What value do you put on Art?

WHAT VALUE DO YOU PUT ON ART?


Unlike the price of a bacon pig, putting value or price on works of art proved to be a lot more murky.
Value has different meaning to different people. There is the value in an aesthetic sense, the value in terms of what it is worth monetarily in the market place and of course, culturally and spiritually. I do not intend to deal with all of these issues here, but rather discuss the prices paid by  individuals and corporations in terms of their tax advantage.

A few years ago ,while running a modern print gallery in Hobart, I found  it necessary to carry out valuations for the Australian Taxation Office. Our gallery acted for some three to four hundred artists of various nationalities. We imported graphics mainly from Japan, Europe and America. Those of you who are not familiar with the expression limited edition original prints, it covers such items as etchings, lino and woodblocks, silk screen, litho images and any other printed image produced by artists in a limited number. The general public then, as now ,tends to confuse the term print with reproduction. Unfortunately English, unlike German doesn’t have a special word, which is unfortunate. I had selected original graphics as our speciality ,because they are light, easy to freight, and they offered me the opportunity to deal in the best current art works available in the world.

On face value, you would think the task  of valuation would be fairly straight forward, but taxation departments don’t operate that way. The reason of course is ,that there is no such thing as value for works of art, other than their inherent aesthetic and cultural value. The price of any art work is very arbitrary. The price is simply what a person or organization is willing to pay at any given time. Prices change not only in a historic sense, but vary from country to country depending on their different cultural values.

Why is all this important? Well in Australia ,a person or corporation may donate an art work to a public galley or institutions and claim the value [price] as a tax deduction. In the tax department’s view this required a professional valuation. Now you may feel this is straight forward, but in reality there are many valuations. There are auction prices, but these may vary depending on whose there bidding, there is the gallery or dealers price and the artist’s price. These prices are constantly changing depending on how popular a given artist is at any given point in time. Many 19th cent Victorian artists who commanded high prices during their life time, now arouse little or no interest with the buying public.  If you are looking at fine art as an investment be aware that fashions change ,and the chances are you are paying an inflated price in the first place.


I have seen a Dali litho sold at auction ,signed within the  print, not after the image has been printed. This means that you have no idea how many copies have been made, whether they are authorised by the artist or not, part of a deceased estate, or simply the plates or stones have been acquired by a third party who are just printing money. Then there are artists who will sign reproduction and even number them for sale to a gullible public.

Early Australian art collections were full of competent copies of the old masters ,and well known art works, sent out to the colonies to eager settlers wanting to establish some cultural identity. I still remember in the early fifties , when Rudy Kirmann tried to sell paintings door to door around Sydney ,being told by the occupant they had all the art works they required ,pointing to reproductions hanging on the wall. Gratefully times have changed.

However to return to my topic, the correct price or value of work. We have all heard of paintings being sold for two, three times or more above the estimate at auction. With original prints there is the unknown  edition size. I have found a supposed edition of 100 copies being released three times! In some countries print makers are required to run off a cancellation print and register the copy with the relevant authority. Such prints are produced by scoring the etching plate for example diagonally from corner to corner ,so it can not be used again.

All these issues were major problems when doing valuations for the Tax Department. The bureaucrats in Canberra continually challenged the valuations .They assumed that the valuations were always greater than claimed. They seemed to suggest that I was receiving some sort of under the table payment, so that the donor could claim a greater tax rebate . In the end I decided the task was not worth the stress, and refused to continue valuations. Over the years ,I had always attempted to arrive at some average price. The reality is that the true value of art works is in their aesthetic worth, not some newspaper headline price or the name at the bottom. It’s what we feel about the work. Does it speak to you in some way. What do you think?