studies

This page highlights works regarding the pricing and sale of old master paintings, manuscripts, antiques and other collectibles.

It covers -

• introduction
• rationality
• data sources
• individual works
• dealers and the business of big numbers
• hot property

     introduction

[under development]

     rationality

For investment perspectives see William Goetzman's 1993 'Accounting for Taste: An Analysis of Art Returns Over Three Centuries' in American Economic Review 83(5) and the landmark 'Unnatural Value: or Art Investment as a Floating Crap Game' by William Baumol in American Economic Review 1986 (5), complemented by the 2002 paper (PDF) 'Art as Investment and the Underperformance of Masterpieces: Evidence from 1875-2002' from Jianping Mei & Michael Moses, William Grammp's Pricing the Priceless (New York: Basic Books 1989) and Jean Picard Stein's 'The Monetary Appreciation of Paintings' in Journal of Political Economy 1977(85).

There is a broader view in Muses and Markets: Explorations in the Economics of the Arts (Oxford: Blackwell 1989) by Bruno Frey & Werner Pommerehne, Gerald Reitlinger's pioneering three volume The Economics of Taste (London: Barrie & Rockcliff 1961, 1963, 1971) and Creative Industries: Contracts Between Art & Commerce (Cambridge: Harvard Uni Press 2000) by Richard Caves. Government and academic studies regarding Droit de Suite are identified in the note elsewhere on this site. Fluctuations in reputation and prices are highlighted in Robert Hughes' persuasive Nothing If Not Critical: Selected Essays on Art and Artists (London: Harvill 1992).

For a view of Japanese speculation, ostentation or rationality see the 2005 paper by Takato Hiraki, Akitoshi Ito, Darius Spieth & Naoya Takezawa on How Did Japanese Investments Influence International Art Prices?

Publication about the fine arts has sparked other research, for example the 2001 The Death Effect on Art Prices: Revisited (PDF) by Victor Matheson & Robert Baade

Major works on collecting are surprisingly sparse. Points of entry into the literature include Collecting: An Unruly Passion - Psychological Perspectives (Princeton: Princeton Uni Press 1994) by Werner Muensterberger, The Cultures of Collecting (Melbourne: Melbourne Uni Press 1994) edited by John Elsner & Roger Cardinal, To Have & To Hold: An Intimate History of Collectors & Collecting (London: Allen Lane 2002) by Philipp Blom, Thatcher Freund's Objects of Desire: The Lives of Antiques and Those Who Pursue Them (New York: Penguin 1995) and The Hummingbird Cabinet: A Rare & Curious History of Romantic Collectors (Ithaca: Cornell Uni Press 2005) by Judith Pascoe.

     data sources

Individual dealers/auction houses and publishers produce a range of print-format records - generally on an annual basis - of sales records. Those publications are useful for analysis of trends but should be used with caution regarding individual sales, given recurrent indications (including successful prosecutions) that some reported sales to figures such as Alan Bond were in fact only on paper.

Online data sources include Gabrius, Mei-Moses Index, Art Sales Index, Artprice.com, Askart.com and Australian Art Sales Digest (AASD).

     individual works and buyers

For Shakespeare see Anthony West's The Shakespeare First Folio: The History of the Book Vol. I: An Account of the First Folio Based on Its Sales and Prices, 1623-2000 (Oxford: Oxford Uni Press 2001).

Synthia Saltzman's Portrait of Dr Gachet: The Story of a Van Gogh Masterpiece. Modernism, Money, Politics, Collectors, Dealers, Taste, Greed, and Loss (New York: Viking 1998)

For Vermeer see Anthony Bailey's Vermeer: A View of Delft (New York: Henry Holt 2001). Dali is discussed in The Shameful Life of Salvador Dali (London: Faber 1997) by Ian Gibson.

Stephen Scheding's A Small Unsigned Painting (Sydney: Vintage 1998).

     dealers and the business of big figures

For Sotheby's and Christie's see in particular Sotheby's: The Inside Story (New York: Random House 1997), Sothebys: Bidding for Class (London: Little Brown 1998) by Robert Lacey and The Art of the Steal: Inside the Sotheby's-Christies Auction House Scandal (New York: Putnam 2004) by Christopher Mason. There is a broader perspective in the lucid From Monet To Manhattan: The Rise of the Modern Art Market (New York: Random House 1992) by Peter Watson and in Lynn Nicholas' The Rape of Europa: The Fate of Europe's Treasures in the Third Reich and the Second World War (New York: Vintage 1995)

Misbehaviour regarding modern masters is highlighted in The Legacy of Mark Rothko (New York: Da Capo 1996) by Lee Seldes.

For Berenson and colleagues see Ernest Samuels' two volume Bernard Berenson (Cambridge: Harvard Uni Press 1979, 1987), Colin Simpson's expose Artful Partners: Bernard Berenson & Joseph Duveen (London: Macmillan 1986), Duveen - A Life in Art (New York: Knopf) by Meryle Secrest and Bernard Berenson & the Twentieth Century (Philadelphia: Temple Uni Press 1994) by Mary Ann Calo.

Closer to home see Annette Van den Bosch's The Australian Art World: Aesthetics in a Global Market (St Leonards: Allen & Unwin 2004).

     hot property

Questions of spoliation and repatriation are discussed in a separate note elsewhere on this site. It incudes detaild pointers to online portals, case studies and works regarding legal frameworks.

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