This is the second installment of my Art Collecting 101 series. Read Part 1 here.

 
Remember the bygone days of stamp, bottle cap, matchbox or scratch ‘n’ sniff sticker collecting? The sense of satisfaction and happiness that a 20 cent sticker brought?

Those were the days before our pocket money got inflated.

Despite the hoards of deflationary trap warnings you hear of, especially from die hard opponents of austerity drive measures, our piggy banks never quite caught up with the inflation rate.

Nonetheless, we still graduated to bigger toys -  designer jeans, designer sneakers, luxury watches, cars, horses, yachts, art.

As a child collector, the strategy was simple: ask and ye shall receive. If not, stamp your feet and roll about the street. For the adult collector, Occam’s Razor will not suffice. The “rules of engagement” are, unfortunately, a little more complex…

1. Do not collect art with the single aim of making a quick buck.

A golden rule of thumb: support the artist’s career and the value (read: not price) of his works will naturally follow.

The art market is small. So small that it can be very easily manipulated by just a few reknowned collectors like author of My name is Charles Saatchi and I’m an artoholic, who could easily make or break an artist’s career.

Italian artist Sandro Chia has one sad tale to tell.

Unlike other investible assets, you must remember that behind every contemporary artwork, is a living, breathing human being. The once blank canvas, screen or space, is now a testimony to the artists’ blood, sweat, toil and soul.

Quick buck stratagies like flipping in real estate markets, trade dumping and pulling a stag on an IPO in the stockmarket, should not be applied to art investment.

2. What’s your Story?

A cohesive collection reflects the collector’s personal experiences. The chosen art works should weave together a story that expresses the collector’s life or chosen theme.

A well curated collection stimulates the senses, describes characters and conjures up settings of the collector’s story.

An effective strategy would be Michael Trant’s Three Anchors strategy: each collection should have three anchor pieces: a work from a well known artist, an emerging artist and an unknown artist.

3. Engage.

Every piece you buy should have a Wow! factor. Whether it is the artist’s compelling motivation, technique, style or story, the artwork should engage your senses.

Try not to be distracted by the lure of the gallerists’ investment calls.

Role Models

If you need role models to aspire to, here are two of mine:

1. Steve Cohen - the only hedge fund manager with street creds, whom I revere.

image by Annie Lebovitz for Vanity Fair

The estimated worth of the Cohen Collection is 450m$ and includes the following legendary artworks:

* The Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living - Damien Hirst: 8m$ (from Charles Saatchi) *  Police Gazette – Willem de Kooning: 63.5m$ * Woman III – de Kooning: 137.5m$ * Madonna – Edward Munch: 11.5m$ * Le Repos – Pablo Picasso: 34.7m$ * Marilyn – Andy Warhol: 80m$

2. Woffles Wu – celebrity platic surgeon

Woffle’s impressive botox-funded 12000 sq ft Maosoleum - which features more than 200 pieces of Chinese contemporary art, cost more than 100,000S$ to set up. Sure, in comparison to Steve’s collection, this might seem like Little League .

Nonetheless 1/3 of the size of his collection is all I need to relive the happiness that my prized 30 cent root beer flavoured sticker brought 2.5 decades ago.

Image via relax.com.sg

Unlike demand & supply, the bard & the economist doth not an equilibrium point  make.

That is, until the arrival of Lew Duffey. His poem, High Finance, is like an op-ed imbued with fluid rhythm and rhyme that does poetic justice to the elusive chase after a truly enlightened economy.

High Finance

Our politicians today will tell you the economy is strong.

Who among us can really tell if they are right or wrong?

However questions keep playing across this uneducated mind.

If they ever analyzed the fact I wonder what they would find.

The first question is a simple point of definition.

What is it that they call a strong economy? Do they mistake it for inflation?

Yes, some who are already blessed with great earthly riches say the economy is strong.

However the middle class is paying for their wonderful success so this cannot last long.

Let me tell you what I believe a strong economy would be.

There would be enough food, clothes, housing and comforts for you and also me.

And there would be more left over to help those who have no home but live in boxes under some tree.

When anyone was seen in need they’d never have to ask, for there would be people who would simply want to help them out and try to guard their health

Yes, those multi-million dollar businesses would want to share their wealth.

For their millions will serve no purpose when there is no middle class.

Without the balance of distribution of wealth, it will soon simply pass.

And when there are no more weak to trod upon, this is a fact of science

That it will simply be a matter of a battle of the giants.

Aggression begets aggression and anger brings the same.

So our strong economy is really only strong in name.

Strength means balance and balance tips the scales not at all.

When the scales are tilted our economy is doomed to fall

- Lew Duffey

Once upon a time, Hugh Grant’s reputation may have been tarnished by a certain not-so-Divine Ms. Brown. What he needed, was a red herring to shift the spotlight away from this peculiar saga. Thanks to a fling with Elizabeth Taylor while soaked up in drunken stupor one evening, he got his wish.

I’m referring to the Andy Warhol painting of Ms. Taylor that Grant sold after a 6 year embrace. No more the foolish cad with very unconventional taste, say hello to the £11million richer art connoisseur!

Investing in or collecting Art, is as much of an art as the Art itself.

Luck, timing, perception, strategy are elements of a game to which we sometimes have little control over. Quoi de neuf. Unless you had every one of your tentacles dipped in every social directory of every industry.

That said, to start off with, there are two things we, as budding collectors can do, to mitigate any unintended consequences of our ignorance:

1. Tree of Knowledge

Research, read, remember. As with most investments in our neo-liberal capitalist world, you can never acquire too much knowledge about the commodity you wish to invest in.

Remember: The search is NEVER over.

2. Fall in Love

Ditch ye olde Wall Street adage. Unlike stocks, bonds and most other non-aesthetic financial products currently in existence, you SHOULD fall in love with your art investments.

I know of collectors whose art investment holding periods lasted longer than their marriages. Patience is surely a virtue, as art is a long-term investment.

But that does not mean that you need to deprive your eyes of aesthetics, your soul of metaphysical experience, nor your mind of thought-provoking intelligence.

Classic Contemporary: Contemporary Southeast Asian Art from the Singapore Art Museum Collection

Featuring: Agus Sugawe, Suzann Victor, Matthew Ngui, Simryn Gill, Redza Piyadasa, Jim Supangkat, Nindityo Adipurnomo, Agnes Arellano, Natee Utarit and Montien Boonma.

Where: Singapore Art Museum at 8Q

When: 29 January 22010 to 2 May 2010

—————————————

(Agus Sugawe, Cindera Mata A La Indonesia, 1996 Mixed Media)

With a clever oxymoron as the title of this exhibition, the Singapore Art Museum (SAM)’s playful intention is to provoke the question “what makes a work of art classic or contemporary“, by drawing from its collection of iconic contemporary artworks.

Billed as an “accessible and quirky exhibition, (it) aims to introduce new audiences to the ideas and art forms of contemporary art.”

“  A stellar cast of painting, sculpture, video, photography, performance art from across Southeast Asia are brought together and given the red-carpet treatment, and the whole of the SAM 8Q building is transformed into a dramatic stage for these stars and icons. Yet beneath the glamour, many of the artworks also probe and prod serious issues – often asking critical and challenging questions about society, nation and the history of art itself  “

New and veteran lovers of the Contemporary Art scene can look forward to a great program lined with curatorial lectures, artist presentations, movie screenings and performances.

More info here.

I am not usually enthusiastic about receiving snail mails these days.  Aside from bills, bills and more bills, I have my complimentary bloomberg magazine to look forward at best… and faux property guru junk mail, at worst.

So I was delighted when a package from a local artist who goes by the tagline: Eros de la Astro, finally arrived at my desk. The anticipation was well worth the wait, as the “oohs and ahhs” from my fellow traders would testify.

As elusive as his tagline suggests, Bernard K‘s artworks are intended to provoke our perception of reality, in the way that surrealist artist, René Margritte‘s works forced viewers to “become hypersensitive to their surroundings”.   

To “transcribe” a 3D effect onto a 2D canvas, each T-shirt is individually screen-printed, and then painted by hand. Wearable Art this may be, but I think I would prefer to preserve the artistry by having it framed.

If you are interested to see more works, do drop the artist a note at tbdcco@gmail.com, and say that you were referred by thangdynasty.

With a voracious hegemonic mandate of achieving seamless-ness, Social Media has been extending its tentacles into every nook and cranny of the real economy.

Virtual exchanges of gifts and grattitude are great. Online communications, fabulous. But it is after all, still the five senses that govern our innate affinities in the offline world.

Perhaps you are an artist, photographer, interior designer or a contented home maker with an eye for aesthetics, and steady hands for creative capturing of beautiful moments and monuments. If only those Kodak moments could have been immortalized on canvas.  

Thanks to Mashable for sniffing out bright sparks of genius, we can now turn to Canvaspop for such a service: uploading and printing any iPhone, Flickr, Facebook photo or digital art, onto a real canvas to mount onto a real wall.

It has been said that his tattoo-works evoke a slight Tim Burtonesque quality. But to compare this reknowned artist-tattoist to anyone, no matter how legendary, would do Leon Lam-Hien‘s art gross injustice.

This beautiful painting I received from a very generous and talented Leon, is now a precious part of my very humble stable of contemporary artworks. To say that I adore this Currently Untitled artwork, is yet another gross  understatement.

 Just like the impromptu methodology he uses in his work as a tattooist, there is much free flowing spontaneity in the manner in which Leon employs his colours and executes his brush strokes. Even the choice of  subject for this tableau was left to providence via masterful tilting of the canvas upon application of the paints, and a clever interpretation of the contours of the paints thereafter.

(Sometimes) the contemporary artworld can appear pretentious, with many artists constantly striving to ascribe profound meaning to their (sometimes) technically questionable artworks Don’t get me wrong here. As an INTP, I revere great… and perverse thinkers and the importance of concepts. That said, brilliant ideas are never an excuse for inattention to the mastery of fundamental techniques for execution.

What I love about Leon’s work, is this deliberate absence of a pre-determined fabrication of a political statement, a creative idea or a clever concept.

It just Is.

Thanks to Daniel Komala, CEO of Larasati Auctioneers and the good people at the Big O, I had the privilege of receiving a copy of renowned Indonesian sculptor, Pintor Sirait‘s limited edition race cars catalogue – an artwork in itself (Blankanvas has a wonderful review here).

The exhibition entitled Pintor’s Race Cars Come to ION Orchard, in which life-sized stainless steel re-creations of F1 cars were proudly displayed last month, may have ended its run. The after-taste of Pintor’s intellectual provocations however, continues to linger on.

A product of the International Political Economy (IPE) school of thought, which is a rigorous yet humble study of the common man, I uncovered memories of buried IPE concepts that quite naturally juxtaposed with experiences of my growing up as an individual. An F1 fan long before it became the novel toyboy of Singapore’s It crowd,  my appreciation of Pintor’s artworks stems from the fact that I can relate to them from aesthetic, sporting and intellectual points of view.

But before I get too carried away, let me distill any motley crews of greek symbols and  bombastic political jargons that plague Ivory Towers of the world, into two intuitive concepts: Love and Power - cleverly forged into Pintor’s fine sculptures.

Disclaimer: This entry is a personal interpretation and appreciation of Pintor’s works. They may or may not align with the sculptor’s intention.

I may be an atypical Singaporean living in the Land of Competition… and Fines. Nonetheless, I am not immune to occassional spurts of abject adherence to the Hobbsian(*) spirit of outrunning all the Lim’s, Tan’s, Wong’s AND Chong’s.

*For the uniniated, Thomas Hobbes said, in Chapter 11 of Leviathan: “… a general inclination of all mankind a perpetual and restless desire of power after power, that ceaseth only in death”

Our primal instinct to be the fittest survivor, drives and motivates us toward our goals. What capitivates me about Formula 1, is its display of how humans have learned over thousands of evolutionary years, to leverage on and in a sense, to co-operate à l’esprit de corps, with simple tools and complex machines, to overcome their inherent limitations and obstacles.

Target, 2008

But victory for the self-serving individual can come at a price. For all the chequered flags conquered, how many tons of fuel have been depleted? How much closer are we to the eventual destruction of Gaia? Indeed, even beyond F1 circuits, victory involves a process of creative-destruction.

Victory can taste as sweet as heaven. It can also be as destructive as the fiery flames of hell.

Victory, 2008

Our history is rife with global political dissonance and the cruelty of the two world wars and countless other ideological and religious battles have shown that our barbaric reduction can produce catastrophic results.

Even if our original intention was born of a noble and just cause, strict adherence typically skews it off-tangent to produce dogmatic and disastrous consequences: think about the Spanish Inquisition, Communism, the war against Terrorism… and Josie Lau’s short-lived foray into the realm of power at AWARE.

Even Democracy (which began in Athens in 508 B.C) has, in many social enclaves, become a tarnished brand, thanks to the Washington Consensus. Big, bad Capitalists in favour of unconditional liberalization and de-regulation, are the reason why many believe, 60% of the world population continue to live in poverty.  For every month of an investment banker’s bonus, another impoverished soul’s livelihood is destroyed.

Democracy, 2009

At some point in the rat race (typically when quarter-life crisis hits), we question blind quests and try to make sense of it. What makes it all worthwhile? What gives life meaning? Why am I working so hard?

The glue that binds it all: Love.

The force that calibrates and centers us all: Love.

I see the encapsulation of Love and its offshoots – beauty (not exclusive to aesthetic beauty), desire, drive, compassion, passion  and procreation, in Pintor’s tongue-in-cheek work, Playboy (no offense to Feminists out there).

As most athletes will avow, the only real competitor is yourself. And to me, the only real target in life is the continuing betterment of onself and ultimately the betterment of mankind.

Playboy, 2008

Three cheers to Larasati for highlighting Pintor Sirait’s works, and for their continuing efforts in promoting Asian and Southeast Asian art. I’m definitely keeping a lookout for more of such outreach programmes and exhibitions.

A chichi Sex in the City-styled alternative to the MoMA Stores comes to New York’s Madison Avenue. Expect to find everything from books to prints to other ”special objects” related to familiar names like Damien Hirst and Jeff Koons.

Images via highsnobiety: