Investigating preferences in art collecting: the case of the François Pinault Collection (original) (raw)
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ARTICLE: Collectors and Collections: Critical Recognition of the World’s Top Art Collectors
Social Forces 2015 doi: 10.1093/sf/sov116 This study examines differential recognition of top art collectors. Using the population of 617 international art collectors named by ARTnews, ArtReview, and Art+Auction from 1990 to 2011, I examine factors that affect the extent of a collector’s recognition through naming on ARTnews’s annual list of the world’s top collectors. The research draws on both humanities and sociological perspectives to model two sets of characteristics that may affect the amount of critical recognition conferred on a collector. First, conceiving that recognition is based on the art object, status characteristics of art collections are considered. Next, characteristics of the art collection’s owner (rather than the art objects themselves) are considered. Findings indicate that the extent of recognition a collector receives is based on both collection and collector attributes, even when holding the other constant. Notably, collections specializing in art originating from both culturally dominant and peripheral regions are favored with extended critical recognition, though only collectors residing in culturally dominant regions are consistently distinguished. Overall, results suggest that important overarching status characteristics of object and owner affect the extent to which elite taste and expertise are critically recognized, with the expectation that the greater the extent of recognition, the greater the validation.
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Due to the constantly growing interest in the alternative investment area, the art market has become a subject of numerous studies. By publishing sales data, many services and auction houses provide a basis for further research in terms of the latest trends. Determining the definition of the artistic value or formalisation of appraisal may be considered as quite complex issues. Statistical analysis, econometric methods or data mining techniques could pave the way towards better understanding of mechanisms occurring on the art market. The aim of this paper is, regarding this area, to identify and describe solutions (and related challenges) helping to analyse, make decisions and define state of the art in the context of intersection of econometrics on art markets and computer science. This work is also a starting point for further research.
Analysis of Price Determinants in the Art Market
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What qualities make the best-selling artworks worth so much? Does the interest of the general public influence the probability that the art will be sold in auction? The art market research focuses on various aspects that affect the potential of art as an investment. The boom of big data offers a unique opportunity to utilize its global impact and improve the present models with a novel measure. Into the econometric analysis of auction results the thesis implements a change in the Internet searching volume provided by Google Trends as a reflection of the taste and the state of mind of society. The subject of the detailed discussion are not only the price determinants, but also the factors that affect the selling probability. The findings lead to a conclusion that the proposed measure based on Google Trends is significant for determining both, the odds of selling the artwork and its price. Beside that, an important effect on the price and the probability have auction houses, the perso...
Preference for art: similarity, statistics, and selling price
2010
Factors governing human preference for artwork have long been studied but there remain many holes in our understanding. Bearing in mind contextual factors (both the conditions under which the art is viewed, and the state of knowledge viewers have regarding art) that play some role in preference, we assess in this paper three questions. First, what is the relationship between perceived similarity and preference for different types of art? Second, are we naturally drawn to certain qualities-and perhaps to certain image statistics-in art? And third, do social and economic forces tend to select preferred stimuli, or are these forces governed by non-aesthetic factors such as age, rarity, or artist notoriety? To address the first question, we tested the notion that perceived similarity predicts preference for three classes of paintings: landscape, portrait/still-life, and abstract works. We find that preference is significantly correlated with (a) the first principal component of similarity in abstract works; and (b) the second principal component for landscapes. However, portrait/still-life images did not show a significant correlation between similarity and preference, perhaps due to effects related to face perception. The preference data were then compared to a wide variety of image statistics relevant to early visual system coding. For landscapes and abstract works, nonlinear spatial and intensity statistics relevant to visual processing explained surprisingly large portions of the variance of preference. For abstract works, a quarter of the variance of preference rankings could be explained by a statistic gauging pixel sparseness. For landscape paintings, spatial frequency amplitude spectrum statistics explained one fifth of the variance of preference data. Consistent with results for similarity, image statistics for portrait/still-life works did not correlate significantly with preference. Finally, we addressed the role of value. If there are shared "rules" of preference, one might expect "free markets" to value art in proportion to its aesthetic appeal, at least to some extent. To assess the role of value, a further test of preference was performed on a separate set of paintings recently sold at auction. Results showed that the selling price of these works showed no correlation with preference, while basic statistics were significantly correlated with preference. We conclude that selling price, which could be seen as a proxy for a painting's "value," is not predictive of preference, while shared preferences may to some extent be predictable based on image statistics. We also suggest that contextual and semantic factors play an important role in preference given that image content appears to lead to greater divergence between similarity and preference ratings for representational works, and especially for artwork that prominently depicts faces. The present paper paves the way for a more complete understanding of the relationship between shared human preferences and image statistical regularities, and it outlines the basic geometry of perceptual spaces for artwork.
Art collections as a strategy tool: A typology based on the Belgian financial sector
Reasons why organizations sponsor artistic and cultural events have attracted a lot of scholarly attention. However, understanding why organizations create and develop their own collections has remained largely under investigated. This is especially striking in the financial sector where companies are well-known for owning substantial art collections. This paper has been written in order to consider two distinct aspects: understanding why financial institutions in Belgium have begun to create their own art collections and how they developed them, and then suggesting a model which enables to categorize each actor according to their policies of acquisition and their managerial objective.
Factors driving the contemporary art market : a quantitative analysis
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This paper investigates the way the contemporary art market works through a quantitative analysis of the first 155 most famous contemporary artists in the world. It empirically confirms Rosen's Superstar model (1981) and the phenomenon of density dependence proposed by Adler (1985). Results on the sample show that: 1) the contemporary art market is a winner-take-all market subject to network effects; 2) the artist's international prestige increases with the number of collections; 3) the contemporary art market is driven by the "economy of attention" (Frank 1998): the quantity sold does not depend on notoriety but on the investments of the curator/investor; market success depends on cultural success (and vice versa); trend setters foster the "star system": exhibitions depend on quantity sold and collections.
This study develops a novel 2-step hedonic approach, which is used to construct a price index for German paintings. This approach enables the researcher to use every single auction record, instead of only those auction records that belong to a sub-sample of selected artists. This results in a substantially larger sample available for research and it lowers the selection bias that is inherent in the traditional hedonic and repeat sales methodologies. Using a unique sample of 61,135 auction records for German artworks created by 5,115 different artists over the period 1985 to 2007, we find that the geometric annual return on German art is just 3.8 percent, with a standard deviation of 17.87 percent. Although our results indicate that art underperforms the market portfolio and is not proportionally rewarded for downside risk, under some circumstances art should be included in an optimal portfolio for diversification purposes.
Academy of Management Proceedings, 2017
This research examines intermediary use of categories at the micro-social level, highlighting the links between categories and gatekeeping. Use of membership categorization analysis (MCA) concepts with ethnomethodology helps to show categorical micro-foundations of intermediation in talk and text. In the case of gatekeepers (gallerists) in the high value art market, thematic analysis highlights ideal-type "good collectors" and newer "good investors," and gallerist strategies to push buyers to conform to one of these categories, often with the goal of discouraging disruptive speculation. The findings show: first, how ideal categories serve as reference points for legitimate and even "valorous" behavior, providing a discursive socialization tool; second, illegitimate categories and problem behaviors provide a moral basis for value-protecting gatekeeping, and; third, how recognized categories underlie dealers' gatekeeping, sorting and allocation, practices seen as fair and necessary for professional practice in value-enhancing gatekeeping. The paper extends our understanding of intermediaries at a micro-social level, identifies productive connections between categories and gatekeeping research, and provides exciting methodological suggestions for micro-social categories research.
I know what I like": parallel tastes in fine art consumption
Advances in Consumer Research, 2016
This paper explores taste through practices in online and offline fine art consumption. Through online communities, art expertise has become democratised beyond established institutions but online art communities represent distinct and parallel practices, tastes and cultural capital. Online expertise does not grant cultural capital offline nor impact established taste regimes.