Art Market Monitor

Global Coverage ~ Unique Analysis

  • AMMpro
  • AMM Fantasy Collecting Game
  • Podcast
  • Contact Us

Cohen as Cannibal: Collectors & the Power of Artists

January 18, 2013 by Marion Maneker

Castelli/Cohen Jasper Johns FlagIn an otherwise hard to locate analysis of Steven Cohen and the intersection between markets and art collecting, Gary Sernovitz has this very apt conclusion to his essay in N+1:

This is now the template for the career of a successful artist: a few incandescent years, a few decades, and then repetition, self-parody, irrelevance, death. But that’s what we admire about them. Their fight against their condition is our fight against our condition. They are trying to fix a vanishing edge in a material form. And that struggle against the mortality of the edge, which is the mortality of every minute, which is mortality, is affirming and heroic and generous.

And the collector of this art? He has $9 billion, which is something. It is certainly more than $8 billion. And he has proved an interesting point. There is no reason to believe that a person can make $9 billion from the short-term trading of stocks except for the inconvenient fact that he has. But the Art Collector’s victories over the edge—maybe the victories of edge—are, for him, just numbers on a balance sheet. They are liquid. And so to convert them into a solid, he buys art. And not just art, but modern and contemporary artists at their peak. Perhaps he wishes that he could eat the paintings to capture their power, like cannibals used to do to their enemies. But a Warhol would be pretty expensive sushi. So he regards what he has bought. Does he hope then that others will understand the transformation he sees in front of him, of his wealth into this art, of his edge into this immortality? Or does he see only what he has never done, and could never do?

Edge and the Collector (N+1)

More from Art Market Monitor

  • VIP Art Fair Not-So-Final SaleVIP Art Fair Not-So-Final Sale
  • Chinese Collectors Show Strength for High Quality Works at the Peter Elliott Estate Sale in AustraliaChinese Collectors Show Strength for High Quality Works at the Peter Elliott Estate Sale in Australia
  • Is Aboriginal Art Just a Style?Is Aboriginal Art Just a Style?
  • Damned If You Do, Damned If You Don'tDamned If You Do, Damned If You Don't
  • Art Thieves Strike in Belgium but Take Fake van Gogh DrawingArt Thieves Strike in Belgium but Take Fake van Gogh Drawing
  • Being Clever at Affordable Art FairBeing Clever at Affordable Art Fair

Filed Under: Collectors

About Marion Maneker

Want to get Art Market Monitor‘s posts sent to you in our email? Sign up below by clicking on the Subscribe button.

Top Posts

  • Keith Haring’s 1989 Retrospect Comes to Sotheby’s London Prints Sale
  • David Hockney's $20m Pacific Coast Highway & Santa Monica
  • Roy Lichtenstein’s Top Ten Auction Prices
  • Phillips to Showcase Helen Frankenthaler at Southampton Outpost
  • Four of Picasso's Women Valued at $28m Come to Christie's from Rose-Walters Collection
  • Norman Rockwell's Not Gay. But Is He a Great Artist?
  • Christie's Announces $70m Picasso Self Portrait
  • Tony Podesta's Secret Art Buying
  • When a Loss is Really a Profit
  • Rare Himalaya Hermès Birkin Offered by Christie’s Private Sale
  • About Us/ Contact
  • Podcast
  • AMMpro
  • Newsletter
  • FAQ

twitterfacebooksoundcloud
Privacy Policy
Terms & Conditions
California Privacy Rights
Do Not Sell My Personal Information
Advertise on Art Market Monitor