Collectors often say they are addicted to art. They buy too much. More than they need or have room for. They spend too much. More than a small village can feed.
A true collector, the old saying goes, is someone who has gone beyond the walls of a house (or two, or three) and buys art for storage.
Even wilder? In a twist that may inspire some people to fork forks, some collectors don’t even bother to pick up the art they’ve purchased. Studios and warehouses are filled with works of art that have been invoiced, paid for, and then left for months or even years.
I heard the story of a museum trustee who agreed to buy a Robert Nava painting for $550,000 plus a drink at Zero Bond in New York last year, wired the money to the seller the next day, then didn’t bother to get the job for seven months. Gallery partner David Zwirner paid $22,000 for 7.5ft tall Richard Serra print at a charity auction for Independent Curators International in 2018, but was too busy to collect it until 2022. Two commissioned paintings, each priced at around $28,000, hang around the studio’s Los Angeles studio. Canyon Castator artist months after being completed, paid for, and ready to ship.
“When you’re rich, have unlimited buying power, and buy indiscriminately, it’s hard to keep up,” said Kenny Schachter, an artist, collector. and another Artnet News columnist. “It’s sick but it’s true.”
Can I help you find something? Kenny Schachter presiding over his Sotheby’s sale. Courtesy of Kenny Schachter.
I first interpreted this trend as a sign of a slowdown in the art market, of the scum rising – or perhaps the low tide exposing all the broken shells and mollusk skeletons on the ocean floor now visible.
Then, as my reports progressed, I realized that this was a much deeper subject, rooted as much in compulsive behavior as in the growing commodification of art. There are pragmatic reasons, too, ranging from collectors renovating their homes to sensible efforts to consolidate shipments — and, yes, a few pinches.
“If you have a house full of art and you buy stuff at every art fair, every auction wave, and in galleries all the time, where do all those art waves go?” says Schachter. “They go into storage and they get left behind.”
Schachter would know. As a compulsive collector, he had amassed so much art that he long filled storage spaces in New Jersey and Switzerland in addition to his apartment in New York. To raise funds for his passion, Schachter held four annual, mostly no-reserve auctions at Sotheby’s, aptly titled “The Hoarder” (and plans new editions every December for the rest of his life, did he declare.)
During COVID, Schachter did a series of online shows; one work was sold to a private museum but went unclaimed for over a year, he said. As a curator, he fell victim when artists left their art behind with a gallery. He estimated that around 10% of all art acquisitions go unclaimed after purchase.
“Things fall into that gray area in the same way as when you take your clothes out to get cleaned and then forget to pick them up,” he said.
A London-based collector told me he left paintings and sculptures in galleries for years after paying for them.
“I see something I like, I want to buy it right away,” he said. “So I forget. It’s 100% ADD.
Axelrod’s safe, set “Billions”, image © Nicole Rivelli, courtesy of Michael Shaw.
Delayed pickups can be difficult for small galleries that have limited storage. Francisco Correa Cordero, owner and director of the Lubov Gallery in New York, said he was not thrilled when the Chinese Xiao Museum left behind a group of eight paintings that had been purchased for seven months. Why the delay? The museum founder had been on a shopping spree in New York and was waiting to consolidate all the artwork into one massive shipment, Correa Cordero said.
“I understood the reason,” he added. “But it was a bit boring because it took up a lot of my storage space.”
While some collectors have legitimate reasons — an apartment leak or construction delays — “I suspect most of the time they don’t want to pay for storage and shipping,” the gallerist said. “Or they want to delay it as much as possible.”
New York collector Evan Ruster would be the first to admit he doesn’t like paying for shipping and storage. He intends to go to Vienna to recover a painting that has been at the gallery for three years. Another painting sat in an East Hampton gallery for a year and a half.
“I really dread it,” Ruster said of a 6-by-4-foot painting that was too big for his apartment. (Too “cheap” to pay for outdoor storage, Ruster has built storage in his ceiling for 15-20 works of art, a few paintings are under the bed and several hang two deep on the walls, he said. he says.)
Is he a drug addict? “Absolutely,” Ruster said. “For every $10 I make, I spend $11 on art. That’s a problem.”
And it’s not just the hot artists or the gallery follies – people who buy high-priced art at auction sometimes also neglect to collect their winnings, so to speak. The mega-rich who buy there are of course not looking for free storage, according to Thomas Danziger, a lawyer specializing in art transactions. (At least on paperauction houses say they start charging collectors for storage after 30 days of sale and may even sell the item.)
“It has a lot to do with tax issues,” he said. “People think they can delay the tax. Maybe they don’t have the money and need to sell something else. People do a lot of things to move assets. Many of the richest people in the world are illiquid.
So what explains the mindset of someone who spends tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars on a piece of art and doesn’t bother to get it back?
Ed Ruscha, Pay nothing until April (2003). © Ed Ruscha, courtesy of Tate.
I turned to Allen H. Weg, a graduate psychologist who specializes in obsessive compulsive disorder. For the most part, he says, the high associated with buying art may be just another addiction among many.
“People who are addicted to gambling or addicted to sex or addicted to food, it’s the same kind of thing,” Weg said. “Some people are addicted to the high you get from doing very extreme sports. You can get addicted to the emotional experience of getting a tattoo.
Addictions aren’t always pathological, they can provide an adrenaline rush or help us calm down and feel in control. “It’s not a problem unless it’s a problem,” Weg said.
Art left behind can also reveal an investment-minded buyer, he explained: “It’s mine. I have control over it. I don’t necessarily need it to be this place or that place. I just know it’s mine wherever it is.
“He had financial problems and literally disappeared,” Klein recalled this week. He managed to get his work back after paying around $500 for storage.
“It’s the only time in my career that I’ve been scammed by the gallery,” he said. I guess I’m lucky.
Canyon Castator, courtesy of the artist.
Going back to Castator, the Los Angeles painter of aggressive pop culture paintings, he admitted that being stuck with works that have been paid for isn’t the worst thing — it’s definitely better to be. stuck with unsold and unpaid works. However, it can leave a bad aftertaste.
On the one hand, he worked hard to complete the two commissioned canvases on time.
“I did,” he said. “It looks amazing on Instagram. He paid my rent and my dinners. But there’s no finality. He’s still in the studio.
This scenario is so common that it has become a joke among his artist friends in the Mohilef Studioshe said.
“I will send the collector a second invoice – for storage,” the joke goes.
But of course, no one followed through on the threat.
“Why would you bite the hand that feeds you? said Beaver.
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