This will be my last post from the UAE. In fact by the time you read this I will already be on my way back to gorgeous grey clouds of the average UK summertime. The last two years of living first in Dubai and then in Sharjah, have been a decidedly mixed experience but I have learned a lot and really enjoyed the exposure to the diverse international art I have seen here. What is perhaps most bizarre is that it took me several months to find an actual Emirati artist but now they seem to be everywhere. It has been very interesting to see how phenomenally the cultural sector has grown just in the last two years and how arts development can become a kind of nationalism in the absence of any other type of overt political statement! I actually arrived in Dubai in May 2007 in the final week of the 8th Sharjah Biennale so I didn’t get to see very much of it. However, 2007 seems to have been the key year. Dubai held its first international Art Fair and fringe in March and not to be outdone, Abu Dhabi followed suit with Art Paris-Abu Dhabi in November. Galleries started to proliferate and three very distinct art areas emerged in Dubai which now has plans for a Museum of Modern Middle Eastern Art, an opera house and various other museums and arts dedicated areas. Meanwhile Abu Dhabi is getting a ‘starchitect’ designed Guggenheim, Louvre, Maritime museum and performing arts centre.

The culmination of all this activity seems to have been the launch of the first ever UAE pavilion at this year’s Venice Biennale. Actually the UAE had not one, but two pavilions at Venice…. the competitive squabbling between Dubai and Abu Dhabi even spilled over into the most prestigious art platform in the world resulting in one national UAE pavilion organised out of Dubai and a Platform for Venice set up by Abu Dhabi.

However, despite this frenzy of arts and cultural development which has really raised the UAE’s international profile it is still not a good environment for artists on the ground unless they have substantial independent economic means. It is a very expensive place to live (although rents are coming down since the credit crunch), there is almost no studio space and the constant pressure to earn money is just not conducive to artistic output. In two years I have reworked some old paintings, produced four average prints, a digital montage of the Dubai skyline and four towers of trash! However, the towers were a great success and gave me two of the highlights of my time here. They were exhibited first in the Creek Art fair in Dubai and then travelled to the Cultural Foundation in Abu Dhabi where they were part of an exhibition and panel discussion on Art and the Environment. It’s a shame I never got to exhibit anything in Sharjah but another real highlight was working on the Sharjah Biennale catalogue and I am very happy I was able to do that. It gave me a lot to think about on many different levels and I have assimilated (i.e. stolen) ideas about processes, materials, concepts and ways of communicating that I will take back to the UK with me. I don’t know yet how this and all my experiences over the past two years will come out in my work. However, the best thing is that I go back to the UK knowing I have a rare period ahead of me where I simultaneously have the two key commodities of time AND money! This means that I can sift through it all at leisure in my own space and then just focus on externalisation and production. I have (mostly) enjoyed being a facilitator, promoter and reviewer of other peoples art over the past two years BUT I cannot tell you how much I am looking forward to just being an artist for while again.

Created by Valerie Grove On 06/19/09 At 11:27 AM

I told myself that I wouldn’t mention Damien Hirst for a while as he’s a bit of a news hog, but I just can’t help myself. There’s no other artist out there like him. None of my artists friends have told me that they’re laying off up to 20 employees as none of my artist friends have 20 employees to lay off.

The quote below is from the Guardian newspaper here.
“On Thursday, up to 17 of the 22 people who make the pills for Hirst’s drug cabinet series were told their contracts were not being renewed, according to two sources close to Science Ltd, Hirst’s main art-producing company. Another three who make his butterfly paintings were also told they were surplus to requirements.
It is thought that amounts to approximately half of the London-based artists who work for Hirst. They are paid about £19,000 a year, sources said. In June 2007, Lullaby Spring, a cabinet filled with hand-painted pills, sold for £9.65m.”

Artinfo also mention the story here.

>> Damien Hirst News, Being an Artist

If you believe that art auction results are the be all and end all of the art market and that art auction results tell the full story of the evolution of art prices then you should probably reconsider your point of view. What art auction results do reflect is an extremely narrow view of how art market participants are reacting to the various influences that affect what price people are willing to pay for a work of art at a very specific moment in time. Looking at the sale history of an artwork over a period of one or two years or for that matter even five years may not give enough information to be able to truly appreciate how the value of that artwork has evolved.

It is difficult to make sense of what is happening when so many different points of view are being expressed by various experts and the media but when one puts things into perspective the figures speak for themselves. As an example of what I am talking about I will use the recent sale of the work “Untitled” (1992) by Albert Oehlen at the Sotheby’s Contemporary Art Day auction on the 12th of November (2008). The estimate for this work was USD $250,000 – $300,000 however it sold for $200,000 (hammer price) which doesn’t appear to be a particularly good result but the full story of this work paints a different picture. First of all, lets look at the sale history of similar works. In June 2002 another “Untitled” work painting in 1989 by Oehlen of a similar size sold for USD $17,322 (hammer price) with several other similar works selling for around the same price. To put this into perspective, if someone had purchased “Untitled” (1992) at auction in 2001 for USD $17,322 (hammer price) and then sold the work for USD $200,000 (hammer price) at the November 12 2008 auction that person would have received an increase of around 860% (taking fees into consideration) on their initial investment which, regardless of the fact that the work sold for $50,000 under the estimate at Sotheby’s on November 12, is an extremely good return. The purpose of this example is to show that the performance of a work of art cannot be determined from one auction results but needs to be assessed using data from a period of at least 10 years.

Another work by Oehlen, “Untitled” (1990), was also sold at the same sale as the above mentioned “Untitled” (1992) but with an estimate of USD $200,000 – $300,000 which was a $50,000 wider estimate than the USD $250,000 – $300,000 estimate for “Untitled” (1990). Although they both sold for the same price and had the same upper estimate the different lower estimate resulted in the sale of one work looking better than the other work. The perceived performance of these works of art have been manipulated by the auction house which once again shows how important it is to look at the big picture. The wider estimate of “Untitled” (1990) may reflect nothing more than the auction house having difficulty determining what the estimate should be and may not have been done to purposely affect people’s perception of the work but never the less the actions of the auction house did in this instance have the potential to alter the way people viewed the sale results and, consequently, the value of the works.

Am I optimistic about the future of the art market? Yes I am, because there are plenty of signs that people have confidence in the art market and have not lost their nerve. One such sign is the strong results being achieved for contemporary art which has been particularly evident with the November auctions as seen in the table below. The table from chelseaartgalleries.com shows the most successful lots from the November 14 Phillips De Pury Contemporary Art Part II auction. It is important to note that the prices in the table are exceptional and are not representative of the whole market for contemporary art but what they do show is that there is still plenty of confidence in the work of contemporary artists. There has definitely been a reduction in the average price people are willing to pay for many contemporary works but that doesn’t mean that the prices being paid aren’t still good in the overall scheme of things as I have shown in the earlier example of the Albert Oehlen works. The relatively strong market for top works of contemporary art reflects the continued confidence in the work of contemporary artists whose work would usually be expected to be the most seriously affected because of the higher risk involved in purchasing such works. Regardless of what people were paying for works of contemporary art six months ago the prices being paid in this first phase of the art market correction represent an art market that is exceeding expectations on many levels and is still showing strength and resilience in a time of financial distress and uncertainty.

Best performers from November 14 Phillips De Pury Contemporary Art Part II auction:
1 Jin Meyerson Lot: 456 $40,000 – $60,000 $200,000 3.33 times high estimate
2 Steven Charles Lot: 243 $8,000 – $12,000 $32,000 2.67 times high estimate
3 Jack Goldstein Lot: 329 $35,000 – $45,000 $90,000 2.00 times high estimate
4 Eric Freeman Lot: 449 $7,000 – $9,000 $16,000 1.78 times high estimate
5 Beatriz Milhazes Lot: 105 $150,000 – $200,000 $310,000 1.55 times high estimate
6 Yayoi Kusama Lot: 260 $12,000 – $18,000 $26,000 1.44 times high estimate
7 George Baselitz Lot: 346 $15,000 – $20,000 $28,000 1.40 times high estimate
8 Nasser Azam Lot: 120 $150,000 – $200,000 $275,000 1.38 times high estimate

Created by Nicholas Forrest On 11/17/08 At 10:38 AM