January 2008
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Alan Bamberger and I are jogging down Grant Avenue on our way to a First Thursday art opening at the John Berggruen Gallery. Actually, Bamberger—tall, lean, with bushy gray hair—is jogging. He’s got a camera in one hand and a markedup list of 32 galleries we’re scheduled to visit, all within the next three hours, clutched in the other. I’m trailing him, resisting the idea that looking at art should be associated with speed or quantity.
I think it’s a losing battle, though. Along with virtually everything else (including the word virtual), the Internet has completely altered how we buy art, as has the proliferation of international art fairs. The art world has opened up dramatically in the past few years: now just about everyone, anywhere, can be a collector. The art fairs, which have made buying art seem like a trip to the mall, have a good deal to do with this.
Even with the current downturn, a robust economy has helped, as has contemporary art’s democratic use of materials, incorporating everything from dirty bedclothes to dried animal dung to graffiti. Not only is buying art more fun and more connected to people’s lives, but, according to San Francisco gallery owner Catharine Clark, “The art world has become such a spectacle, such a ‘scene,’ that more people want to get in on that. Collecting is not just the terrain of the wealthy.”
As a result, while a decade ago the Bay Area had just 10 or 12 major collectors, there are at least twice that many today.
The group still includes such boldface names as Don and Doris Fisher, Norman and Norah Stone, and Richard and Pamela Kramlich. But there are many new faces— people like Didier Hirsch, who amassed a great collection buying online; Martin Maguss and Mari Iki, who have to watch what they spend; and Robert Mailer Anderson and Nicola Miner, young parents who in the past might have waited till their children were grown to begin buying art.
All this enthusiasm has doubled and tripled prices. That even holds true for photographs, prints, and the work of young artists, the traditional lower-priced starting points for new collectors. It used to be that when someone graduated with an MFA, you could buy a piece of his or her artwork for $5,000. Now it’s closer to $50,000.
And with the ever increasing number of eager art
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