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.

Amsterdam

For 15 years I've been living in Eindhoven. There goes the proverb "The only good thing in Amsterdam is the train back to Eindhoven." Nowadays I live in Utrecht, which is 80 kilometers closer to Amsterdam. Utrecht even looks like Amsterdam. An overcrowded city center. Parking problems combined with huge parking costs. Entering the city center by car without a TomTom or ten years experience is impossible. On the positive side. Because of the crowd everything is always happening. There are beautiful canals. The ancient city center has lovely buildings. By foot or bike you can reach any destination within 10 minutes.
The main difference between Utrecht and Amsterdan is, that Amsterdam is about three times as large. Both city center and city.

I had a meeting in Amsterdam for "My first art collection" We discussed how a gallery owner makes his prices and how taxes mingle with art. The latter one was discussed with Sigrid Hemels lecturer at Leiden University. She wrote a Dutch book for non-tax lawyers about that subject.

After the meeting being in Amsterdam I decided to go to the Melkweg for the exposition Pure from Mery I previously wrote about.
The exposition was overwhelming. I usually don't see many pregnant women. I never see them nude and I never ever saw 75 together in one building. Most amazing was that Mery was capable of showing each woman as an individual. All pictures were really different. I am happy to own two of these pictures.
A print 140 x 90 cm is 1000 euros one size smaller is 650 euros and 40 x 55 cm is just 250 euros.

Walking from the gallery "Serieuze zaken" to the Melkweg I encountered about 4 galleries which I all entered and where I studied the works of art.

After that I went to gallery RonMandos at the Prinsengracht. I encountered again about 4 galleries which I entered and where I studied the art.
At Ronmandos I was amazed about the huge gallery, which was just exhibiting two artists. I had a nice chat with the two employees and the quality was pretty high although not my collector's taste.

Now it was rather late so I just visited two unplanned galleries and went to "Eduard Planting fine art photography"
I saw beautiful pictures there and two very scary pictures. Loretta Lux showed these two.
Have a close watch to see WHY they're so scary.

Then I finally got lost towards Koch en Bosch That gallery I bought my works form Marjo van den Boomen. (having a baby so not on the art mood right now) My remarks about this exposition won't do it justice. The artist "mijn schatje" is a girl and she is mainly bought by girls.
Have a look at the picture. In an edition of 70 it is just 95 euros, Which I consider a bargain. All other works are under 1000 euros as well. If you anywhere like this get your work of art.

I really have to admit. Amsterdam is amazing with regard to the amount and quality of galleries. Probably half of all the galleries in the Netherlands are in Amsterdam. I just walked through a part of Amsterdam and saw dozens of interesting galleries.
Content I took the train back to Utrecht. Not the only good thing but still the best.


PS I bought a work of art yesterday night and I am really content about it.
Close visitors have seen that I moved one artist from "watching" to "in collection"
More Later.

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.

Really looking at art

Since February I've been attending the course My first art Collection. The course is aimed to help the student create an real art collection.

One part of the Course was last Saturday. We went to the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag (Municipal museum The Hague)
There we were welcomed by the curator contemporary art
Doede Hardeman and Professor Kitty Zijlmans. (lecturing contemporary art)

This day we would enter the depot of the museum. (This seldom happens to non-museum co-workers. ) There we would watch some 19 paintings and photo's, from which had to select five objects in couples.

I couldn't say the depot was awesome, but impressive it was. On the racks were the Mondriaans (largest collection in the world) and many many other works of art. About a football field filled with racks which had art attached to it.

The aim was to be more aware of our norms we had for liking art. We had a homework assignment to describe a work of art and to argument why we liked the work.

Below here I translated my home work to English and made some additions which I was made aware during the course.

"Boom van een kerel” "Men Tree" (2006) by Sanneke Duijf

The work is mostly a painting which has a 3-D addition made of wire. The painting depicts the upper half of man which transfigures at the neck to a leafless tree. In the background there are some other trees. The wire forms the branches of the tree which come forward out of the painting towards the viewer.

In the all paintings four colors are being used, black white, light grey and dark grey. The most part of the painting the forms are sturdy. However details are visible the man's white shirt has got detailed button and collar. The highest and smallest branches form the tree are detailed pictured too.

What really stands out is the sturdy composition. This combined withe the title (which is in Dutch an expression) makes quite clear what the painting want to express. The man tree figure stands big in the middle of painting. The size about 80 x 90 centimeters makes that the figure is as large as in life.

The black and white part, the jacket and the shirt are treated with varnish, that's why these parts shine and make the man part stand out of the tree part. One could also say that the varnished part is just the clothing of the man tree.

The wire comes about 40 centimetres forward and is part of the tree. It will create shadows on the branches making extra branches when spotlight is directed to the painting.

I like the painting because of the good execution of the simple concept man tree (boom van een kerel) The concept has been worked out clearly with simple means (colors and large areas) The distinction between man and tree is made extra by varnishing the shirt and jacket. Next to this the extra wire literally gives another dimension.

The concept man tree stands central. Some details were added. The trees in the back, the detailed shirt. These make the painting more real and vivid. The tree seems part of a forest and you can unbutton the shirt.

back to the workshop

The question which was posed during the workshop was why is a piece of art beautiful. If you have strong emotion for a piece of art you have that feeling for a purpose. Feelings are short-cuts to make us act fast, because something important happens. Every emotion has a reason. I you find out, what created the emotion you are better able to select art of your liking and you are aware why you like the particular works of art.

Some findings of my own. At must be unusual, must make me think or amaze. I also like craftsmanship and a good concept. Both should be present in art.

At the end of the workshop we were asks which work we would buy from the 19. Strangely I chose a work not in the selection of 5 we chose as a couple and which one was not my favorite.

Why? More about this in my post: my second art collection. (coming this Tuesday)