budget and collecting

Collecting is choosing. Every budget is limited, so is mine. May is the month I usually spend the most money on art. This has two main reasons. The second is ArtAmsterdam, that is the biggest art fair in the Netherlands. It's mainly Dutch but it has a sturdy international component. Quality is high, some art is within my budget. The last two times I bought art and I never intended too when I went.

The first reason is the art and design sale in the Tac in Eindhoven. That's the place I started to buy art in such quantities I started collecting. Since the first time year it's kept I go and buy. This year won't be different.
Janneke Sprenkels will be there and probably Marleen v/d Heuvel or Matthijs v/d Kerkhof. Merel van Beukering and Liselotte de Groot (both on my watch list) might be there as well.
Tac is short for Temporary Art Centre. It's situated in an old Philips building. (For the Football fans: the Philips stadium, home base for PSV,is right across the street. Philips was founded in Eindhoven.) Tac is meant for creating art. There are dozens of ateliers in the building and a small dozen of multi purpose spaces. Exhibitions parties, workshops and the Art and design sale are held here. Many artists from my buy or watch list will be there so I will leave Eindhoven with a trunk full of art and ann empty wallet.

That's the easy part. There are however artists who are high on my watch list, but I'm sure I won't meet on ArtAmsterdam or in the Tac. So I'm helping faith a little bit. I e-mailed Liselotte Schuppers for a price query on the photography and I will go tomorrow to an exhibition from Liesje Reijskens in Amsterdam. Next to this I received lists from gallery Aeroplastics for Amanda Besl and Shadi Ghadirian.

The problem gets obvious far too many artists and works and not enough budget. To make things worse I've already decided to buy one large work from Carla van de Puttelaar. My biggest buy ever considering size (205 x 78 cm) and price (twice the amount from my second largest buy.) Although I will pay this in 36 months it still creates a gap in my budget.

I alomst forgot the works from Boukje Janssen which came back from New York but are stuck now at customs.

So this month it's decision time.

The least likely to buy this year is the work from Amanda Besl.
She makes paintings on small panels depicting adolescent girls.
To compensate here her picture "a beautiful moustache"



Artist's Statement of Amanda Besl:

In my recent work I try to evoke an open-ended fiction while speaking of the documentary quality of photography, the language of fashion photography, the viscosity of oil paint, and the transient nature of memory. My paintings emerge from a cultural feminine perspective, exploring the complexities of an aesthetic that fetishizes youth. The images are a string of metaphors that build series of events. The paintings are small in size in order to allow a more intimate viewing experience and to recall their history as photographic images. They pop from the wall off beveled edges to create a staccato rhythm of frozen suggestive moments. My pieces are cinematic in nature. I link seemingly unrelated sensory images which inform each other as narrative moments. The subject matter balances on the fine line between the mundane and the obscure. To view these paintings is to partake in a visual eavesdropping on the secretive world that engulfs today's girl.

I focus upon metaphors of the transient nature of adolescence. Horses act as a suggestive counterpart in paintings which are mostly devoid of human males. The fetishistic quality of these pocket-sized worlds emphasizes the idea of obsessive crushes. I am interested in heroic transformations of ordinary events which exist both as dark psychological secrets and as adult fairy tales supplanting their predecessors. These paintings are not nostalgic, except as personal nostalgia. They are not apologetic or hedonistic and have any number of possible endings or possibly no ending—just a pause, a breath.

More housekeeping.

Yesterday I installed my last piece of art I bought at ArtRotterdam. It's very fragile and really 3-d. So I had to find a spot. Where know one comes I don't know about, my cat cannot come, where there is no wind or draught.
So I placed it in my bedroom on eye level.
It consists of two small mirrors in an angle of 90 degrees and in between a transparent sheet with the text from a sermon on it, with as a subject: when does one actually exist.
The object is between two photographs, one from Isolde Woudstra on the left and one from Mery on the right.

Art Brussels 2009

This Friday I went to ArtBrussels. I should have been we but my Mfac co-student was confused by the wrong house number and never reached my house.
Artbrussels is held in the Expo next to the Atomium. It is divided into two halls. I took the backdoor because of the parking lot I'd put my car for the incredible amount of 4 euros. (I expected 10.)

I walked in and the first thing I grabbed was the floor plan. ArtBrussels is large. 172 galleries are represented. (425 wanted in) I think 3 to 4 football matches could take place in this space now dedicated to art. The next thing I did was grabbing a lunch and looking at the plan looking for familiar galleries.

Off course I should go to Ronmandos the gallery I had the invite from. I actually saw their booth just 5 hours later. I started in Hall 3 and had my first good surprise within 15 minutes. Aeroplasctics Contemporary sold paintings from Amanda Besl. Her paintings are on the first picture. They're all small, very realistic made in high detail and all from young women. I own two from her paintings. I bought them at ArtAmsterdam two years ago, my first buy from a gallery.

They had more work, I liked Shadi Ghadirian as well. But I think her fame Will make her very fast too expensive for my taste. Good for her though.
I saw a wonderful video from Antoine Roegier and missed an other one. I strolled from booth to booth saw very nice works from artists who are very well known but I had never known them. Endless my stroll was, after two hours I was just halfway hall 1 and still had one and a half hall left.
My conclusion half way therefore was. ArtAmsterdam and ArtRotterdam may be nice, but this is a different cup of tea. The quality of the art is the same, but the quantity is way larger. Luckily there was also a bar which sold good an cold Belgian beer. In total I visited them twice in my 5,5 hours walking amongst art, to drench my thirst and to rest my feet. I saw some nice works from Marina Abramovic. I thought she just made performances jeopardizing her own life. But she also makes pictures from Chinese children sleeping with M-16's.

Guided tours were held twice a day, and I joined one of the. Together with just two other people. While being guided I found out that I thought I'd covered now three quearters of the exhibition. Bu it really makes a difference which way you go through an aisle. The aisles I'd covered form left to right we now went through from right to left and while walking that way I saw completely different art.
So I'd missed a lot.
The tour was very nice. It mentioned the sculpture from picture two below. Is seems to abstract but if you look well enough a face can be seen.

After the tour I scooted through the last aisles, vsited RonMandos, and started to collect the prices and other information I wanted from the artists I really liked an were probably within my budget. The Austrian artist Marc Aschenbrenner shown by gallery Olaf Stueber (Berlin) , is one of them.
I collected my data, didn't buy a thing and went home. Dead tired but content after a 5,5 hour walk between international works of art I headed for my car.

Final cononclusion: best art fair I ever visisted, from the point of quality and quantity
Below some more overview pictures:

collecting and connecting

As a single and more living inside my head than outside it is often a lonely job being an art collector. My colleagues and friends are at least bewildered when they find out I pay as much as an inclusive two-week Holiday to Turkey for a few works of art I bought at ArtRotterdam and considered cheap.

I don;t have the budget to go with the crowd when buying, so I chase my own taste. I have no spouse or children who are dependent on me. So all the money I have left I can put in my art-budget and no one complains about it.

So I do have some urge to connect with fellow collectors who understand my problems like will I buy three photographs from Marije Arends or one from Hellen van Meene?

As an IT-consultant, to keep the headhunters away I will not specify my specialty, I have a profile on linkedin. I'm already connected to three different art groups.
The problem is however is that those artgroups are spammed by professionals in the art scene who want to sell their services, their own art work, or the art work they represent.

Somehow I was delighted when I was made aware of www.independent-collectors.com A networking site for collectors only. It's Germany based so most collectors are European. And for me an important German area as the Ruhr area is about a two hour drive by car. So very close.

The site is just starting so to start up they asked Tommi Brem to start a blog about starting collecting art. So he did here.
He is a really new not in collecting, he collected SF-books and records before this, but he is in art.

Although he is confronted with the same problems as I am. Many impressions, small budget, what to buy, why to buy. There also huge differences. He has a wife, who must be devoted to him and sometimes in complete denial of his actions. (She picked up a piece of art at German customs containing a drawing with a swastika, which is illegal in Germany.) So he cannot exceed his budget without getting up in a row with his wife. I can decide to enlarge my budget whenever I feel like it.
The other one and more important one is that I started to paddle in the sea of art by buying a painting somewhere in 1999 at a local second hand bookshop in Middelburg.
A picture of it, I show in this post. He really plunged in the deep. He has been to Art Basel with side shows and Art Basel Miami, these are fairs I've never been to.
He decided to collect. I somehow found out two years ago that I was collecting art when I had been buying for 8 years and collecting for two years.

The similarities are, we both blog and both collect and enjoy it.

Tomorrow I will go to my first foreign ArtFair. Art Brussels is just abroad, someone from my MFAC students will join me to the always surprising Belgians. Let's see what happens.

Art Antiques Fair Den Bosch

This Sunday I went to a fair I'd never gone before Art and Antiques Fair Den Bosch.

My conclusion: It wasn't a complete waste of time.

That is not a very positive remark. But I am not very positive. Art and Antiques Fair Den Bosch(in short AFH) is a pale shadow of a fair like Primavera. AFH is an old fair established in 1967 but its glance is fading. The antiques are now being replaced by contemporary art to attract younger visitors. As a young visitor (really 36 and still young) I skipped all Antiques, glanced a few times over the modern art and had a thorough look at the contemporary art. I actually saw four booths with nice art. None of them however had any pioneering art. No Tinkerbel here, this was art for the living room to replace the reproduction from Monet above the couch. Not boring, but not shocking either. As for the children's room of waiting room. Nice to look it, but in no way confronting or with a second layer. To see what I mean a nice picture from Willy Rojas. Very nice for a children's room who will enjoy it. But it cannot keep my mind busy for more than 10 seconds.

just another day at the office

So what does a collector do on a quiet Wednesday. Due to circumstances I was early away from work. So I went to the inner city of Utrecht.
At first I bought the book Puur (pure) from Mery dedicated to her project of photographing Teenage mothers.
Next I bought some white gloves to handle my art more cautiously. Some works form Boukje Janssen I recently bought, require more subtlety on handling.
After that I went to Flatland gallery to see their exhibition. It was a nice exhibition in a very nice building. I'd actually never been to that gallery. They focus on photography which I like but their aim is a little bit too high for my budget. After that I went to a second hand bookshop and bought an old catalogue from Sotheby's "photographs from the Bert Hartkamp collection" It gives a nice overview for the contemporary photography.
Finally I got home and found a letter from gallery Smarius. They sent me a special guest badge for the fair Art Amsterdam, so I can enter the preview and enter during this fair whenever I like for free.

Delivered Boukje Janssen

In law school one learns that there is a huge difference between sale and delivery. In the art world it happens all the time. It seldom happens that the moment I buy a work, I instantly can take it away.

This Friday and Saturday I got 6 works delivered. Friday morning I went to the atelier from Boukje Janssen. I had a nice chat saw some interesting work and collected 4 works of art I had bought earlier during ArtRotterdam.

I have two pictures which do some justice to the works.



As the title says: both works ar from Boukje Janssen

Tefaf

The European Fine Art Fair is by lengths, the largest art fair in the Netherlands. I was there Saturday with my group from My First Art Collection (MFAC). Tefaf is situated in Maastricht, which is by far the most European city in the Netherlands because it's very close to our neighbours Belgium and Germany and very far from most of the Netherlands. The Maastricht Treaty is also well known adding an other European feature to this city.

When you're at Tefaf. You can see the most expensive painting for sale in the Netherlands, a 26 milion euro Van Gogh. You're standing in a space about as large as ArtRotterdam and ArtAmsterdam combined. You have paid 55 euro's for a ticket which is 3 times the price for the ticket of ArtAmsterdam and probably the catalogue which is 4 times as expensie as ArtAmsterdam's , but also 8 times as heavy.

The variety of art is massive. Jewellery, pottery, furniture, paintings through the last 4 ages but also ancient weaponry and suits of armour.

My taste is more the contemporary art. And with a football field to choose from I had more than enough to watch. Very remarkable was this a life-size sculpture by Duane Hanson It looked very scarily real. It was bought by the Scheringa museum. Not all the banks seem to bothered by the credit crisis.

There were also dozens of Fontana's, Richters, Picabia's, Magritte's. The sales of these kind of works of art I usually just read about in books. And now you can go ask for the price. The price you cannot afford.
A member form the Rotterdam of Mfac asked for the price of a painting she was drooling over. The Marlene Dumas was 120.000 euro's. About ten times as much she could afford...

For our group it wasn't buying just watching. But sometimes you don't need to buy art to enjoy it.

Primavera Art Fair

Last Saturday I went to the Primavera Antiques and Art Fair in Rotterdam. I hadn't been there before so I was wondering what kind of fair this was.

The entrance fee was 10 euro's, but I had a discount and paid half . The parking ticket for my car was 10 euro's. So a parking place near the center of Rotterdam is twice as exclusive as a ticket to Primavera.

When I entered the first piece of art I saw was Balance of Destiny by Robert Heindel. It had a price tag of 120,000 euro's.

That was a mixed signal. It had a price tag. It costs 120.000 euro's, I could buy my half house for that amount. So on the one side the precence of a price tag which means middle or low end, but 120,00 euro's is a huge amount.

If you go to the Dutch high end Art Fairs like ArtRotterdam or ArtAmsterdam price tags are considered tacky. I don't know why: Everyone who has a booth on those fairs wants to make money. But it should be hidden as long as possible. I very soon found out that the painting was with some other paintings from Robert Heindel the only objects this expensive.

So I found out the fair had mainly middle class Dutch art. Most of it was figurative some abstract works. 99% under 10,000 euro's.
I'm only interested in contemporary art. There were about 40 booths with that kind of work. Next to this, jewellery, old instruments, icons and other art from previous centuries.

I like fairs because these are the only places you can compare so many various works of art in a very short time. And all the art is for sale.

This Fair was very Dutch. The art displayed ready tame. No place for Tinkerbel here. Strangely there wasn't much photography either.
An amazing kind of craftmanship I saw in the works from David Begbie. It is a sculpure from steelwire. When behind it a spotlight is placed, the shadow from the scuplture makes a briljant "drawing" from a nude.

At the end of the fair I was wondering if I would buy a work. Before the fair I had intended not to buy anything. My budget for this year has already been depleted. (more about the works I've bought this year later) And there is one fair I allways buy is at Whitsun in Eindhoven so all the money I've got left I will spend there. However the flesh is weak.
I was choosing between a work from Marianne Venderbosch "Mood"
and a work from Oskar (Spierenburg) "haarlem"

Finally I was wise and just bought a bottle like this It was painted by Douke van der Ploeg.

What did I learn: price tags are really handy. I can control myself by not buying art and I still like figurative art but I'm not swept of my feet by it.