June 2006 Archives
Fedex frustrations
It was a long, hot and frustrating day, spent working and trying to tie up loose ends in New York. I've finally got my advance parole, which allows me to leave the country – which I'm doing tomorrow. Michelle left a day earlier (today), and texts me on her way to the airport that I have a package waiting for me at the FedEx depot on Leroy Street in the West Village. Since we'll be gone for a while, I take a subway over there with the door tag (marked "Salmon") and my driver's license. But when I get there, I'm told that they can't give me the package, because it's addressed to Michelle Salmon and not Felix Salmon. Michelle Salmon, of course, doesn't exist: if Michelle went to pick up the package, they'd tell her that she couldn't have it either, because it was addressed to Michelle Salmon and not Michelle Vaughan. But just to rub things in, the FedEx people do divulge to me that the package contains... bread. Which means that if we ever do get the package, on our return, it will be inedible, and possibly alive. There's nothing I can do, so I get on another subway back home. Yet another hour of my life I'll never get back. But let this be a lesson to you all: don't ever try to be clever when addressing packages. Make sure the name on the package is the same as the name on our photo ID, or there's a good chance we'll never get what you're sending.Posted by Felix at 22:03 EST | Comments (2)
Best Restaurant Ever
There are very few reasons ever to visit the western suburbs of St Louis. In fact, I can't think of any – or at least I couldn't think of any, until Wednesday night, when I had the great good fortune to dine at The Seventh Inn.
I was lucky to have sensible parents: ones who saw little if any point in taking children to grand restaurants. As a result, I only really started eating out in Britain long after the cliché of the local French restaurant serving Steak Diane and Beef Wellington had pretty much died out entirely. And insofar as it did exist, neither of my parents nor I ever had any interest in eating in such a place. Nowadays, of course, no one has any interest in revisiting the height of sophisticated dining in the English suburbs of 1978.
But The Seventh Inn, in a sleepy backwater known as Ballwin, Missouri, is gloriously immune to any developments in culinary history since its inception in 1972. Still run by Else and Lee Barth, its menu is almost aggressively conservative: if you click on "fowl", you'll find nothing but chicken, underneath an entire section of various Wellingtons. That said, if you give them a little notice, they'll be happy to serve you their duck special, and indeed I should imagine that you could pretty much order anything you liked from this place: while it's extremely formal, it lives up to its Midwestern location by somehow avoiding stuffiness.
The restaurant is located, weirdly enough, in the middle of an apartment complex, and is not particularly easy to find. Once you do find it, you find what I can only describe as Greek-style statuary flanking the front door, which you enter with a certain amount of trepidation. Inside you experience a degree of sensory overload which can be quite disconcerting to the uninitiated: an overabundance of silk flowers, more statues, faux-Impressionist paintings, gilt everywhere, and a maître d' who arrives in full evening dress to escort you to your table. You have a choice: you can opt either for the main dining room, with full white-gloved service featuring as much tableside preparation of dishes as you can imagine, or you can walk through the tropical-themed bar, complete with lounge singer covering Frank Sinatra tunes, to the terrace overlooking the lake and the fountain.
Once you've been seated, settle in for the long haul. First, you'll be asked if you want to order cocktails – and this is certainly the kind of restaurant where you order a martini to begin. Eventually, the menus will arrive, and after that Elsa Barth will more or less obviate the need for those menus by telling you about pretty much everything on them in glorious detail. You'll be asked if you want to order an appetizer. Our party of three suspected that the portions at The Seventh Inn would be enormous, so we went for small appetizers: a side salad, steak tartare, and Oysters Rockefeller. At some point the wine list will arrive: as you might expect from a 34-year-old restaurant with five-star ambitions, it offers suitable vintages, rather than the too-young wines which are often the only bottles younger restuarants can source.
Then, before you've been given the opportunity to order your main course (I was planning on getting the swordfish stuffed with snails), the appetizers will arrive. And they will be huge. Oysters Rockefeller – oysters! – are a meal in and of themselves, stuffed to overflowing with spinach and bacon and hollandaise. The steak tartare was a pile of raw beef roughly the size of a small loaf of bread; on top, for some reason, was an anchovy. The starters were very good, but far, far too big: we simply couldn't order a main course at that point, since it was clear from the size of the first courses that we were going to have room for maybe 15% of whatever we ordered. So Elsa Barth's mouthwatering descriptions notwithstanding, we moved on to dessert and the bill.
Elsa was disappointed, of course, but then again the restaurant does seem to be set up in such a way that it's possible to duck out of the whole meal if you're astonished, as we were, at the size of your starters. If and when I go back, I'll give them a heads-up so they can get some duck, and then I'll make sure not to order anything to begin. But I'm sure I'll leave the same way I left after my first visit: grinning like an idiot, just like I was all the way through the meal. I'm not sure why I loved the place so much, but I think it's something about the utter lack of irony. I'm sick to death of ironic kitsch, but non-ironic kitsch, it turns out, if it's also of halfways-decent quality, can actually be a lot of fun. And the food is easily the best I've had in St Louis, although admittedly that isn't saying very much.
In any case, if you do find yourself in St Louis, I heartily recommend The Seventh Inn. You'll enjoy yourself immensely, you'll have really good food, and you won't be eating at a chain restaurant. Tell Elsa I sent you.
Posted by Felix at 19:19 EST | Comments (2)
Michelle on Max and Il Bagatto
Restaurant: Max
Meal ordered:
Bottle of house rose
Fennel salad
Lamb ragu
Antipasti:
My fennel salad was lightly dressed with balsamic vinegar. I could easily taste the fennel which had been finely sliced, it was refreshing and cleansed my palate.
Pasta:
The lamb ragu was gorgeous. It was tossed with a flat spaghetti. Definitely a crowd pleaser. My only complaint was that there was too much sauce and meat, which bothered me at Lavagna. The less the cooks smother the pasta with sauce, the more empty plates would return to the kitchen. I could not finish my ragu - and all I had for an
antipasti was fennel!
I must say, food at Max is very satisfying. The food is hearty, but fresh and delicious. Because I was with friends and we were sitting outside, we chose a bottle of rose. My table ordered the ravioli and lasagna - I sampled it as well. Lovely, warm, comfort food. Max is not inventive, but cooks homemade favorites that do not disappoint. My total bill was less than Lavagna - $33 rather than $47. Money well spent.
Restaurant: Il Bagatto
Meal ordered:
Muller Thurgau 2005
Heirloom tomatoes and grilled vegetables
Spaghetti with tomatoes and basil
Antipasti:
Il Bagato's sampler of antipasti was quite tasty... pickled and grilled veggies followed by our Heirloom tomatoes... these were fresh, but not particularly flavorful.
Pasta:
My spaghetti was not fresh and the tomatoes with basil were nothing special. I wished I had ordered the pork ragu which I kept dipping into... my friend Kerry had wisely chosen something more interesting. But I decided to try something basic from the menu to see if satisfied. My conclusion was no. The pork ragu was definitely a bit better, but even then - the pasta was "imported" and not fresh. Ditto for my spaghetti. Only a couple of items on the menu featured fresh pasta.
Il Bagatto is a neighborhood favorite and East Village staple. I sat down for my meal and it just didn't hit home. The prociutto in my heirloom tomatoes was melt-in-your-mouth yummy... but that was the only item which stood out except the whine, which was crisp on a warm summer day.
I am officially sick to death of Italian and will take a small break until further notice.
Posted by Felix at 8:57 EST | Comments (2)
Michelle on Lavagna
While I’m in St Louis and notblogging, Michelle’s dining in New York and finding time to write foodblogs. Here’s her first:
Right! So my nose has been in Bill Buford's new book for over a month. My reading is incredibly slow, but I have been savoring every moment. Mr Buford's writing on cooking in a kitchen, eating, sussing out Italian food gurus, and constantly injuring himself in the kitchen, has got me under his spell.
After texting my friend and making a plan for the evening – I carefully avoided the refrigerator. I was waiting for what I thought was going to be dinner out. My nose in the book, I continued to salivate. PASTA. FRESH PASTA MADE WITH THE PERFECT EGG. PERFECT EGG. Then I really started day dreaming: quails’ eggs, truffles, truffle oil, pasta, eggs… AAAGH!
This is bikini season! I am meant to be hustling my ass on a cardio machine – but all I could think about is the tender, light, lovliness of ribbony "00" flour mixed with egg and water to create the ultimate in carbs… it made me want to pee from excitement.
My date cancelled last minute. My disappointment was so intense that I decided to continue on with my plans regardless. This was totally unlike me, but my cravings lead to the original restaurant I had in mind:
Restaurant: Lavanga
Meal ordered:
Glass of Rioja Crianza 2001
Artichoke heart with white bean puree and cremini mushrooms
Paparadelle with braised rabbit, thyme and moroccan olives
I walked into the restaurant and panicked. It had been so long since dining by myself that I immediately placed myself at the bar. The host was pleasant and set up my dining area. The waitress handed me my menu and seemed uninspired. I reviewed it and asked the waitress if they had any specials, she said no.
Antipasti:
The artichoke was slightly tough – not tender. The beans and mushrooms were delicious, but there was too much to accompany the artichoke, so what I was left with was a rather large plate of bean puree and mushrooms which I sopped up with bread. It was tasty but there was too much on the plate – all that was needed was simple tastes with a tender artichoke heart. Less is more!
Pasta:
The rabbit paparadelle came and I asked the waitress if every pasta on the menu is fresh – she said no, except for the ravioli and paparadelle. I noticed the pasta was light, thin, and beautifully made. It spriraled around my tongue and snapped off my fork at just the right moment – telling me: "I'm fresh!" Again, there was too much rabbit in my dish, and the Morrocan olives overpowered the food. That said, the flavor of the rabbit was wonderful, partly due to being cooked with the olives. I left a pile of olives after finishing my plate. My host said, "I suppose you don't like olives." I confidently said, "they added to the rabbit – it was good, but the olives were too salty to eat." This was true (I was served a bowl of olives while ordering and ate 3… seeing them for a second time during my meal turned me off, my palate sufficiently salted).
Drinking the rest of my wine, I made a promise to myself: if I went to the gym every morning this week – I would treat myself to a local Italian restaurant and find my favorite one. My logic is that I certainy won't lose any weight – but I won't gain a pound, and finally suss out a local Italian up to my standards where I could become a regular.
Posted by Felix at 16:11 EST | Comments (2)
Bogus trends in the NYT: Racism in soccer
A few months ago, Jack Shafer wrote a story whose subhed ("Spotting a bogus trend story on Page One of today's New York Times") could probably appear quite a few times on his Slate columns. So I'd like to get in on the act as well: It can't just be Shafer and Radosh spotting bogus trends. Let the bogus-trendspotters multiply!
Anyway, here's the story. The headline is this:
Surge in Racist Mood Raises Concerns on Eve of World Cup
The story is 1,875 words long, which is surely enough space to actually adduce some evidence that the "surge" of the headline exists. But I'm sure it will come as no surprise to Shafer that the author, Jere Longman, never quite gets around to that.
He's good at following the standard bogus-trend template, though. He starts off with two anecdotes, showing the problem. Then comes the nut graf:
International soccer has been plagued for years by violence among fans, including racial incidents. But FIFA, soccer's Zurich-based world governing body, said there has been a recent surge in discriminatory behavior toward blacks by fans and other players, an escalation that has dovetailed with the signing of more players from Africa and Latin America by elite European clubs.
Did FIFA really talk about "a recent surge in discriminatory behavior"? Did it, perhaps, characterise the extent of that "surge"? Has there, in fact, been a marked increase in Latin and African players in European leagues of late? Longman has no time for such practicalities, since according to the hard and fast rules of bogus trend stories, the next graf is where he needs to put his news hook:
This "deplorable trend," as FIFA has called it, now threatens to embarrass the sport on its grandest stage, the World Cup, which opens June 9 for a monthlong run in 12 cities around Germany. More than 30 billion cumulative television viewers are expected to watch part of the competition...
I'll leave it to Radosh to debunk the "30 billion" figure, since he did such a good job with the Oscars. But even Longman feels the need to backpedal on the World Cup aspect of his story just a couple of paragraphs later (although after the jump to an entirely different section of the newspaper):
Experts and players also said they believed the racist behavior would be more constrained at the World Cup than it was during play in various domestic leagues around Europe, because of increased security, the international makeup of the crowds, higher ticket prices and a sense that spectators would be generally well behaved on soccer's grandest stage.
So which is it to be, Jere? A surge of racism which threatens to embarrass the sport of soccer, or a sense that spectators will be generally well behaved?
Of course, this is a bogus trend story, so we need to get anonymous "experts" in it, preferably saying the blindingly obvious:
Racist behavior at soccer matches is primarily displayed by men and is fueled by several factors, according to experts...
But Longman fails the bogus-trend template in that he doesn't manage to quote even a single anonymous "expert" in support of his main thesis, that racism in soccer is getting worse.
He quotes Kurt Wachter of Football Against Racism in Europe saying that "we will see some things we're used to seeing". He talks a lot about the extent of racism in Germany more generally, and what politicians are doing about it. And of course he mentions the war, with a very weird verb formation:
The German government has intended to confront its Nazi past while preaching openness and tolerance.
No, I have no idea what this means, or what it has to do with racism in soccer. In fact, most of second two-thirds of the article seems very confused, to the extent that one wonders if Longman himself actually believes in his own bogus trend:
The Bundesliga in Germany is one of the world's top professional soccer leagues, and has not experienced widespread racism.
So if there's no widespread racism in the Bundesliga, why is Longman so worried it will turn up during the World Cup? Remember that earlier on in the article he was predicting all manner of horrors:
Players and antiracism experts said they expected offensive behavior during the tournament, including monkey-like chanting; derisive singing; the hanging of banners that reflect neofascist and racist beliefs; and perhaps the tossing of bananas or banana peels, all familiar occurrences during matches in Spain, Italy, eastern Germany and eastern Europe.
But when he gets around to quoting a black member of the German team, he ends up going back a decade to support his thesis. Even then, the match in question was not an international match, but a club match about as deep into the former East Germany as it is possible to get:
Gerald Asamoah, a forward on Germany's World Cup team and a native of Ghana, has been recounting an incident in the 1990's when he was pelted with bananas before a club match in Cottbus.
In fact, in the entire article, Longman comes up with not a single example of racist behaviour during an international match, although that doesn't prevent him from speculating at length on the sanctions that FIFA may or may not apply should such behaviour occur this year.
The New York Times, like the rest of the world's media, is only just starting on its World Cup coverage, so we have no idea whether this story is a harbinger of how future reporting is going to turn out. But it's pretty horrible that the first World Cup story to hit the front page should be an ill-sourced bogus trend story about a "surge" in racism which almost certainly doesn't exist.
There's one thing we can all take comfort in, however: the New York Times will never pass up an opportunity to demonstrate that it knows nothing about soccer. This in the second paragraph:
Then, as he went to throw the ball inbounds, Onyewu said a fan of the opposing team reached over a barrier and punched him in the face.
As he went to throw the ball inbounds? Sigh. That's basketball, Jere.
Posted by Felix at 9:13 EST | Comments (2)
Calculating losses
A man walks into a widget shop with the intention of buying a widget. He picks out a nice widget for $100, but just as he's about to take it to the counter to pay for it, he gets an urgent phone call and rushes out of the shop, which has a 30% profit margin on its widgets. The question is: How much has the shop lost because of the phone call?
a) The shop has lost nothing. A man walked in, a man walked out. Where's the
loss?
b) The shop has lost $30: the profit it would have made on the sale of the widget.
c) The shop has lost $100: the amount of money it would have received had the
man not received the phone call.
I'm inclined to go with (a) on this one. But let's say that the shop starts seeing a pattern: people walk in and always seem to get urgent phone calls just before they buy their widgets. The manager of the shop calls me up, and says "we're losing thousands of dollars a month because of these urgent phone calls". I can see that, too.
As long as this kind of mathematics stays on the anecdotal level, none of it really matters. But when corporations spend millions of dollars to work out exactly what they're "losing", and newspapers write long articles on the subject, then it's worth revisiting the question of what losses, really, are.
In case you haven't worked out where I'm going with this, it's my favourite subject: counterfeiting. Today's question (or yesterday's, actually: we'll get to that in a minute) is this: if a Zippo lighter costs $25, and a counterfeiter sells a fake Zippo for 37 cents, how much has Zippo lost?
a) Nothing. If it's not there on the P&L, it's not a loss.
b) $25.
c) $25 muliplied by p, where p is the probability that the
person buying the counterfeit Zippo would have bought a real Zippo were the
counterfeit Zippo not available.
d) The answer from (c), multiplied by the profit margin on a $25 Zippo. Or,
to put it another way: if Zippo makes $10 in profit on every $25 lighter, then
$10 multiplied by p.
Which brings us to yesterday's news: two big articles fronting the Marketplace section of the Wall Street Journal. I don't have an online subscription, but here's a link that Google says leads to a story entitled "China Policy Lets Counterfeiters Off Lightly", and here's a link to the other article, entitled "Estimates of Copyright Piracy Losses Vary Widely".
Let's take the second article first. "Counting the losses from piracy isn't a science – it's an art," says Geoffrey Fowler, who even quotes Keith Jopling, at the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, saying that "we will never know 100% the exact loss". Fowler's article is reasonably fair: it even makes the point that some people who download music illegally actually buy more money on legitimate music as a result. As Sasha Frere-Jones points out in last week's New Yorker,
The Arctic Monkeys built their audience by playing live shows—constantly, all over England—and by giving away its songs as MP3s on Myspace.com. When their remarkable album, “Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not,” was released, in January, it sold more than three hundred and fifty thousand copies in the first week, making it the fastest-selling début in British history. (So much for the idea that giving away your music hurts sales.)
Still, there's a difference between an artist using the internet to market their work, and a counterfeiter selling bootleg CDs. In the latter case, a criminal is making money from selling intellectual property which he doesn't own. But it's the next logical step which gives me pause: the idea that if a criminal is making money, then somebody else must be losing money. Theft of IP is theft, by this logic, and if you steal something from someone, then they lose something of value.
In the case of IP, however, the owner of the IP remains the owner of the IP even after it's been stolen. It's not like anybody ever steals a copyright. So I'm not convinced that the sale of a counterfeit Zippo, or the sale of a bootleg CD, actually causes any measurable loss at all to Zippo or to EMI.
And that's where Fowler's article is weak: he implies that the uncertainty about losses due to piracy is epistemological rather than ontological. The only question, in his mind, is over how big they are, not whether or not they exist. But to give you an idea of how meaningless most of these numbers are, let's say that the MPAA is right when it reports that Hollywood studios collectively lose $6.1 billion per year to piracy. What does that mean?
a) If there weren't any piracy, then the profits of Hollywood studios would
be $6.1 billion greater than they are now.
b) If there weren't any piracy, then the gross revenues of Hollywood studios
would be $6.1 billion greater than they are now.
Judging by Fowler's article, it's the latter: he notes at one point that "not every pirated disc equates to lost revenue". So what would $6.1 billion in lost revenue equate to in terms of lost profit? Now there's an unanswerable question. But let's use Disney's profit margin of 8.22%: it works out at almost exactly $500 million, which, divided among all the Hollywood studios, seems a big but hardly enormous number. Is this really the statistic that some studios were afraid of releasing for fear that its magnitude was so great it might spook the markets?
And then there's this very silly bit near the end of the article:
The Business Software Alliance's Asia regional director, Jeff Hardee, says the group's studies show a nearly one-to-one ratio between decreases in piracy and increases in legitimate sales, suggesting that, on average, people are willing to "replace" pirate software with the real thing.
Which sounds very impressive until you stop to wonder what these "decreases in piracy" are, and how they might be measured. It turns out that the BSA measures piracy by a very simple method: take the retail value of all the software installed on all the computers in the world, subtract total global software sales, and the rest is piracy. Now I very much doubt that there's any market in the world which has seen the total value of software installed ever go down. Which means that if the BSA measures a decrease in piracy, then the only way that's going to happen is if legitimate sales rise. No wonder there's "a nearly one-to-one ratio between decreases in piracy and increases in legitimate sales"!
Now, let's return to those Zippos, as reported by Nicholas Zamiska. The story is this: Chinese authorities raided a factory which turned out to have 32,980 fake Zippo lighters. Here's Zamiska:
The problem stems from the way China values seized knockoffs. Unlike many wealthier countries, China values them at the price the counterfeiter meant to sell them at, not at the retail price that legitimate versions go for.
Yes, that's "the problem".
To be fair, Zamiska does report both sides of the story. He gives the Chinese view, which seems sensible to me:
Chinese courts have defended the practice by arguing that valuing seized goods at the prices they would fetch in developed countries would grossly distort penalties for counterfeiters, who stand to make a pittance in comparison.
At a news conference in April, Xiong Xuan Gao, the vice president of China's Supreme People's Court, brought up an example of counterfeit watches, pointing out that even though a genuine luxury watch might be worth more than $12,500, the vendor sells it for only about $1.25.
"The sentence of conviction and criminal punishment should be measured by the real profits he has made for himself, from the viewpoint of social harmfulness," Mr Xiong said, according to an official media report. "On one hand, we should make more efforts on cracking down on the infringing upon intellectual property rights; on the other hand, we also need to be fair on the suspects and protect their own rights."
The main thrust of the article, however, is that this policy is extremely misguided and harmful.
My view is that China, with its weak IP laws, is actually much better placed to be an economic powerhouse in the 21st Century than economies which stifle innovation with draconian copyright laws. The Zippo lighter is a design icon because of its beauty and simplicity – in that respect it's very similar to the Noguchi table which I've blogged about in the past. We live in a world where great simple design can and will be brought to the masses cheaply. The successful companies of the future will be the ones who embrace that fact; the failures will be those who litigate against it. Law might be on their side, but history will not be.
Posted by Felix at 18:54 EST | Comments (2)
Backgammon in Lower Manhattan
Liberty Park is back, and much better looking than it was, it must be said. (I know Liberty Park is not its official name. But I'm sure it will no more be called Zuccotti Park than Sixth Avenue is called Avenue of the Americas, or the West Side Highway is called Joe DiMaggio Highway.)
Judging by the photos up at Curbed, the chess players are back as well. But the real question is whether the backgammon players will return. They left after September 11, of course, and eventually found a new, more central venue: Bryant Park.Will they desert midtown and its magnificent conveniences for the memories of the windswept Liberty Park of old? In the years before September 11, Wall Street would regularly face off against the semiprofessional backgammon hustlers, sometimes for very large stakes indeed. Bryant Park is probably nicer, but I suspect the pickings are better downtown.
Posted by Felix at 21:43 EST | Comments (0)
John T Unger and art as investment
John T Unger left a comment on my last blog about how art makes a terrible investment. No it doesn't, he said:
I've found that art makes a great *short-term* investment. I buy what I like, because I want to hang it, but with limited wall space I've often ended up selling older work from my collection to finance and make room for newer work. So far I've always enjoyed about a 400% profit or better on work sold within the first 3-4 years.
I needed to know more. So I asked, and he answered:
I make a full time living as an artist myself, but on occasion I've sold or repped work by other artists to make ends meet. I tend to think back on the story of Marcel DuChamp supporting himself during his supposed retirement by selling Brancusi's sculptures. For me, it's not so much about the investment as it is a contingency fund, but on the other hand I've always turned a hefty profit when I have sold others' work.
Because I'm in the scene (and stick to the ones I'm in), I have a fair idea of whose star is rising, who's being heavily promoted, which collectors are buying what and so on. I'm in the Midwest, so most of the time the prices are at best in the thousands rather than tens of thousands. But hey, if you can turn $500 into $2000 without doing any real work it's not bad. I'm playing the market on a relatively small scale, but I suppose if I bought in greater quantity it could be a real income.
A typical example would be four nicho sculptures I bought at an art event by a Mexican artist who goes by Marcos. I bought the set of four for $550, sold one for $600 a few years later and see his work bringing $1500 at Chicago's Ann Nathan Gallery now. Some of the sequined Haitian Vodoun flags I bought for $200 to $400 now sell well at $1200 and up.
I mostly buy three types of work: outsider/self taught, "emerging" artists (usually people in my own circle) and modern ethnographic art, focused mostly on Haitian or African work. I also buy work with heavy recycled content and some craft or design items if they're exceptional in quality. Most of the time I don't expect those to appreciate in value, but it has happened with limited run or unique pieces by artists or designers who've become well known.
The emerging artists I buy are often purchased directly from the artist, though it's not infrequent that I'll be dropping my own work off at a gallery and see something I really want. On occasion, I'll trade my own work to either the artist or the gallery. When I lived in Chicago, I was in Pilsen, a neighborhood that was home at the time to several hundred practicing artists at various stages in their careers. That gave me a great opportunity to see work before the public had a chance to view it and pick the winners. I sometimes now buy art online, usually after seeing it reviewed in a blog. I also sometimes pick up some of the ethnographic or craft items at festivals. In all the above cases, my selection criteria is chiefly about liking the work or seeing something that seems new or interesting. A few of the friends who I routinely buy work from are also artists I promote to other collectors and galleries.
The Ethnographic pieces mostly come from curators I know who buy and import it. Again, the advantage is being able to see the work before it reaches the market. One of the best collectors of my own work has been Marilyn Houlberg, who curated the Sacred Arts of Haitian Vodou exhibit. Not only does she have access to the best contemporary flag artists in Haiti, but she also has a pretty heavy influence on which become most successful and coveted… so, a lot of the work I bought from her over the years appreciated well.
Most of the work I've sold went to collectors I know or other artists. Sometimes I consign work through galleries or dealers I've shown with or bought from in the past. Generally, I try to sell work directly to avoid commission fees. Every now and then, someone will drop by the studio to look at my work and express interest in buying something from my collection. Sometimes I sell, sometimes no.
What really works for me about re-selling work is that as my tastes change over time, I can keep the collection fresh while constantly upscaling the work. When something sells at higher price than I paid, it's easier to buy work that I couldn't previously afford.
Actually, I used to do the same thing with books when I was a writer. I had a good idea of the market, so I'd pick up books that were undervalued and later re-sell them to buy first editions, etc.
I'm not 100% sure if my basic strategies would work for everyone or not. A big part of what allows me to buy good work is that I have a behind the scenes pass with both artists and galleries. On the other hand, the strongest part is definitely knowing the market and having a good eye. After all, there's way more stuff I didn't buy than that I did.
I replied with this:
It's great you can do this and make a profit – but isn't what you're doing here basically acting as a private art dealer? Most of the time, you're buying privately and you're selling privately. And I don't think anybody disputes that art dealers can make money. Crucially, you have quite a lot of access to art buyers – something that most people simply don't: isn't that even more important, in many ways, than your backstage pass with galleries and artists? With a bit of effort, anybody can cultivate galleries and artists. But finding people to sell to: that's where most people would come up blank.
There's a long tradition of underpaid workers at auction houses, for instance, supplementing their income by doing private art dealing on the side. And I suppose you could say that art dealing is the same as "short-term investing". But the difference in my mind is that in the former case you're building a market, while in the second case you're simply buying and selling in a pre-existing market. Which is why I suspect that given the distinction between a dealer and a collector/investor, you're more the former than the latter.
Or am I wrong here?
John wrote back:
It's an interesting distinction you raise… I certainly never thought of myself as a dealer before.
Although I have a good nose for deals and sometimes get a bit of a discount, I'm still paying pretty much retail price for most work. Or at least, I'm certainly not getting the work at wholesale/dealer prices. I feel the access I have to unseen work helps me to get better quality pieces, but it doesn't necessarily get me a significantly better price. And when I consign pieces to galleries for sale, I still have to pay them their standard commission. I would think that this is more likely the deciding line between collector/dealer than access to buyers, no?
Most of the collectors I know have a tendency to swap work out just as I do over time. Many of the outsider and ethnographic buyers/collectors tend to run in the same social circuits and often trade amongst themselves. I think it's part of the collecting sickness that they're always looking for more, new, better work. It's incessant. There aren't enough venues for acquisition so they cannibalize each other's collections. Seems like you'd see the same behavior in comic collectors or any other obsessive collector culture.
Making successful short term investments in art probably requires very similar qualities to blogging, actually. You have to be passionate about what you're buying. It helps to specialize in a niche that you can become expert in. It helps to know people, and if you don't, to get out and meet them. Finding things first and then promoting them to other interested parties is good strategy. It doesn't hurt to have an outgoing, upbeat personality. etc.
As far as finding buyers for art, you have a point that not everyone would know where to look. But my access to buyers is something that I cultivate more to sell my own work than for the purpose of resale from the collection. My access to the market for reselling art really was a result of my access to the community surrounding specific art in a specific area. I knew the young up and comers, their dealers, some collectors, and had a good in with a bunch of importers for the ethno stuff who all knew each other. Art is a small town, even in any city, right? You get to know the players and then you can get in the game.
I think that if someone were to approach short term art resale as a significant investment strategy, getting into the community and researching who buys what would be part of the due diligence type work you'd do for any investment.
So there you have it: art can be a good investment. But you need to be pretty serious about it, and invest a lot of time in the art community, for it to be so. I, on the other hand, generally can't stand the art community, and I'm very happy never go to openings and never to meet any artists or dealers or curators. I guess I'd make a dreadful art investor.
Posted by Felix at 0:24 EST | Comments (5)
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