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| Shared Passions |
Artful Beginnings
Aline Sullivan
08/02/2004
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TOP VIEW
Collectors often find it useful to articulate a theme around which
their collecting strategy may coalesce. After we decide what common thread we
want running through our collection, the financial aspects and challenges of
investing in art quickly come to the fore. However, with the help of a
well-chosen advisor, we can assemble a portfolio of art that works both as an
aesthetic statement and as an investment. |
Half a millennium later, on May 5, 2004, an
anonymous patron purchased Pablo Picasso’s 1905 Boy with a Pipe at Sotheby’s for
$104 million ($93 million, plus the auction house’s commission). Like Lorenzo de
Medici, the new owner of Boy with a Pipe is manifesting his love of the
aesthetic by placing a sizeable wager on its future value.
When we become art
collectors, we take similar risks. These investments gain most of their
long-term value from difficult-to-quantify (and more difficult to predict)
vagaries of style and the passions of our fellow aficionados.
Despite his
miscalculation over the Tazza (at least by today’s standards) Lorenzo
established himself as a leading patron by commissioning innumerable pieces from
the age’s best artists. This contributed to his “magnificence,” not just in his
own time but also in the eyes of posterity—another (somewhat less easily
calculated) payoff to his many commissions. We have the opportunity to leave a
similar legacy, if the wisdom of our collecting strategy matches the ardor of
our love for art. While we usually think of the artist as visionaries, as
collectors we must be, too, if we are to assemble collections that serve as both
financial and aesthetic legacies.
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