In the world of collecting fine art there is a large misconception I encounter with clients regularly. Everyone thinks that if you have a painting and it’s old it is automatically worth alot of money. If you have thought the same your answer is here, that is absolutely false. Over the years trends and taste have changed, and rather rapidly over the past two decades or so. Previously, the market was consumed with the hierarchy of paintings, a guideline set by the French Academy in 1669! This rated the importance of paintings by subject matter in the following order History Painting, Portraiture, Genre Painting, Landscapes, and lastly stilllife painting. This ranking was based on the perceived difficulty of executing each subject matter masterfully. This thought process wasn’t rejected until the early twentieth century. So just imagine how long it takes to reprogram someone’s thought pattern after 225 plus years. There is still a large majority of people today who “can’t get” why a Jackson Pollock, Marcel Duchamp, or Jeff Koons is in a museum or worth six-seven figures.
However, Modern and Contemporary art have taken the forefront in the fine art marketplace. But where does Modernism begin? Believe it or not it’s back in 1872 with Claude Monet’s Impression, Sunrise. That’s right, French Impressionism which now might be considered passe was technically the birth of Modernism. It was the first breakaway from the French Academy and Hierarchy of Paintings. But this also explains why Impressionist Day and Evening auctions are some of the top performing sales of the year. Without Impressionism we wouldn’t have Cubism, Abstract, Expressionist, or any other form of art you can imagine. Now fast-forward from 1872 to 2020, that’s 148 years of free wielding creativity across the world. A lot of funky stuff has come to fruition. For example, upcoming at Bruneau & Co. Auctioneers we have a Modern and Contemporary Art Auction on November 30th. The featured highlight being a 60″ x 72″ oil on canvas by Eddie Martinez (b.1977). It’s estimated $150,000 to $250,000 but it could easily sell for double that and it’s from 2018. You’d be hard pressed to find a Hudson River School painting today which can perform like that. The lesson here is if you have a crazy ugly looking painting from your weirdo uncle you’re going to want to investigate it. Don’t worry about your Grandmother’s Norman Rockwell collector plates and Thomas Kincade glicee prints.
