Professional art advisor Ariel Meyerowitz joins me to demystify the art world for new and experienced collectors alike. Ariel shares her core philosophy: begin by looking at as much art as possible to develop your own taste, and always start by buying what you love, focusing on the emotional investment rather than financial returns.
We discuss the intimidating nature of galleries and art fairs, the subjective vs. objective quality of art, and the powerful influence of “tastemakers” and mimetic desire in the market. We also explore the different dynamics of auctions, galleries, and private sales, and dig into the psychological weight of provenance, forgeries, and why a work’s story can be as compelling as the work itself.
Ultimately, Ariel argues that living with art is an essential, stress-reducing practice that enriches our lives, making it a pursuit of passion first and foremost. I agree!
I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did. We’ve shared some highlights below, together with links & a full transcript. As always, if you like what you hear/read, please leave a comment or drop us a review on your provider of choice.
— Jim
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Books Mentioned:
The Painted Word by Tom Wolfe
Highlights
Art Reduces Stress
Ariel Meyerowitz: There was a study that just came out last week out of London. There’s a psychiatry organization that studied, it was a small pool of people, but they studied, I think it was 50 people. They sent them to a museum to look at five paintings by major artists in person. And they had monitors on them. And then they showed that same group of people the same paintings on a piece of paper.
Jim O’Shaughnessy: Oh, yeah. I can see this coming a mile away.
Ariel Meyerowitz: Right. And so the outcome of this study was that looking at art reduces your stress by 22%. It literally brings your cortisol levels down. And I have been saying that forever. For myself personally, anytime if I’ve been in a bad mood or a sad mood or there’s something happening in the world that’s incredibly distressing, which there seems to be always happening now, my balm, my salve, is going and looking at art.
Jim O’Shaughnessy: I agree. It is magical in what it can do for all of us just by looking. And that is a very rare thing.
Ariel Meyerowitz: Yeah, well, because the feeling that you, it impacts your emotions and how you feel impacts your choices and the things that you do for the rest of the day. And if you have a good experience, I mean, just talking about it is giving me chills. Just having something beautiful or emotionally or intellectually stimulating wash over you is the greatest kind of bath.
Blank Walls as a Visual Pause
Ariel Meyerowitz: I also am not a believer that in your home or in your office that there has to be art on every single wall. I really firmly believe that there have to be walls, spaces that are empty. Because if you have art everywhere, your brain never shuts off. And so I look at blank walls almost like a comma in a sentence, it’s like a pause. You need a place for your eyes to rest.
Because particularly now in the world that we live in, there’s so much stimulation. Everyone’s way overstimulated, you know, there’s so much news and imagery being thrown at you. And to be able to have a place for just your eyes to rest for a moment actually enables you to see the art that you have hanging even more fully than if it’s constantly being layered upon, layered by all this other art around it.
Art Doesn’t Need an Explanation
Ariel Meyerowitz: I don’t believe that all art needs an explanation. In fact, there is a contemporary painter whose work I absolutely love. Her name is Anj Smith, and she is a really wild painter, meticulous in every brushstroke that she makes and every detail. And the work deals with motherhood and femininity and postpartum depression and fashion and environmental issues. I mean, she’s really all over the place. And she has, when you look at her work and you talk to someone at her gallery, they will share with you some of her studio notes, ideas that she was thinking about while she was making it.
But she is a firm believer in not having a description to accompany each painting because she wants to just put her vision out there on the canvas and then the rest is up to you. She doesn’t want to tell you what to think about her work and what to pull from it or to put onto it. She wants you to have the complete, raw experience. And I really appreciate that about her position because there are artists also that really have a very clear directive about what they want you to see in their work.
And sometimes I struggle with that because I think if you have to tell me everything I’m supposed to see in your work, then I don’t know that your work is as successful as it should be because it requires so much information. Share a little bit, but then leave the rest up to me and to other viewers. But if you have to over-tell, then you haven’t, in my opinion, you haven’t accomplished what you set out to in making the work.
🤖 Machine-Generated Transcript
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Hello, everyone. It’s Jim O’Shaughnessy with yet another Infinite Loops. Today’s guest is Ariel Meyerowitz, an art advisor here in metropolitan New York who works with private clients and companies in their attempt to acquire and develop a beautiful contemporary art collection. Well, thank you so much for coming on to tell us all about the world of art, of collecting, of how to tell what’s good and what isn’t.
Full disclosure, Ariel is also our art consultant who has been very helpful. We’ve been looking and buying art for more than 25 years, and yet it’s really helpful. One of the things we found is it’s really helpful to have a professional to either say, “Oh, no, Jim, you honestly do not want to buy that,” but also just for the learning function.
So I thought what would be fun today, Ariel, is for much of our audience, super highly educated, a lot of people are founders and or part of the tech community as well as other creative endeavors. And I’ve been getting a lot of texts and whatnot from those who know that I collect art. And they’re kind of like, where do I even begin? Why don’t we start at the beginning? Let’s assume that I am a newbie art collector. I’m very eager to learn. I’m bright enough to figure it out. Walk me through how you would enlighten me.
Ariel Meyerowitz
Well, thank you for having me on. I love talking about this subject, and I talk about it all the time with all of my clients and my new clients. The best way really to start, well, when someone hires me, the first thing I do is I go and I meet with them in person, either at their home or their office, wherever they want to start buying the art for, and we have a conversation about their interests. And if they don’t know their interests, if they’re too intimidated, I have a whole series of questions that I ask them. That’s really about just getting to know each other so that I know what direction to steer them in.
And once I have that information, then for me, I go out to galleries and artists, but mainly to galleries, and start culling imagery together to show them. And that’s just the initial introduction, just to throw all of these different images at them for them to respond immediately to. “Yes, I like it. No, I don’t like it.” Ideally, for them to say “I don’t like it,” I want to know why that is, because that helps me move in a different direction.
After that, it’s really about going to the galleries and going to the museums, and if they’ve got the tolerance, to go to the art fairs and just look. I mean, that’s really the best education, is just going and seeing as much art as you possibly can. Because you’ll begin to, whether you understand it or not, you’ll begin to feel. You’ll have a visceral response to it, and you’ll feel what works for you and what doesn’t work for you.
And we then start making acquisitions. There’s never a rush for it. It’s very rare that I’ve ever had an art emergency. But it’s really about, particularly if you are brand new, as cliche as it sounds, you start by buying what you love. You can’t put on your investment hat right from the beginning. You really have to buy something that you’re going to get immense pleasure out of looking at every single day. And then from there, you just, as you wish in terms of the timing, you start adding more and more to the collection.
And in some cases, there’s never a pressure to actually build an entire collection, unless that’s the goal of the person. If they’re really just wanting two or three pieces, that’s a wonderful place to begin because there’s really something to be said for living with art. You don’t have to have every wall in the home filled with something. You start with what you first purchased, and you just have that experience every day relating to it.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
One of the things that Missy and I did before we started to collect in earnest was we spent years going to every museum that we could find. Literally whenever we were in Europe, we had entire days, many days devoted to just museums. I myself found that part of the education to probably be the best, at least for me, because I would get really interested in not just the art itself, but like a Botticelli. You have to read a Botticelli painting differently than you read a traditional painting, because it’s mostly allegories. And you get this sort of inside information about what the world during Botticelli’s lifetime was like, and why he painted it the way he did. But that’s a nice to have. It’s not a need to have, other than I would say, if it were me sitting where you’re sitting, I would say you do need to go take in as much art as you can. And I would advocate first for museums, right, because it’s a low stress environment for the most part.
Ariel Meyerowitz
Well, I just made that face because museums have so much, and it really can be quite daunting, overwhelming. When you walk into a museum, there’s so many different directions you can go in, so many different types of shows. So I agree, a museum is an incredible resource. But if you’re just starting, maybe focus on one exhibition in that museum and really spend time with it, and then maybe the next day you come back, if you’ve got the time or the weekend, whenever it is, to come back and then see more and more shows.
But when you’re just beginning, it’s really important to spend as much time that you can in one exhibition so you can really absorb it and understand it as opposed to throwing so much visual stimuli at yourself in one day. But museums are brilliant, and galleries too. I’m a big supporter of galleries, and I think it’s a wonderful opportunity to see so many different artists, for the most part, who are working today and seeing what’s current and getting a sense of all these different aesthetic interests and directions that galleries are sending you on.
I’m also a big believer, and I do this for myself as well. I mean, I look at art all the time for personal pleasure and then also for work. But it is the single greatest source of pleasure for me, is to go and look at art. And if I go into an exhibition, I sometimes can be quick to dismiss something just because I’m so used to looking at art all the time. “No, that’s not of interest.” Pretty much anytime that happens, I stop myself and I force myself to stay with a show.
Because if I don’t like something, obviously it’s speaking to either a lack of understanding or a fear of not understanding. And I force myself to stay in that exhibition and really study the work. If it’s a gallery exhibition or even if it’s a museum show, before I read any of the wall text or if I read the press release, I want to have my own personal experience looking at it and to see, the longer I spend with it, does it change for me in some way? I think a lot of people, if they don’t understand something, they just dismiss it too quickly.
So it’s really important to, like a life lesson, confront your fears or not shy away from the things that you don’t understand and sit with it and then read about it and see if once you understand what the artist is trying to say, does it work for you? And if it doesn’t, then that’s okay. And if it does, that’s even better.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
For the longest time when I would be talking to people and they were asking me about, like, why do you collect art? And many thought it was for asset diversification. That was not it at all. It’s just because we love art. Like you, we just never get bored looking at beautiful art. And it can be of any genre. But one of the things that was a constant undercurrent when I was chatting with people who hadn’t done it yet was they used the word “daunting.” I personally don’t approach it that way, but why do you think that is the majority word that I hear, always “daunting”? Or like, “Oh, I don’t know about that.” It seems to me the way you explain it shouldn’t be daunting at all.
Ariel Meyerowitz
Well, I can understand if I put myself in a, as the word you used, a newbie, if I put myself in a newbie’s shoes, I can understand why it would be daunting. Because there’s so much in your head already of, “Well, I’m supposed to understand this. It’s in a museum, which means I probably should like it.” And you have this inner dialogue happening while you’re looking at the work, and there’s all this other work around you, and it’s just overwhelming. And I think that really wears people down, particularly because they know that they can look at something in one venue and there are a thousand other venues.
I think in New York City alone, there are nearly 3,000 venues to go and see art, or at least that was the case pre-COVID. So there’s so much to see. And as a new person entering this field, as a potential collector, it feels, well, it’s just intimidating. And if you don’t have an advisor, a trusted somebody with you, you really don’t know what direction to turn in. And that is the start of the feeling of overwhelm.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
And another thing that I’ve experienced when bringing my siblings to galleries here in New York, especially those who don’t really collect art, and they’re all sisters, thinking specifically of one sister who was like, “I just felt like they were judging me the whole time.” But I don’t ever get that feeling. What is it about the gallery experience that makes people feel that way?
Ariel Meyerowitz
There’s a photographer whose name I unfortunately can’t recall at the moment, but he published a book a number of years ago of just the reception desks in galleries because it’s such an intimidating experience. Oftentimes you walk in and the reception desk is really high, so this is all you see of the person. And it makes you, it’s this big force that confronts you. And particularly when you’re walking into a gallery, it’s a retail environment. So people think, “Well, if I come in here, am I obligated to buy something?”
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Oh, I never thought about that.
Ariel Meyerowitz
“If I’m not going to buy something, am I allowed to be in here?” When I owned my gallery, people would come in sometimes and ask if there was a fee to come in. And sometimes a few people, a very small percentage, would ask, “Because I’m here, do I have to buy something?” So there’s really a lack of understanding that galleries are free for everyone, as they should be. And again, you’re walking into a place, it’s generally, they have very high ceilings, it’s very grand, and you have these massive paintings or big sculptures or photographs on the wall, and you feel this pressure.
And of course, you do have security cameras, so you feel this pressure that you’re being watched or that someone might come out from behind the desk and say, “If there’s anything I can help you with.” And that puts pressure, even though they’re not intending to and they’re really just trying to be helpful. There’s a pressure that people who are new to this feel that they are obligated in some way to engage or to buy.
And it is something that has changed since COVID. When you walk into a gallery, more often than not now, the people behind the reception desk will stand, if it’s really tall, they’ll stand and they’ll say hello. They’ll greet you with a big smile, they’ll say if you have any questions. And that really did not used to be the case. It used to be this real air of snobbery. There really was a sense of snobbery. And for someone who, I’ve grown up in this world, right, I was born into it with a father who’s a photographer, and my late mother was a ceramicist and a painter, and they only knew artists.
So I grew up literally getting dragged or pushed in my stroller from artist studio to gallery to museum. And so it’s just in my blood, being in this world. And even still I would have times I would walk into certain galleries and I would also feel a little intimidated. But it’s really just about reminding yourself this is just another person and this is just where they happen to be employed. And I am within my rights to ask any question and I’m within my rights to not engage and just look and stay however long I want or leave as quickly as I want to.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Well, you know, I think sometimes about the way they design casinos, for example. Casinos are designed for one purpose and one purpose only, to suck as much money out of you as they possibly can. If you walk into a casino, they’re giving you free drinks for a reason. There are no clocks for a reason. There are no windows for a reason. And I remember after we moved to New York going into the galleries and, you know me pretty well, I was a bit put off at first by what I viewed as an obvious affectation. And I wonder why did that develop? Why did that happen? Because, you know, ostensibly, as you mentioned earlier, these are retailers who want you to buy something from them. And generally speaking, if you’re a retailer, it’s not good to treat the customer like shit.
Ariel Meyerowitz
Yeah, exactly. Customer service is essential. I would have to get back to you about the history of that. I do think it started really in the ‘80s and galleries wanting to create an air of exclusivity. And if you’re going to come into my gallery and if you’re going to buy from me, you need to prove to me that you are worthy in a way. And I think that just continued on for a long time and it isn’t, it plays out in different ways now, but not so much when you enter the gallery.
And I think that they wanted to try to raise the understanding and the access to art to a different level, that it wasn’t in fact available to just everybody, that you had to be a certain someone, you had to be a celebrity, you had to be another famous artist, you had to be absolutely a high net worth individual in order to have entree into this world. And oftentimes if you weren’t vetted, you would be directed to the first tier person in the gallery. You couldn’t get access to the director or to the owner necessarily. You really would have to prove yourself again if you weren’t a vetted person.
But thankfully that has changed in a lot of ways. And there’s a greater, there’s just, because the art market is now global, it’s always been global, but now there’s an interconnectedness that wasn’t really present back in the ‘70s and ‘80s and even into parts of the ‘90s. Art is for everyone. And there’s public art now more than there ever has been before. Think about the High Line that cuts through Chelsea. There’s always public art installation. So the art market as a whole is really, from what I’m seeing, banding together to try to make it more universally accepted and accessible. And so that has trickled down to the galleries where you feel less excluded when you walk in.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
You know, another thing that has always been a thesis of mine is that the art market is one of the most memetic markets I’ve ever studied. And I mean memetic in the Dawkins sense of a meme is a thing or an idea. Actually, I mean it more in the Girardian sense of mimetic desire, which when you see somebody that you admire, you unconsciously and many times completely unconsciously find yourself wanting the things that they have and you’re not even aware of doing it.
And I once used the movie Titanic to walk somebody through how art markets work. Because you remember Rose, she bought all of these soon to be priceless masterpieces. But at the time, no one thought anything of them at all. In fact, if they thought anything about them at all, they thought that they were horrible.
In my version, the Titanic doesn’t sink. She marries the dastardly heir. And they set up a beautiful home here in New York City with all of that art she had on the boat. And then when older people came to the parties they had, they were quite shocked when they looked at the art on the walls and they’re like, “Oh, this won’t do.” But the younger people were all like, “Well, she certainly is beautiful, and boy is he handsome and rich. I want to be like them.”
And then I won’t go through the whole thing, but it makes its way throughout the entire ecosystem. Whereas, you know, the dealer is like, “Everyone seems to be interested in that. I better get over to Europe and find these artists so that I can represent them in the world.” And then the critics and the people who write about it start writing about it a lot more because it seems to be. So it’s this sort of self-reinforcing, compounding mechanism. Is all art subjective or is there any objective standard by which to judge art?
Ariel Meyerowitz
To go back to your first, the first part of what you said, there are tastemakers and that is how many artists have gone from virtually nobodies to major somebodies. And those tastemakers tend to be celebrities who have a real stamp of approval, like Alicia Keys for example, and her husband, major, major art collectors, curators, big time museum curators, or in some cases some well-known independent curators and some gallerists too. If they choose somebody and they deem this person is worthy of adding to the collection or being in their gallery show, suddenly all these people come in and say, “Well, you know, if Larry Gagosian says this is great, I’ve got to love that artist too.”
And sometimes there’s a little bit of blindness because you’re just saying, “Well, that person likes it, so therefore I have to like it.” And maybe in your gut you say, “Well I don’t really like it, but they say it’s fantastic, so I’m going to go and follow that.” And there is a little bit, an offshoot of that is maybe a little more crass, keeping up with the Joneses, you know, “Well, so and so has it, so I want to have that too.” I’ve run into that just in terms of clients I’ve had in the past telling me, “Well, my friend has this piece that you sold them and I want the same thing.” It’s a whole other part of the conversation.
But I believe firmly that all art is subjective. That even though someone who is very influential in this world, in the art world, says this work is amazing, if you don’t think it’s amazing in your gut, that’s okay. You don’t have to like it just because everyone else seems to like it. And so I, yeah, I think all art is subjective and I think it’s perfectly acceptable that it is that way.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
So Tom Wolfe wrote a pretty famous, very short book called The Painted Word, in which his thesis was that modern art, which he did not like, let’s be very clear about that, especially abstract art, Wolfe was not a fan of. He wrote in his book that the art itself, even to a subjective observer, has no meaning without a thesis in writing explaining why that art was important.
Ariel Meyerowitz
I can understand that from a certain perspective. I think that there’s a lot of art, particularly abstract art, where there is no meaning behind it. I mean that was the whole basis of the AbEx movement, is that it is just pure expression and there wasn’t any storytelling intention whatsoever. And knowing that, if there was something the artist had written to go along with it, wouldn’t always make the work better. Sometimes it can detract from it.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Sure.
Ariel Meyerowitz
So I don’t believe that all art needs an explanation. In fact, there is a contemporary painter whose work I absolutely love. Her name is Anj Smith, and she is a really wild painter, meticulous in every brushstroke that she makes and every detail. And the work deals with motherhood and femininity and postpartum depression and fashion and environmental issues. I mean, she’s really all over the place. And she has, when you look at her work and you talk to someone at her gallery, they will share with you some of her studio notes, ideas that she was thinking about while she was making it.
But she is a firm believer in not having a description to accompany each painting because she wants to just put her vision out there on the canvas and then the rest is up to you. She doesn’t want to tell you what to think about her work and what to pull from it or to put onto it. She wants you to have the complete, raw experience. And I really appreciate that about her position because there are artists also that really have a very clear directive about what they want you to see in their work.
And sometimes I struggle with that because I think if you have to tell me everything I’m supposed to see in your work, then I don’t know that your work is as successful as it should be because it requires so much information. Share a little bit, but then leave the rest up to me and to other viewers. But if you have to over-tell, then you haven’t, in my opinion, you haven’t accomplished what you set out to in making the work.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Yeah. And I sometimes think that art can get overly analyzed, overly analytical. I read a lot of the academic theories on art, and I find them completely unsatisfying. It’s like they’re drained of what makes art beautiful, in my opinion, in the first place. And yet I’m fascinated by symbols, by the hold that they have over us as humans. And art clearly has a huge hold over us, regardless. In fact, for the most part, art was used for people who couldn’t read or write. Like, if you were the church, you wanted your stained glass to send a certain message to people. If you were part of a community and people couldn’t read or write, it was the visual that was right there, that and storytelling.
You know, I was thinking as you were answering about the Abstract Expressionism, there must have been something that drove the CIA to have a program called Operation Long Leash, in which they sponsored and paid for Pollock and other abstract artists to be displayed all around Europe. And when you read their explanation, it’s “America, we’re so free, you can just do whatever you want.” But I just wonder in the absence of an underlying thesis or whatnot, like what kind of counsel do you give? What if one of your newer, or what if I, I’ve been a client for a while, what if I fell in love with something that you just thought was horrible, just the worst thing you’d ever seen in the world? How would you handle that?
Ariel Meyerowitz
Well, I would have a conversation with you and say, “Well, what is it about this work that resonates with you so strongly where you feel that you have to have it?” And I would want you to really give me a legitimate reason rather than just, “I don’t know, I like it.” Not that you personally would ever do that, but I would want you to make your case. And then I in turn would make my case as to why I didn’t think it made sense.
And it would be, I guess it also depends on the collector as well. If you are building a particular collection, we would have to discuss, does this piece make sense within your collection? If you are a new first time buyer, I really would want to know what it was that spoke to you. And at the end of the day, I can really only think of one or two cases where I have said to a collector, “I really don’t think that this is something that you should move forward with.”
I can only give you all of the information and I can share my opinion with you. But at the end of the day, it’s your money and it’s your house or your office. And if you have this overwhelming response to, “I panic, I have to have this piece, I can’t live without it,” I’m not going to be the person to stand in your way. If it is six figures or seven figures, and I really don’t think that it is wise, then I really will make a strong case.
But I’m sure there are other advisors out there that will just cut you down and say, “Absolutely not.” But I’m not that way. I mean, I want to make sure that every purchase that you make, you are happy with, no regrets. And if I’ve stood in the way of you buying something that you really love and then you resent me for it, you know, what good am I?
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Well, yeah, and I think that you explained what good you are in the way you responded to my question. I think the right way to do it is exactly as you’ve outlined. And just ask them, like, can you give me a hint on why you like this particular piece of work? Because it’s only through those kinds of conversations, I think that you can grow, that you can learn to see things from a different perspective. And so, therefore, I think it’s very admirable to have that kind of conversation.
Ariel Meyerowitz
It’s respectful. Yeah, I’m not, if you say to me, “I really like this,” and I just shut you down, I mean, that’s not respecting the process as well. It’s really important for each person to be heard. And I mean, yes, there are other people out there that will just, they’ll just flat out say, “No, you can’t do it or you shouldn’t do it.” But if that happens, I question, well, what’s the agenda of that person? Why are they doing that? What else do they have planned? I just want my clients to be happy with every single piece that they own, and I don’t want to stand in that way.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Do you find that when you have newer clients, that many are drawn first from the idea that this could be a good investment versus the way we are? Like, we buy everything with no plans to ever sell it.
Ariel Meyerowitz
I love that. I do. I really do.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
But how many come at it from the other way?
Ariel Meyerowitz
So when I’m working with someone for the first time and they quickly launch into an investment conversation, I’m pretty quick to stop them in their tracks because I don’t feel that’s the right motivation from the beginning. I think that you have to start by buying, as I said in the beginning, you have to start by buying what you love as a way to kind of get your feet wet and get comfortable. And investing in art is, it’s like gambling. It’s not like gambling. It is gambling. There are no guarantees. There are definitely a handful of artists where you can make a pretty good guess that the likelihood that the value will appreciate is pretty high.
But at the end of the day, when you choose to sell that work that you’ve purchased for an investment, it’s only going to be worth more money if there’s someone else that wants to buy it and pay that, and there’s no guarantee of that ever happening. Also, with investing the way the market is now, you don’t buy something for $5,000 or $10,000, in a lot of cases, $20 or $25,000, that should be considered an investment. You really have to come in at a higher end.
And when I have those conversations with clients, I say there are a handful of artists that are quite well known but still a little underappreciated. They are later in life, maybe in the twilight of their life or career. And there’s a decent chance, as morbid as it is, but it is a fact of the art world that when a well-known artist passes away, their art goes up in value. And so if you know that to be the case and the artwork that the person is making makes sense for this collector and they can afford that six figures or upper five, how long do you plan to sit on this piece before you flip it?
But really it’s, if we’re going to invest, we’re coming in at a much higher starting point. The kind of investment conversation I have is the emotional investment that you’re going to get from something you are buying. That’s the first and foremost investment that I think is really worth talking about and embracing.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Missy and I also, when we started to collect art in earnest, one of the things that we wanted to do and which we’ve been largely successful at was we wanted to buy living artists because we felt that by doing so we could potentially materially impact their life. Now obviously, as the Buddha heads behind you indicate, we have not always been incredibly successful at that. The whole idea of patronage we found very appealing because of what we’re just talking about, the flippers, the commodity, turning it into a commodity. This is not the way I look at art at all. And I think it’s so much more important than that. And you know, to come after it from a mercantilist point of view just doesn’t float my boat.
Without question, if you look at certain of the various blue chip artists historically, even ones who already had an established reputation, like they’ve made pretty good investments. What do you think about the auction market versus the gallery market versus going to a fair that’s gallerists at the fair versus the private sale?
Ariel Meyerowitz
So the auction market is pretty wild. It’s really changed. When I first entered this field, everybody went to the auction house and there was very little phone bidding. And it was really, it was thrilling to be in there and to see the paddles or all the different gestures that people made to bid. And you’re really experiencing the excitement in a different way. It’s less interesting now because the majority of the bidding that happens is either online or it’s on the phone. So you’re sitting there and I watch them live on my computer and I’m basically watching people on the phone.
And so much of it is there’s a tremendous amount of money in the world, more than ever before, and a lot of people are just looking for places to park it. And to also have a trophy, to be able to buy something and pay way above the high estimate and then to show it off and say “I’m the one that paid that.” So it’s really, it’s all over the place.
There are certain artists who don’t come up for auction very often. And that doesn’t mean that people don’t love that work. It just means that people are holding on to it, they don’t want to let it go. And at galleries their work sells for tens of thousands of dollars or even in the low six figures. But at auction it just does terribly because there’s no deep history and record for that artist. So you can’t always judge how an artist performs at auction as something to invest in or not. Again, that’s a sort of a gross generalization.
One has to break it down to certain artists who have consistently performed well. So when you’re looking, I mean, I’ve done this for you, and artworks that I have suggested, not necessarily to buy at auction, but I will reference that artist’s auction history as proof of this is someone who is stable because for the last 20 years their work has continued to appreciate and appreciate at auction. So it’s a good reference point.
But these three or four markets that you talked about, the art fair, the gallery, the private sales and the auctions, one relates to them differently. Private sales are just that, they’re private, so you don’t always know what things are selling for. And once you own it and it’s a one of a kind piece, to a certain extent, you can sell it for whatever you want. It’s just, can you find someone who will pay whatever it is that you’re asking? Often there’s a negotiation. Sometimes there’s a trade as well. “Well, I want this painting, you have that painting, so we’ll trade it if it’s of similar value.”
The gallery market, it is, for the most part, it’s primary market. It’s the first time a work is being sold. There are galleries in the city that specialize in secondary markets. So they take works that sold a long time ago and they get them in and they have an opportunity to sell them again in the secondary or tertiary.
And then the art fairs are often a very elegant flea market as what some people describe it as. You walk in, there are 220, 250 galleries from all over the world. They’ve got these booths of different scales and they’re bringing sometimes either work by just a single artist, which I often prefer because you get in a small space in a concentrated period of time, you get a sense of the, potentially the breadth of one artist’s work. A lot of other galleries bring one example by 20 different artists that they represent. And it’s fast.
Galleries are now leading up to art fairs two weeks, three weeks, sometimes even as far out as a month before, they’re sending out PDFs listing everything that they’re going to be bringing to the art fair. So a lot of these bigger galleries or even the smaller ones that are quite successful will get to the art fair and everything’s sold already. Or if something, if you see something and you reach out to the gallery and you say, “I’m bringing a client to the art fair and they’re interested,” they’ll put it on hold for you for one hour.
And then you have to do this whole dance of making sure that you are there for the VIP or the pre-VIP entry time. And it’s literally like a horse race. 11am strikes and people are running through the halls to the gallery with their client in tow to look at the artwork and buy it immediately. And that’s the thing with art fairs is often there’s no, you can’t luxuriate in time and thinking about the work. You have to make a decision. You have to make a decision right now while you’re looking at it.
And it’s a certain kind of art buyer that can handle that, that fast decision making. And so generally for first time buyers, I say go to an art fair, even if you spend just a couple of hours, you’re not going to see everything in those couple of hours. But go not with the intention to buy anything, but let’s just go and look. It’s a reconnaissance mission. And so I will walk through with those collectors and after having initially a conversation with them about what I think their interests are, I curate the time that we spend together at the art fair, showing them specific works, but always say to them, if there’s something here as we walk through that catches your eye, let’s pivot and go and look and talk to the people about it.
That is the other, one of the other upsides of the art fair is that you have the gallery attendants, you have their undivided attention because they’re stuck there for hours on end just to answer your questions. So even though going to an art fair can seem intimidating because there’s so much there and can seem daunting, which it is, it’s an opportunity to have access to gallery directors and associate directors or owners in a way that you wouldn’t if you just walked in off the street into a gallery.
And often at art fairs on the first day or second day, they’re not cutting deals because why would they give you a big discount on day one when they’ve got four more days to potentially sell it to someone else for the full retail? I have found in the past the Sunday of an art fair or if it goes to a Monday, the last day of the art fair, particularly with galleries from overseas, they’re more willing to cut deals because they don’t want to go back with this big piece that they brought with them. So you can often negotiate a little bit more on the last day of a fair, but you also run the risk of that piece that you saw on day one not still being available on the last day.
Those four markets we’re talking about, the art fair, the gallery, the private sale and the auction, they all move at different paces. And the slowest pace, of course, is the gallery.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
As I was listening, I was thinking also about art is, there’s just no question about it, it is, at least it is a perceived prestige game.
Ariel Meyerowitz
Absolutely.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Oh yeah. And yet I think that there is, I believe very deeply that I can infer quite a bit about a person by looking at the books on their bookshelf and I’m wondering what are your thoughts? Do you think that you can infer quite a bit about people by what’s hanging on their walls?
Ariel Meyerowitz
Without a doubt, without a doubt. And particularly for the people that have nothing on their walls, I infer a lot and I admit there’s some judgment that’s at play. But yes, I mean, I consider myself to be a very open-minded person. So when I go into someone else’s home and I look at the art on their wall, I try just to have the experience of it and not pass any judgment. Again, that goes back to the conversation earlier about everyone’s opinion about an artwork is neither right nor wrong. You are entitled to think and feel what you want about it. So I might not like it, but it doesn’t mean that I think that they are a bad collector or a bad person.
But yes, you can tell a lot about a person based on the style of work that they have, what is actually in the context of the work itself. You can get some sense as to what are their interests. Do they, this is someone who likes to go deep. Do they want works that are provocative, emotionally evocative? Do they want to challenge you? Or do they want, do they want not to think when they come home at the end of the day and just have works that are calming? And so, yeah, I can definitely get a strong sense about someone like you based on the books they have in their library and based on what’s hanging on their wall or placed throughout their house.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
And do you think that people just sort of intuitively understand that and that it has a performative aspect to it?
Ariel Meyerowitz
I think that there are definitely some people who are interested in the performative aspect of the art that’s hanging in their home or in their office, and they want to convey a particular message or a feeling based on that. There is a showing. I think it really just depends on how they live with it. Some people like their biggest pieces to be in the, you know, the most public part of their home or their office, and others will have the most important piece in their collection in their bedroom so they can have an intimate experience with it.
So, I mean, that’s why I love what I do so much, because every person I work with is totally different. I don’t have two clients that are the same in the slightest. Everyone’s interests are different and environments are different and budgets are different. And it’s really, it’s just thrilling to be around all these different personalities and go into all of these different directions and to be in their homes with them and in their offices with them and help them choose exactly where they’re going to live with this piece and how it impacts the room.
I mean, that’s a conversation that I always have with my clients, particularly my new ones. I’ll back up. If I’m starting with someone for the first time and they get very excited and they come to our first meeting with wallpaper swatches and fabric swatches, I say, “I’m not your person. I will take all of that into consideration, but I’m not going to match something to your sofa. I want to find out what’s your intention for this? How are you going to use this space?”
And then let’s talk about how the art can relate to it. How you engage with art is very important to me as an advisor. I think it’s really essential that the art that you hang in your home or in your office, that it always stimulates you in some way. And it’s not something that you can just walk by. And after the first few times of seeing it, you just dismiss it. It just blends into the space. I like for art to always engage the viewer. And it doesn’t have to be in an intense way, but engage you to the point where every single time you look at it for the first week, for the first 10 years, that it stimulates something, that you have that visceral response to it.
And you can tell when you walk into a space that someone is just putting stuff up on the wall just to have something up on the wall or as a way just to impress the people that come over, or whether it’s something they really want to deeply enjoy. I have an example. I had some clients, always makes me laugh. I had some clients many years ago. They had a pied-à-terre here in the city. And these are people that were only interested in photography at the time. And I met the wife and talked with her, and she was clear she wanted to hire me. So then I had to meet the husband and went out for a meal with her and her husband. And it was 21 questions. He just grilled me about my experience and my knowledge and whatever.
I mean, this is 20 years ago. And so we’re just going to buy fashion photography. And when we left the restaurant, the wife was walking ahead of us, and the husband pulled me aside by my arm and he said, “Listen, I don’t want to look stupid in front of my friends, okay?” And I thought, gotcha. And I knew that this was not someone who, I mean, he’d made it clear in our conversation he wasn’t really interested in art. He wanted to make his wife happy, but he really wanted to impress his friends.
And when his highfalutin friends came over, he wanted them to walk in and say, “Oh, that’s an Irving Penn. That’s a Richard Avedon.” Because he also didn’t want to be in a position of having to explain what they were. He wanted them to speak for themselves. So, I mean, I had a great time with it, and I accomplished his goal, but everybody relates to art differently.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Yeah, I, that, it just keeps me coming back to, there is something about art that infects everyone, even people like your fellow, who doesn’t, who’s not that interested in art. He, I think that we see it as the question I just asked you, as a reflection of ourselves. And, you know, most people don’t want to look dumb. Most people don’t want to, I mean, like I’m, I look dumb all the time, so I’m used to it.
Ariel Meyerowitz
Hard to believe, but...
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Well, you know, one of the things that I love about working with you is you have a natural love of the art. The first time I ever met your dad, he had read, and for those who aren’t aware, your father is maybe the most famous living, at least street photographer today. He’s up there, he’s one of the, and he’s moved beyond and he’s doing, I love his work, as you know. But the first time I met him, it was because he had read one of my investment books.
Ariel Meyerowitz
That’s right.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
And wanted me to manage his money.
Ariel Meyerowitz
Yeah, that’s right.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
And he came over to my office. I was at Bear Stearns in midtown at the time. And this is the first time I ever met your dad. And he walked in and my office was decorated exclusively with Missy’s photographs. And that was when she was in her Hasselblad black and white phase. But when your dad came in, he said, “Nice to meet you.” He’s very polite and everything. But then he said to me, “May I look at your art?” And I went, “Of course.” Do you know how long he took looking at my art? A long time. A very long time, which I loved.
And then after staring at a self-portrait of Missy for more than five minutes, he looked at me and he goes, “I’m not familiar with this artist. Whose work is this?” And I teased him a little bit and I said, “Why does it matter to you?” And he said, “No, not at all. It’s just whoever’s work it is, they have a wonderful eye.”
But it was so obvious, I fell in love with your dad immediately, right? Because it was so obvious that’s all he cared about. He just cared about the work. He didn’t care about any of the other stuff that goes with it, right? Like he’s not interested in the game, he’s not interested in any of that. And I just do wonder, I think one of the reasons why I’m so fascinated by art and the art market, right, like I’ve been fairly successful in markets and so I try to figure out what drives them, why are they doing what they’re doing. And my comment earlier, I find the art market to be highly memetic.
They always say follow the money. But I think in certain circumstances you’re much better off following the prestige because you have a whole host of occupations that are very high status, even if they’re not terribly well remunerated. Right. I think that what I like about you so much, and I’ve spoken to other art consultants and people who do what you do, a lot of them look at it from the point of view of the market as opposed to the art. And I just think that is backwards, right? It’s like, why would you ever do that?
Ariel Meyerowitz
Well, I am my father’s daughter. I mean, I, from as early as I can remember, some people, there’s the expression, some people are born with a silver spoon in their mouth. I was born with a little Olympus camera. So from as early as I can remember, I had a little camera and I would always take little pictures. And as we would go on family trips, I would stand by his side and I would take pictures and he would yell down to me what f-stop to use. And so it just, it became so much a part of our life.
And then when we would get home, I would sit with him. We had a small room, a TV room and a library. And we would sit in there because it was windowless. It was the best place to go and look at the pictures he had taken or I had taken on our old-fashioned slide projector, click through every image. But I would sit with him as we looked at all of the pictures he had taken or I had taken and discuss together what made a photograph successful or not. And I’m not talking about financially successful. I’m talking about visually successful. What worked about it, what didn’t work. Did we, did you miss that shot by a split second or did you get it just right?
And so I spent countless hours just looking at work with him, coupled with going to, as I said before, his artist studio friends, his artist friends’ studios, and just being around art all the time. It is the only thing I knew. It’s the only way that I knew how to relate to art. And I don’t know, maybe I would be a much more successful art advisor if I just focused on the markets and, well, of course I take it into consideration. I have to. It’s part of my job.
I am really, I do this because I believe art is essential and people describe it or dismiss it as “Well, it’s a luxury item.” And to a certain extent it is. You have to have a certain amount of disposable income to have this on your walls. But I think that there is art for everybody at every level, regardless of what your budget is. And to spend the time really looking is really what it’s all about. Because that it has such an impact on you and it affects everything else you do.
And so growing up with someone who would prioritize looking at Missy’s photographs rather than sitting with you and talking about the whole reason why he came to meet with you in the first place, that was how, that was the directive of my life as a child and as a teenager. And even to this day, when he comes to New York or when I go and I visit him in London, we always set aside time to go and look at art together. And we can be in the museum for hours and hours, or going to galleries for hours and hours, because he literally, and I have so many pictures of him, he literally gets almost nose to nose with whatever it is that we’re looking at, and he studies all aspects of it, and it’s, it’s just, it’s thrilling to him.
And I think that’s what you have to do. That’s how you have to engage in art. Because the artist has spent blood, sweat and tears into making this work for you to engage with it. And so that’s why it’s really important to spend time with it.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
What I hope that people watching and listening can understand is your primary message, which I think is absolutely correct, which is, think less about how it’s going to fit into your portfolio and think a little bit more about, does this do anything for you or not? I do think that the market is, it’s almost perfectly designed to take advantage of insecurities, to take advantage of keeping up with the Joneses, much like what we adorn ourselves with or the type of watch that we buy or use. People probably see art more than anything. I would see books more because it really talks about what you really want to be reading about.
It seems to me that, like, that’s a very difficult line to navigate. And by that I mean you probably, as an effective advisor, have to be mindful of the potential for that as a particular investment. But by the same token, your greater goal, which is why I love you, should be, does it work for Jim? Does it work for Missy? Does it work for what they’re after? And that seems almost like you have to be really good at reading not only art, but people.
Ariel Meyerowitz
Oh, I’ve said on so many occasions that as an art advisor, I am, there’s definitely a therapy, I guess, psychologist aspect to it because I do spend so much time with the people, and it’s a very intimate experience. I mean, quite literally, I’m in your bedroom and I’m in your bathroom, and I’m in your home in every different area. And so I really need to understand you as best as I can in order to marry you in the best way possible with the right artwork, over and over again. Yeah. Understanding the person is essential because again, if you don’t, then it’s really a transaction. Then I become more of a facilitator, not so much an advisor.
And while I can do that if that’s what the person wants, I really, I do this because I love people so much and I love communication and connection, person to person, but also person to artwork. And it is such a joy for me when I’ve taken somebody who’s never bought art before and is intimidated by it, and I’ve gotten them to start looking. And then when they make that first purchase, there’s a whole physiological change that the person seems to go through. It’s a sense of accomplishment, there’s a sense of relief, and there’s an overwhelming sense of excitement that they’ve made their first, they’ve taken their first step into this world, and then they get to spend all of this time with the piece.
And then additionally, the people that I work with are, they’re all high net worth individuals who for the most part, work tremendous hours. And when they come home at the end of the day, or if they are already home, when they leave their office, their home office, I want them to, if possible, to turn off that work brain and just have the art pull something else out of them. Give them a sense of relief or a nice distraction from whatever it is that they were doing for the rest of the day, earlier in the day.
So there’s, there’s so many different things, so many different factors that get taken into consideration when working with someone and figuring out what’s the right art for that person. Along those lines, I also am not a believer that in your home or in your office that there has to be art on every single wall. I really firmly believe that there have to be walls, spaces that are empty. Because if you have art everywhere, your brain never shuts off. And so I look at blank walls almost like a comma in a sentence, it’s like a pause. You need a place for your eyes to rest.
Because particularly now in the world that we live in, there’s so much stimulation. Everyone’s way overstimulated, you know, there’s so much news and imagery being thrown at you. And to be able to have a place for just your eyes to rest for a moment actually enables you to see the art that you have hanging even more fully than if it’s constantly being layered upon, layered by all this other art around it.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
That was something that Missy and I really experienced when we were at Paris Photo. As you know, it’s the, is it still the largest single photography?
Ariel Meyerowitz
Yes, it is. Yeah. Well, there’s AIPAD in New York. Yeah. But I do think that Paris Photo is bigger.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Yeah. On a real estate basis, I think it is.
Ariel Meyerowitz
Yes. Yeah.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
But one of the things that we noticed was after a certain amount of time, we got photo blindness. Like, literally we would just look at each other and say, “Are you not seeing anything anymore?” And we would literally have to leave. So I think that really underlines your point about needing the break, the comma, as you put it.
Ariel Meyerowitz
Right. You definitely need the break. But also, again, going back to the new person, if they are choosing to go to an art fair, it really is so helpful to have an advisor with you because that advisor curates your experience there, rather than saying, “We’re going to go into every single booth and we’re going to look at every single thing here.” And by the end of five hours, you’ve seen 30,000 images. And that’s just, you can’t see anything.
So the advisor comes in and says, “We’re going to go to these 10 places and we’re going to look at these 12 photographers, and then that’s it.” I mean, if the person has incredible stamina and they want to keep going, then great, you lean into that. But generally, I think it’s best, and it’s most productive to not try to see every single thing. Yeah. And then, or come back if you have the time, then go back the next day and go to a different set of galleries.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
That’s really close to the way that we treated our kids when they were young. We would take them to the Met, but we would only take them to, at most, three exhibits. My son Patrick, being a young boy, we always had to go to the armor and armory.
Ariel Meyerowitz
Well, I mean, at the Met in particular, that’s, it’s incredible, but...
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Yes, it really is.
Ariel Meyerowitz
Yeah.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
But one of the things that I found was particularly helpful was to do very different periods, like, really ancient stuff, then take them to really modern stuff and then make the stop and look at all the armor. But I definitely found that on the third group, you could tell, yeah, they’re...
Ariel Meyerowitz
Getting ants in their pants.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Yeah, ants in their pants. Like, “Why is it,” well, you know. And that obviously was not what we were trying to do. We were trying to get them to actually look and understand. Back to the idea. Another reason I’m so fascinated by this market is because it does seem pretty gamble-y. And let me explain what I mean by that. I’m sure you’re aware of the story of Basquiat. What a lot of people don’t know is that Basquiat had a partner and they did graffiti art. And they were so similar in their styles that when Basquiat and his former partner used to revisit a piece that they had worked on together, neither of them could honestly remember who did what part of the piece. Right.
And yet the stark difference between what happened to both of them, I just find fascinating and like, it gnaws at me a little bit because of how fascinating I find this market. Right now, we’re off art as an object of beauty and everything. And I’m now talking a bit more about the market. So of course, Andy Warhol discovers Basquiat, takes him under his wing, and naturally his prospects soar. The whole, you know, my mom used to call it basking in reflected glory. And, and this, I’m not saying, I think Basquiat was a really fascinating artist, so don’t get me wrong, but Andy Warhol at this time is super famous and super well known.
And so the reason I’m telling the story is because the partner, he would have none of that. He viewed it all as selling out from his purest, “I must suffer for my art” point of view. He just thought that was selling out, that was giving into the man, all of the watchwords. Right? We all know what Basquiat ended up selling for. This guy who, they couldn’t tell the difference in their own art, couldn’t sell a piece to like, buy a meal from a cart here in New York.
And then I watch another artist who I think actually very highly of, Banksy. And same sort of thing. Really, really interesting. And it does make me sometimes wonder whether it’s, we’re just all hypnotized by either the artist whose collection they’re in, what other highly thought of people think of them. I saw the movie The Last Vermeer, which is about the Van Meegeren forgery of Vermeer. It’s very interesting because the forger makes a point at the end of the movie when they expose it as his art. And he’s literally on trial for his life because he was being tried by the Dutch authority for collaborating with the Nazis. And the penalty for that was death.
And he was trying to demonstrate, “No, I took this fat guy, Göring, for all the money in the world with a forgery,” and he had to prove that he had forged it. And that’s part of the film. But he makes a point that I find really interesting and want your opinion on. And that is after the man acting as his counsel throws the agent at the painting so that his signature is revealed underneath. He says to the entire courtroom, “Don’t you understand? That painting, which all of you viewed as priceless moments ago, because it was a Vermeer, not one brushstroke has changed, not one aspect of it has differed, and now it’s worthless.” What do you think?
Ariel Meyerowitz
I think it speaks to what we were talking about earlier about tastemakers and the few people at the very top that have tremendous influence over what everyone else thinks. And it’s, I mean, forgery is so complicated. I think what is behind why people immediately cut the value down for a forgery and call it worthless is because the original artist had the vision, had the intention, made the effort.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
It feels like a violation.
Ariel Meyerowitz
It doesn’t feel, it is.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
It is a violation.
Ariel Meyerowitz
It’s a complete violation. And it’s, it’s literally, it’s cheating. It is absolutely, as you said a moment ago, gaming the system. It is to just make a copy and then basically claim it as your own when it’s not your own. You’re pretending to be someone else. I think that’s why it’s okay to look at something incredible and then a moment later, see it as absolutely nothing, because it is. It’s totally empty. It’s just a copy. There’s no heart in it. There’s no connection. It’s just, it’s just a carbon copy.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Yeah. I think the deeper point there, though, is not necessarily, we all know what the forger’s doing is wrong. Right? But I think the larger point that intrigues me is the idea of the puffed up expert. And of course, who do they play as the biggest asshole in this movie? The guy who is the authenticator of the previous Vermeers. And for listeners who don’t know about Vermeer, he was a very famous Dutch artist, only did 30 canvases during his lifetime, or at least those are the, what have survived. Very, very small, magnificent use of light. Eerily so. The Frick here has some pretty good Vermeers.
Ariel Meyerowitz
Stunning.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Yes, I agree. But the forger, Van Meegeren, literally out-Vermeered Vermeer.
Ariel Meyerowitz
Yeah.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
And so I’m interested in the people who hold themselves out as experts, as extraordinarily well educated in that particular thing. There is a part of me, the naughtier Jim, who doesn’t mind seeing them tweaked on the nose occasionally. What do you think about authentication, provenance, et cetera? I think from an investment standpoint, it’s very important. But from the point, if you’re actually buying the art because you love it and because it feels right to you, what do you think?
Ariel Meyerowitz
So I guess I’m of two minds. If you love the work and you can afford it and it speaks to you in myriad ways, then you just, you buy it. Yeah. Provenance, important provenance or not. But as someone who’s so deeply steeped in this world, I really respect provenance and I really think that it lends itself to the overall value of the work. So to know that the painting that you’re thinking of buying or the sculpture was shown at this gallery back in the ‘80s during this seminal exhibition.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
And that’s fun.
Ariel Meyerowitz
It’s fun, but it just, it adds a little, it adds an extra layer of excitement around the artwork and importance to the artwork. You don’t, that doesn’t happen with primary market works. That just doesn’t happen with primary market works. It has to be something that’s already, you know, secondary or tertiary. But it’s something that I always include when it’s relevant. If it’s something I’m offering to someone, I include what the provenance is. And if the person doesn’t understand, then we talk about, “Here are the three galleries that this painting showed at, and it was included in the Venice Biennale, and it was owned by this princess. And now it’s made its way to this person,” and it just shows that it’s just a stamp of approval on the validity of the work and how so many other people have felt.
“This is a great example of this particular artist’s work.” And to know that it has a history is, it just helps you to relate to the work in a slightly deeper way. So I do think that provenance is important. But again, if it’s a primary market piece that has no provenance, because it’s just, the provenance is, it came direct from the artist studio, then that, you’re, it’s nothing to take into consideration at all. It’s just a matter of how you engage with it, how you love it.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Yeah. And we had an experience that you know pretty well, but most of our audience probably doesn’t. And that was with the artist Anne Tabachnick. She was a not terribly well-known artist who we visited at her home and studio in the late ‘80s, unfortunately was dying of pancreatic cancer at the time, and she was desperate to sell some work because she needed the money and we couldn’t decide on a piece that we would like. So I wrote her a check and I said, “You know, send us a piece that you think works.” And unfortunately she never got a chance to because she died.
There was a particular piece that we both loved, didn’t buy at the time because it was too big or we didn’t have the right place for it and we didn’t want to store it, et cetera. And flash forward to a few years ago, and we are walking in the gallery district here in Manhattan and my wife Missy says, “Oh look, they represent Anne Tabachnick.” And I went, “Cool, let’s go in.” And we asked the gallerist, “You know, we’d like to see some of Anne’s work.” And she was like, “Absolutely. Most of it’s kind of big, so I’m going to have to go to the back and unroll it for you.” We said, “Pick whatever you think is like your favorite or whatever.”
And she came out, unrolled the painting, and Missy burst into tears because it was the one that we loved. And the reason I tell that story is because I think that gets at the heart of art. In other words, we hadn’t thought about that story or that piece in years. Anne made a huge impression on me and I did 10 pages in my journal about her because she was such a fascinating woman. Not very much about that particular piece, more about her as a person, but just to have that instant emotional connection after all those years to make Missy burst into tears. And so I joked, as I think I joked to you, “The painting’s so nice, I paid for it twice.”
Ariel Meyerowitz
Right.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Because there was no way I was walking out of that gallery without buying that.
Ariel Meyerowitz
Yeah. Yeah.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
What do you think for some of your clients, what do you think the biggest mistakes you see clients make? And let’s remain nameless, of course. Meaning don’t talk about the mistakes I made. But what do you, what do you see as the biggest mistakes that even seasoned art collectors make?
Ariel Meyerowitz
I think it is maybe not trusting their judgment or making a quick decision on a potential purchase without thinking it all the way through and then missing an opportunity. I think that’s probably the biggest one. And then the other mistake is just not taking care of it while it’s in your home and hanging it in a spot that is not right for the artwork in terms of, it’s exposed to too much light, so it gets damaged in that regard. But I would really, I think the main thing is maybe making decisions too quickly, rash decisions, I think is really the main mistake. Rash decisions and buying something too quickly that then they cannot return or making a fast decision that they’re not going to buy something and then they’ve missed out on something.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
And that is where, again, for somebody who did well as a quantitative investor and tried to, believe you me, for years to come up with a quantifiable way to figure out the art market, it just can’t be done.
Ariel Meyerowitz
It cannot be done. It can’t be done. It’s just so, it’s such a fluid market. It is constantly changing and it’s hard to predict which way it’s going to go. I’m here representing the art advisor relationship with collecting art. And I think it’s really important that the collectors, while you are the ones with the finances to make the choices, you’ve hired an advisor who’s really your team player, your partner in this journey together. So it’s also really important for the client to trust the advisor.
And when the advisor says, “I know you’re hesitating on this and I hear you, but here’s why I really think that you should reconsider,” and to really take that under advisement too, and not say an immediate yes or an immediate no, but to really think about the other person’s position. Because there definitely have been, toot my own horn for a second, which I don’t typically do, but there definitely have been experiences I’ve had with collectors in, well, I’ve been advising for 20 years, but I’ve been working in this field for 34.
I definitely had experiences with people where I felt very strongly about something and the collector just was very quick to dismiss it. And it turned out to be a missed opportunity tenfold. And I have these moments where I think, “Well, you should have listened to me,” you know. But I think it’s, that relationship is really important and it’s not, I’m not a facilitator. This is not transactional for me. This is really something that I feel that I’m doing closely in partnership with people. And I think for me and my personal experience, I can’t speak for other people, I just think it’s these missed opportunities.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Yeah.
Ariel Meyerowitz
And the same, I’m sorry to cut you off, but the same thing goes for the advisor, too. I mean, we’ve all made mistakes where we’ve not believed in something that the collector has, and we were the ones to screw up and that it really was, it would have been a great piece for the collection, and now it’s gone.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
There must also be, especially if you’re dealing with couples where they’re very different. Like, you know, Missy and I are very different. I tend to, she tends to be more thrifty than I am. As you were talking about, you know, you missed that 10x-er. I was visiting my hometown of St. Paul, Minneapolis, Twin Cities, and we knew a dealer there named Doug Flanders. I don’t know whether you know Doug, but he was a pretty significant dealer in Minneapolis at the time. And there was a diptych. This is a long, I’m aging myself here because this is just as Chinese art was getting popular again or again was making its way into the West, and there was a diptych by a Chinese artist that I really liked.
And so I called my wife, and she was like, “Oh, that’s really expensive, and, you know, I really want to see it.” And I said, “Well, I will send you a photo.” And that didn’t work. Anyway, we passed on it, and about 10 years later, we saw Doug at Art Basel Miami Beach, not Swiss Basel. And he seemed to go out of his way when he saw me to come over, like, you know, a beeline to me and say, “Oh, by the way, you remember that piece, that diptych you didn’t buy? Oh, yeah, it just sold at auction for 15 times what I was offering it to you for.” And I was like, “Ouch.”
Ariel Meyerowitz
I will never, I will never say to your face, “I told you so.” I will think it. I will think it, but I would never, I would never say it.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
That’s because you’re smart.
Ariel Meyerowitz
But, yeah, there are many, “I told you so” moments. Well, not many, but there are enough “I told you so” moments where it hurts. Yeah, it hurts a little bit, because I just want, again, this sounds corny, but I just want the best for my clients. I want to make them as happy as I can. I want to enliven their homes or their offices to the best of my ability. I want them to be super pleased with everything. But saying that on the heels of your saying, you know, working with couples, it’s so fascinating because the couples that I have worked with in my years have been, there’s three different types. They’re the couples where they both have to agree 100% together on everything that they buy. Then there are the couples where one partner really just doesn’t give a shit at all and just lets the other person run with it.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Right.
Ariel Meyerowitz
Which can be a little easier sometimes. And then there are the couples where they just don’t often agree, so they take turns. “Okay, I don’t really love this piece. I like it, but I don’t really love it. So, Jim, you, you know, we’ll get this one because you love it,” and you say, “Missy, I don’t really love this piece, but you love it, so we’re going to get this one.” So at the end of the day, there’s a balance, and you both, it’s finding that middle path and making sure that everybody is happy. And it’s hard when it can be a little extra challenging sometimes when both parties have to feel the exact same passion for a piece because it’s hard to please everybody. That being said, there’s enough art out there to accomplish that. It just takes a little bit longer.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
And I think, you know, as we near the end of our conversation here, I, if we’re going to leave our listeners and viewers with anything, is it can seem daunting, it can seem complicated, and all of those things, but especially if you’re in a major city, if you’re here in New York, like, the world is literally your oyster. Absolutely. You can go and see art everywhere, and it doesn’t cost you anything for the most part. And really, the first lesson I think we both agree on is just go look and do that a lot, because what will happen is you’ll find you’re getting educated even though you don’t know that you are.
Ariel Meyerowitz
Exactly.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
What else, on top of that, what else are you going to leave our listeners and viewers with on kind of a, here’s the way to get into this. You don’t have to buy anything expensive or, you know, do anything declarative that way. But in addition to the looking, which I think, I think we both agree is like, step one, very important.
Ariel Meyerowitz
I think, particularly...If you’re living in a major metropolitan that is considered to be an art hub, since we’re here in New York City, I’m just going to focus on New York City. If you have the time or if you can make the time, take advantage of everything the city has to offer in terms of art learning such as you can take classes in the evenings at the Museum of Modern Art. I’ve done that once before. And you have the entire museum to yourself. You and maybe 10 other people. And it’s always one of the museum curators that’s teaching the class. It is an incredible way to see a lot of art and to learn about it.
And that actually is a great way to remove the daunting aspect because you have somebody walking you through and you’re doing it at a quiet time of day, again, if you’ve got the time or can make the time. And you can find resources to learn about where artists are giving lectures or curators are giving lectures about work. That’s a wonderful way to enhance your journey into art looking and art learning and getting over the intimidation that you may have when you step into a gallery and just having a conversation. You will never be obligated to buy anything, but you are completely within your rights to talk to whomever is behind the desk or to speak to one of the directors about the work. You’re within your rights and you should. It’s the best way. There’s no other way, but I find the best way to learn is through the experience of talking with someone while you’re standing in front of the artwork.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
And also, as we both agreed earlier, it’s subjective anyway. It’s not like there is some objective standard that you’re going to fall below or soar above when you’re trying to determine whether you want to collect something.
Ariel Meyerowitz
That’s the beauty of the art world or the beauty of art looking is that you and I can stand in front of the same photograph or same painting or sculpture and you can love it and I can hate it. And we should have a lively conversation about it. But it doesn’t mean that you’re right and I’m wrong or vice versa. You are totally entitled to your opinion and I’m totally entitled to my opinion. And it’s completely acceptable.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
And what’s wonderful about that notion is people are so tribal today. And so “I’m right and you’re wrong.” And what a great thing that you can do exactly as you’ve just discussed. It’s okay if you look at that painting and hate it and I love it. And then we talk about why. And nobody’s, doesn’t seem like feelings get hurt or anything because it is recognized, recognize that it’s entirely subjective. And maybe, there we go. Maybe we’ll get world peace by just having all of these people who are fighting with each other constantly just go through many of our museums here and duke it out there.
Ariel Meyerowitz
I like that idea. That feels like a really pleasant way to go about it.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Plus, you get to see some beautiful things while you’re arguing.
Ariel Meyerowitz
I do. I actually wholly believe that. Looking at art, I’ll say this. There was a study that just came out last week out of London. There’s a psychiatry organization that studied, it was a small pool of people, but they studied, I think it was 50 people. They sent them to a museum to look at five paintings by major artists in person. And they had monitors on them. And then they showed that same group of people the same paintings on a piece of paper.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Oh, yeah. I can see this coming a mile away.
Ariel Meyerowitz
Right. And so the outcome of this study was that looking at art reduces your stress by 22%. It literally brings your cortisol levels down. And I have been saying that forever. For myself personally, anytime if I’ve been in a bad mood or a sad mood or there’s something happening in the world that’s incredibly distressing, which there seems to be always happening now, my balm, my salve, is going and looking at art.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
I agree. It is magical in what it can do for all of us just by looking. And that is a very rare thing.
Ariel Meyerowitz
Yeah, well, because the feeling that you, it impacts your emotions and how you feel impacts your choices and the things that you do for the rest of the day. And if you have a good experience, I mean, just talking about it is giving me chills. Just having something beautiful or emotionally or intellectually stimulating wash over you is the greatest kind of bath.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
I agree entirely, Ariel. We always have a, the final question here at Infinite Loops is we’re going to create you Empress of the world for one day. There are rules. You can’t kill anyone. You can’t put anyone in a re-education camp. But what you can do, we’re going to hand you a magical microphone and you can say two things into it that everybody in the entire world is going to wake up whenever their next day starts, and they’re going to think to themselves, “You know, I’ve just had two of the greatest ideas. And unlike all those other times when I wake up with these great ideas and do absolutely nothing with them, these two I’m going to start acting on today.” What two things are you going to incept in the world’s population to make the world a better place?
Ariel Meyerowitz
If I am Empress for a day, I would say everyone has to go and look at art.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
There you go.
Ariel Meyerowitz
Because the more you look at it, the more you learn and the more comfortable you become in figuring out what you like and what you don’t like about it. And this should come as no surprise. Number two, live with art because it has an impact on you that little else does. And it is so good for your brain, it is so good for your heart, it is so good for your conversation with others. And it just expands your world. And that would be my directive, is to go see art and to live with art, and you’ll be a happier person.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
I could not agree more because I do both of those already. Ariel, thank you so much for coming on.
Ariel Meyerowitz
Thanks so much for having me, Jim.
