Our group has decided to investigate further the following research question: What impact do fakes have?
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Faking can be found in many different areas. This paper brings plagiarism in the fine arts, in particular in paintings. It does not approach art fakes in legal or art historic way. Instead, it utilizes the economic approach.
All arguments pro and contra are considered.
Lets start with the three major benefits.
Firstly, the fact that there is plagiarism means that people really want the art work, it is in demand. The original artist may earn of the imitations in two different ways. To begin with, the creator may get ones share of the profit from legal copies. In addition, the name of the original artist is spread around, which makes it possible to sell future original works at a higher price.
Secondly, art fakes raise artistic capital. This means that the copiers train themselves by making accurate copies. It also becomes harder for art experts to distinguish the original work from fakes.
Thirdly, imitations help keeping creativity and art alive.
Unfortunately, there are also disadvantages.
On top of the resource costs, buyers would be deceived if they buy a copy, supposed to be the original work.
The artists are harmed by fakes because they are less stimulated to be creative and discontinue to create original art pieces.
If we compare the advantages and disadvantages, we can conclude that the disadvantages do not countervail against the advantages. But does a solution exist? According to the academics, quotations are the solution. Quotations do not contain monetary payments but do render appreciation to the original artist.
Céline De Paepe
Frey, Bruno S. 1999. Art Fakes What Fakes? An Economic View. Working Paper Series, 14, 1-18.
The artist and the brand argues about the link between consumption, branding and art. It clearly demonstrates that there is a link between art and consumption and that this leads to the fact that branding is of strategic importance.
The paper refers therefore to three case studies.
The first one handles about Andy Warhol. His work strongly shows the impact of mass production. Trough this first case study, the paper arrives at the conclusion that we consume the product itself as much as the brand.
Subsequently, there is Barbara Kruger, known for her photograph I Shop Therefore I Am. Although she links culture and consumption, she remains critical about branding: You think you can escape commodification you cant(Kruger, 1994).
The final case is about Cindy Sherman, a well known photographer. She uses branding features like photography and strategic image building on Holywood celebrities.
The paper concludes that brand managers can learn a lot of the art world and the skills of artists in particular.
I must admit that I am impressed of the connection between art and brands. Of course, we all know the soup cans by Warhol. But by reading this paper, you can see that there is much more than that. Artists and marketeers use the same techniques to arrive at the same objective: consumption.
Céline De Paepe
Schroeder, JonathanE. 2005. The artist and the brand. EuropeanJournal Of Marketing, Vol. 39 Iss 11/12, 1291-1305.
Im pleased to hear that art can be used to get rid of or to ease pain. Its fascinating that there are so many therapies to alleviate mental problems, that even art can be used for this.
In a way this commercializes and promotes art even more. Art isnt just to look at, it offers many interesting opportunities, some we may not even know yet.
The question is: does this give extra value to art or not? I think it does.
reaction on "Discoveries of Fakes: Their impact on the art market"
I think its interesting that a piece of art is only considered fake after its mentioned in the press. This gives time to owners of real or fake art pieces to deal with the matter.
What disturbs me is that there is only a database for expensive paintings, starting from prices above $100.000. Why not lower?
Another interesting aspect is the fact that there is a cycle in the formation of prices after a fake is discovered. Prices increase again after a year instead of remaining low.
Arts in psychotherapy? Ive never
heard of the term before and therefore it got my attention.
Apparently art is often used to deal
with pain. Moreover, a lot of artists have created a different manner to treat
pain but they all use art by placing the pain outside, into artistic creation. In
the paper there are six examples given of contemporary artists.
For example Sophie Calle used other
people by asking them about the situation in which they had suffered the most.
She wrote down the pain of others in a book where she added one photo relating
to each story. It helped her to relativize
her own problems and to solve them.
In general art provides insight in
pain which is very important in art therapy. The art therapist doesnt evaluate
the aesthetic form of the work but his role consists simply in accompanying and
supporting patients such that they can find their own form of personal
expression. Art is an indirect way to help patients and therefore a more
approachable way than having a regular therapeutic conversation.
I think that art can be useful for
certain people to express their emotions and I find it remarkable that they use
such special treatments in therapy.
Femke De Cock
Reference: Therapeutic thinking in contemporary art: Or psychotherapy in the arts, Eva Marxen, MA, MA, DEA
While 70% of museum their income consists
of subsidies of the government, its important that they attract a lot of
visitors to be seen to offer value to government. Because of that, they use
marketing strategies and try to maximize their management approach.
There are given two types of
managers in the paper. The first one, the custodial manager, tries to improve traditional
activities. Especially, he takes care of
research and collections. The second, the entrepreneur, is more based on
business activities and he tries to attract visitors by creative programming.
For example, market analyses, survey non-visitors and efficiency measures.
Service delivery is a very important
part of marketing. Furthermore, the elements of service delivery in a museum
are: education, accessibility and communication. Adapted services for different
interest groups of visitors are an example of accessibility. Communication
stands for interaction, interpretation and entertainment. And last, education
is the relevance and quality of the content of the museum for the visitors.
Its important to be aware of the
impact of good management and marketing to have more visitors. Mostly it is
important for a manager for the furtherance of the organization.
Femke De Cok
Reference: Audrey Gilmore, Ruth Rentschler, (2002) "Changes in museum management: A custodial or marketing emphasis?", Journal of Management Development, Vol. 21 Iss: 10, pp.745 - 760
Discoveries of Fakes: Their impact on the art market
Discoveries of Fakes: Their impact on the art market
This paper analyzes several interesting subjects and hypotheses like: What happens with fake paintings?, Are fakes more likely to be sold by a major or a minor auction house?,How do the prices react before and after the discovery of fakes?.
The fake is considered discovered on the date when it is first mentioned in the press. Once it is discovered, it will be removed immediately from the market and mentioned in a database. This database only exists for paintings which have a value higher than 100.000$.
The major auction houses have better procedures to assess the originality of the artwork and therefore buyers will have more faith in them. So the seller, who is sure about the genuineness of the painting he/she owns, will prefer a major auction house. Conversely, the owner of fakes will chose to sell his paintings by a less known auction house because they want to avoid the screening tests. These tests prevent fakes from reaching the market.
The probability to sell a painting (which has been copied) depends mainly on the price asked. Prices do not react immediately after fakes are made public. After the news is spread, owners might postpone their sales. But they cannot postpone their sales indefinitely. So some sellers are forced to decrease their prices. A year after discovery, prices will start increasing again because buyers know a lot of fake paintings will be removed from the market by then.
What determines a successful auction? An analysis.
What determines a successful auction? An analysis.
Have you ever wondered why auctions work the way they do? Well, Ive found a paper that may hold the answer to that question. You can read it here: http://www.rst.nus.edu.sg/research/workingpaper/2004-010.pdf.
The paper itself deals with the various aspects of how auctions function and which underlying factors determine a successful auction sale. The research is done using data from auctions in Singapore and several other sources.
Using empirical data and several statistical data analysis techniques the researchers come to many interesting results and conclusions. First of all an auction sale is more likely to occur if its about a distress sale. This is logical because the seller wants to get a part of his/her investment back, no matter the cost. The fact that the chance of a sale is higher if the market is not in a recession, the choice of the auction house/agent and whether there are a lot of people present at the auction are other determining factors. There are still other factors which are also mentioned in the paper. The thing that all these factors have in common is the fact that they all appear to me as common sense and seem logical, the paper only proves it to be so.
This study may prove valuable to people who want to sell things at, or organize an auction. Meaning they can first study the different factors that lead to a successful sale. This in order to find out if the time is ripe to sell or not, which is of course the whole reason of an auction: selling things.
Reference: Ong, E. S. ; Lusht, K. & Mak, Y. C. 2005. Factors Influencing Auction Outcomes: Bidder Turnout, Auction Houses and Market Conditions. Journal of Real Estate Research. Volume 27, number 2, 177-192.
DEA meets Picasso: The impact of auction houses on the hammer price
DEA meets Picasso: The impact of auction houses on the hammer price
In May 2004 Picassos famous work Garcon a la Pipe was sold at Sothebys New York for $104 million, and became the most expensive painting ever. This paper examines: is there a connection between the price of an artwork and the auction house? and what is DEA?.
The amount of people, who invests in expensive paintings, is increasing. So it becomes more important to know which indicators define the hammer price of an expensive painting. When we focus on auction houses as a main variable, we notice it is difficult to link the inputs (the physical characteristics of Picasso paintings) and the outputs (the auction prices). A benchmarking technique called DEA, is used to investigate if there is a connexion between them.
So our two questions are related. The Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) is a tool which allows us to analyze various input indicators of Picasso paintings sold in different auction houses. The result of this analysis shows that there is a difference in performance between the auction houses. So it is a fact that some auction houses are able to sell a painting at a higher price than others. Sothebys New York seems to be the most efficient house over all Picasso periods and sales periods according to the DEA.
