Is Art Recession Proof?
"Art is recession proof."
If you spend time among art world people, follow galleries or auction houses on social media, or else are a collector yourself, you’ve probably heard this, especially from people who sell art.
In many ways, this is a misleading claim because, of course, any specific artist’s work isn’t anything-proof. Art is a tricky category (as I’ve mentioned here before), as its value is cultural and, unlike a stock, isn’t tied to the tangible, quantifiable value it delivers (say, units of product, or— in this day and age— eyes on ads). But it’s true, as a category, art holds its value better than the stock market, and the art market tends to bounce back faster than the S&P 500.
Portrait of Edith Gregor Halpert by Samuel Halpert, 1928
So those are our givens, but within the context of economic uncertainty, I think there are far more interesting things to discuss, like *what* people start to buy when cash is tight rather than the *how much* of what they already own.
To explain what I mean, let's rewind about 9 decades when another economic downturn, the Great Depression, changed buying habits, significantly affecting not only the art market, but art history.
Trying to keep business afloat, gallerists like Edith Halpert were scouring the attics in rural areas of the United States for family folk art heirlooms— those weathervanes and crudely rendered 19th century portraits— to sell to New Yorkers looking for a less cash intensive way to collect art.
The rise in popularity of folk art in the 1930s was extremely influential on the history of modern art in America. The Museum of Modern Art, which opened in 1929 and had great folk art collector Abby Aldrich Rockefeller as a founder, used folk art as a foundation on which to build the legitimacy of American modernism.
Picasso and the like looked to the so-called “primitive” arts of Africa? Well, we had our own “primitive" artists to look to for similar inspiration.
So back to the present: I wonder, could something similar happen as we become ensconced in a new economic downturn? Will the relative “discount” on the work of women artists attract price-conscious collectors, bolstering their market for the future?
Only time will tell—but if you want a front row seat sign up for the Less Than Half Collecting Membership, where I’ll teach you how to be a matron of the arts by collecting and supporting the work of women artists.