directly by Christie’s and, of course, that they look for masterpieces (here). In the meantime, everyone who is trying to buy emerging artists, will tell you that it has become extremely hard to find pieces available at a reasonable price on the primary market, even if the artist is very young and with a poor cv.

 

It may follow that most of the people who are trying to collect emerging artists are looking for the masterpieces which the rich auction houses’ market is nowadays extremely hungry of. It could sound an obvious assumption, but it generates at least two questions difficult to answer: what is exactly a masterpiece? And, is the “masterpiece” category applicable to nowadays art practice? We don’t think so.

 

First of all, if one considers “masterpiece” to be the most important piece produced by an artist in his career, then one should wait until the last artwork has been done before deciding. It would be possible to identify the Leonardo’s masterpiece, or the Caravaggio’s one. After a panel discussion with experts we may also be able to spot the Rothko’s best work. But what about contemporary masters such as Gerhard Richter, Jeff Koons or Damien Hirst? Is their masterpiece their biggest piece in size, or the earliest one, or the most published, or the one collected by the big museum, for that matter?

 

From this point of view the answer to our the second question will come easy. Even if a work is nice, huge in scale, or the most web-friendly one, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it is either to be considered a masterpiece, or that it will be so in the future. A masterpiece ought to prove its status in the long term, and from an historical perspective too. That is to say a work of a certain artist turns into a masterpiece when the maximum market value corresponds to the highest cultural value. Reaching one of these elements is enough to hope, but it’s anyway not a certainty.

 

Moreover, just as Richter, Koons, Hirst, or Guyton too, the generation of artists born in the Eighties is producing specific “types” of artworks, instead of one-of-a-kind pieces, or series of the same work. This is precisely what the market is asking for – thus not masterpieces, but iconic pieces. The Fontana’s or Rothko’s strategy is winning. Every work is unique, but perfectly recognizable at the same time as part of a precise group. The differences are basically in the size, color, and year of production. Wade Guyton is a good example: flames, X, monochrome, U, all of these are “types”, not series, conceived in order to diversify the production and keeping the “style” clearly recognizable.

 

The problem is that when the “type” substitutes the masterpiece the value of the artwork tends to depend almost exclusively on the size and it generally means that the economic value is overwhelming the cultural one. But can you imagine the Monna Lisa three meters long?

 

July 18, 2015