7 Dark Roses - Free Audio ebooks

Certainly, it is often possible to buy good, reasonably

priced works by lesser artists, particularly in out-of-the-

way art stores, antique shops, and even second-hand

bookstores, which are frequently excellent places to pick up

prints and etchings. Then, of course, one can shop very

advantageously for the works of talented young artists who

have not yet arrived, but who show promise. It should

hardly be necessary to point out that an artist does not yet

have to be established for his work to be good and have

lasting value.

Even people with very slender budgets can acquire works

of art that will prove excellent investments in beauty,

pleasure —and also in the financial sense. I know many

individuals who have paid modest prices for works of art

and have then seen the market value of their purchases

spiral upward.

The experiences of a journalist friend of mine provide a

trenchant four-in-one example of what an individual with a

little common sense and taste can do. This journalist

travels extensively to New York, London, Paris and Venice.

By no means an art expert and far from rich, he likes to

browse— and occasionally buy—in art, antique and

secondhand bookstores. His tastes run quite a gamut; he

buys things that please him and satisfy him aesthetically,

regardless of whether they are ancient or ultramodern. But

he shops carefully—and the collection for which he paid

about $2000 over the last six years already has a market

value of at least $8000.

Typical of his successful investments are these four pur-

chases, each made in a different

one of the four cities he

visits regularly: Six years ago, he bought three water colors

by a young Greenwich Village artist, paying a total of $140

for all three. They now have a sale value of $125 apiece.

During 1957, my friend was in London, where he found a

set of six small, neatly framed 19th Century

gouaches

which he bought for 17 guineas—$51—and for which he

was recently offered $250. In 1958, while visiting Paris, he

purchased eight early 19th Century prints for the

equivalent of $24; two years later, an American dealer

offered $150 for the set. Only last year in Venice, my

journalist friend saw—and liked—two paintings by the

young Italian artist Fioravante

Seibezzi and bought them

for 30,000 lire—about $50—apiece. Shortly thereafter,

Seibezzi had a one-man show that drew critical raves, and

the market value of the paintings jumped 300 percent—and

is still going up.

My friend has rejected all offers for his acquisitions. Al-

though he is convinced their market values will continue to

rise, this is not his reason for refusing to sell. He has the in-

stincts of the true art-loving collector. “I bought them

because I wanted to own them,” he explains. “I like them all

far too much to sell them for any price anyone is likely to

offer.”

This astute art investor’s experiences serve to

underscore the fact that many

tourists and people who

travel on business often overlook chances to invest wisely

in fine art during their travels. They have a habit of

shopping for gaudy and frequently costly souvenirs that

have little or no value. They fail to realize they could

acquire objects of considerable beauty— and of considerable

and permanent value—without expending any more effort

or money than they spend in buying the trivial.

One man I know served in Japan and Korea with the

United States Army. Mildly interested in Oriental art, he

used some of his off-duty time looking for a few good pieces

to take home. Shunning the main-street stores and tourist-

trap bazaars, he poked about in out-of-the-way shops and

market places. Spending a total of less than $300, he

acquired several pieces for which a San Francisco dealer

later offered him $1500.

Another man I know took his wife to Turkey on a holiday

in 1956. Instead of buying the tawdry wares traditionally

hawked to tourists in many Mediterranean countries, they

did their shopping carefully and off the beaten track. They

bought some ancient metal castings, figurines and carvings,

paying about $650 in all for them. Experts who appraised

the items when the couple returned to the United States

that same year fixed their immediate sale value at $1400.

In the ensuing five years, various factors served to increase

this value. By 1961, the art objects for which the couple had

paid $650 were worth $2000.

Now, none of these people are art experts. Their knowl-

edge of art is limited to what they have picked up on their

own by reading, visiting galleries and exhibitions and

browsing in art and antique shops. To them, art collecting

is simply a very pleasant extracurricular interest, a hobby

if you prefer. They enjoy having objects around them that

they consider aesthetically satisfying. They find it makes

their lives more pleasurable.

The fundamentals of art collecting are not difficult to

master. Obviously, the average person is not financially

able to go on a shopping spree for Rembrandts, Fragonards,

Gauguins or other paintings that—when and if available—

run into the hundreds of thousands or even millions of

dollars.

But even the individual who has only a very few hundred

dollars to spend can buy good works of art—objects that are

of high quality and that will retain or increase their value.

It stands to reason that the safest way to buy art is to

employ an expert to do the buying—or to buy only in the

most reputable galleries. But, by so doing, one will be

paying the peak current market prices. Also, most people

do not have the budgets to buy on the scale such

purchasing implies— and many people would rather savor

the adventure of shopping for works of art on their own.

However he does it, to buy art wisely, an individual must

first make up his mind about what mediums and periods

please him the most. He should then learn something—the

more the better—about them. There are copies and counter-

feits galore on the market—and the only way to distinguish

between them and the genuine is by knowing which is

which. (Reputable dealers will, of course, almost always

permit the prospective buyer the right to have a piece

authenticated, or will provide authoritative authentication

themselves.)

What to buy? This depends on two factors. The first is

the individual’s taste—and, if he is to buy wisely, it must be

assumed that he has fairly good taste. The second factor is

the individual’s wallet. Whatever the price range he can

afford, the art collector must al

ways strive to buy the best

he can within that range. One good item is worth a dozen—

or even a hundred—bad ones.

On the one hand, the collector must always remember

that artistic value does not necessarily follow the value set

by the market place, or vice versa. On the other hand, a col-

lector can appreciate art and revel in its beauty, yet he is

entirely justified in wanting to invest his money wisely. It

is just as foolish to throw good

money away on bad art as it

is to throw good money away on anything bad—and only a

fool would knowingly overpay for whatever he buys.

Then, to determine whether one really likes a work of

art enough to buy it, there is no better rule-of-thumb test

than that provided by the cl

assic question he should ask

himself: “Can I live with it?”

The individual who owns a

piece—be it a painting, marble bust, French Renaissance

escritoire or whatever—will have to look at it often and

long. If he believes an object he contemplates buying will

continue to please him over a period of time, then—all

other things being equal—he should buy it. If not, he

should look for something else

. “I buy the things I like—and

like the things I buy,” is the true collector’s guiding

philosophy.

Once he has made his purchase, it is up to the individual

to decide what he wants to do with it. He has two choices:

He can hold it until there is a rise in its market value, sell

it and pocket his profit. Or he can keep what he has bought

and enjoy it, holding onto it no matter how high the market

value goes. If he does this, he can be satisfied that he has

invested wisely, for he owns something that has lasting

artistic

value and pays him regular dividends in pleasure

even while it unobtrusively continues to increase in

monetary value. Either way, buying fine art can be the

finest and most satisfying of all investments.