Let’s be honest, we would all love for a piece of art we own to become so sought after that it rockets in price and makes us rich.
In 2017, ‘Salvator Mundi’, by Leonardo da Vinci sold for a mind blowing $450 million. Just 59 years earlier, In 1958, the same painting changed hands for just $60. By any one’s standards, that’s an incredible rise in price.
Now if course there are certain artists who’s fame almost guarantees their artworks will continue to rise in value. Works by the following famous artists are in the top 5 of the most expensive paintings ever sold:
Leonardo da Vinci – $450 million
Willem de Kooning – $300 million
Paul Cezanne – $250 million
Paul Gauguin – $210 million
Jackson Pollock – $200 million
Unless you’re a multi millionaire, get lucky at a car boot sale or find a hidden treasure under the floorboards or in the attic, the likelihood of owning a painting by such an artist is probably just a fantasy.
So, for the rest of us should we be buying art as an investment? Or should we be buying art that we love?
Buy art that you love, not as an investment
Here at CreativeFolk it’s a no brainer. We all should be buying art that we love.
Artists, or at least most of them, are creating their work because of a passion and drive, and we in return will either like it or dislike it… it really is that simple.
The art world is a very strange and manipulated world full of critics telling us what we should and shouldn’t like, but ignore them. Art is a very personal thing, it is something you need to decide for yourself, and if that painting you bought happens to rise in price, or the artist becomes famous then that’s just a bonus.
In high society, many paintings have lost their original meaning, they’ve become trading cards for the rich and shameless with many becoming trophies hidden in basements. This isn’t why the were created, they were created to be looked upon, to be admired.
We hope that when you purchase a piece of art, you are buying it because you love it, because it speaks to you and in return you’ll hang it somewhere with pride, where you can appreciate it daily.
Most of the expensive paintings you see at auctions are from artists who are now dead but in recent years a certain street artist’s work has seen a meteoric rise in value.
Banksy? Who’s Banksy?
Over the last 15 or so years, street artist Banksy has seen his work go from the streets into top galleries around the world. When his work first started becoming for sale you could pick up an original for hundreds rather than hundreds of thousands.
CreativeFolk artist Paul Kneen recalls when he bought a Banksy print:
“I remember walking past a shop in London about 15 years ago and seeing a selection of beautiful prints in the window. At the time they were £45 for an unsigned print or £90 for a signed one.
The artist in question was some unknown artist called Banksy. I bought an unsigned ‘Weston Super Mare’ depicting an old man sat on a bench with a chainsaw heading towards him. I bought the print because I liked it, I’d never heard of Banksy back then. If I had I’d have bought everything with his name on and I’d be recalling this story from my private yacht”.
Unless you own a magic ball it’s almost impossible to know whose work will gain popularity and in turn rise in price. With that in mind…
Our advice? Buy because you love it.
