“Collector Power: Who Has It and Who Doesn’t?” It’s a compelling question to say the least, especially in the midst of Art Basel, when buyers from all over the world leverage their money and clout in pursuit of the choicest works. So it was apropos that this pressing near-koan furnished the topic of conversation between Baerfaxt publisher Josh Baer and New York collector Adam Lindemann at one of Art Unlimited’s panels.
Seated on matching lime-green Eames chairs, the two friends spent a lively half hour continually interrupting one another on the texture-rich subject. “Your collection should ultimately be you,” Lindemann intelligently noted. The Baerfaxt, meanwhile, is “more like a tip sheet, like you get at the race track,” he said. (Unlike IN THE AIR, which is more like a feuilleton, like you get at Bohemian Grove.)
When the conversation was opened to questions from the audience, one young art adviser queried Lindemann — who has several major works of Jean-Michel Basquiat loaned for the Beyeler Foundation’s blockbuster show of the artist — whether he consulted an art adviser or curator in selecting his purchases. “I married my art dealer,” the collector quipped, referring to his lovely wife, former Gagosian rainmaker Amalia Dayan. “So I saved a fortune.”
As for tips on calculating how much of one’s fortune a person should throw at a particular work of art, Lindemann turned to that age-old collecting metaphor, surfing. “Find that sweet spot for you on the wave, according to your skill and resources. Don’t get crushed by the big wave.”
The advice goes for artists too, particularly those who suddenly find their stature and prices jacked up to the stratosphere — Matthew Day Jackson, a previously obscure artist who “went from zero to one million dollars at auction” when his 2007 Bucky painting, estimated in the $50,000 range, sold for $938,000 at Christie’s in February. (The artist has since been added to Hauser & Wirth’s stable.) In the panel, both Lindemann and Baer ascribed the phenomenon to the copycat patterns of non-alpha collectors who follow big guys like François Pinault, who bought Jackson early on, thanks to the crystal-ball urgings of superadviser Phillipe Segalot.
