Project A.R.T.
Today I had lunch at Joel Robuchon with my friend, GC. We sat at the table on the right shown in this publicity shot for the restaurant:
The interior was mostly comprised of mahogany and rosewood with suffused warm lighting and contrasting orange-red accents in the shape of jars of pickled red chili and carrots. I noticed that on the walls next to us were raw spices, sealed in by glass panels to look like Modernist Art. This was pretty neat.
Food-wise, I had the langoustine fritters to start and then lamb cutlets with mash as my main. Both were perfectly cooked and delicious, and it struck me how the fritter casing was almost the same as a Chinese spring roll’s. [Btw, my mother is famous for her spring rolls which are packed full of giant tiger prawns, vermicelli, black ear fungus and herbs. She tends to make batches of 250(!) spring rolls at a time, which are eaten over 3 days during Chinese New Year].
Anyway, in the afternoon we did some music shopping before heading for his office where we scoped our online art project some more. We have some seed capital, some pieces of art, some finance + art sector friends and contacts with us on our adventure, and some end objectives. The details will be finalized over the coming weeks and months, but essentially I’m responsible for the technology and social network aspects of it.
Plus I’ll be calling upon senior people I know and/or have worked with at some of the investment banks to sponsor an art exhibition or two in a major city or two. Thankfully, my friend Marta will be here from Spain in a few weeks’ time so I can ask her for some advice. She previously worked in the sponsorships team of a big telco and her Uncle is CEO and Chairman of a telco giant which has developed some interesting online assets.
First on my list of bankers, I’ll be approaching a Deputy Global Head of Wealth Management and a Head of Corporate Strategy (Americas). I originally met them back in 2000 and it will be really interesting to speak with them about art instead of cost/income ratios.
Meanwhile, tomorrow I’ll be cooking a huge spaghetti bolognese. As much as the French food tasted wonderful the portions were so tiny that I’m now completely hungry!
UPDATE
Here’s that spaghetti bolognese I made first thing this morning in my wok after I did the laundry:
There’s enough to last this entire weekend — LOL. Oh and I marinated my sugar-sambal spare ribs too for grilling tomorrow night. It’s great to have haute cuisine treats but to stay firmly in favor of good old home cooking and comfort food too!
Wow–that place is phenomenal! I love the interior, with the deep reds and blacks. There is a photo on their website that shows off the spice wall decor too, absolutely beautiful.
I’m dying to find out what that music intro is at the lead-in to their website–very soothing, makes you want to eat fish and drink wine all night, I’m sure. I’m not as impressed with the decor in the other locations, except for Vegas–that looks pretty cool too.
Oh well, we won’t see anything like this down South until bar-b-q becomes high-style, but then when it does, you’ll get 2 ribs on a triangular plate with a dollop of corn grits and some chili sauce for $75. yumm-o.
Re. A.R.T.–can you elaborate? Or is that another ancient chinese secret…
Re. A.R.T., I’m probably going to rope in your superb 3DMax skills and aesthetic tastes to get the pictorial content more ship-shape.
If you ask your brother about hedge funds and alternative investment assets, he’ll probably tell you that art is a well-known alternative investment. Hedge funds and their clients do NOT have to opt for those toxic mortgage CDOs or casino-style risk taking which has (unfortunately) been happening in some quarters out there.
Instead of a piece of intangible and perhaps non-fungible commercial paper that says they own some callable option on a mortgage that could potentially default, they can own a piece of tangible art — whose value has realistic and more stable opportunities of producing a positive return on investment.
We’re all applying what we know about art, alternative assets and technology to good, proper and fun use.
Well, All I know about investing in ART is that the artist has to be alive today to get the stuff really cheap, and then he/she needs to die off and then become famous in order for that piece of art to become valuable.
All the stuff by the dead guys is what’s worth a fortune today, and hanging in museums all over the world with art historians pointing to it and saying “This artist was a revolutionary, he broke the mold, he defined a new style, created a new medium, and forced us to see ART from a different perspective.” At the time, the artist who is now lauded and magnified was considered a crank, a quack, and most likely lived an impoverished life, with no glory or applause in his lifetime.
So I guess the lesson is to look for someone considered a knucklehead today, buy up all their crap (painting with elephant dung = future $$$) and lock it away in some dusty museum vault for 50 years, then have your descendants drag it out with glorious fanfare, declaring that THIS was unique, This defined a moment, and sparked an entire generation of artists to follow. Then open up a nice little museum with a gift shop and sell greeting card prints and macrame scarves depicting the works that have been squandered away for half a century.
A funny thing about art and art history–it’s pretty easy to look back 100, 200, 500 years and point to which works were Change events. But according to art historians, our current “modern era” started in the 1960′s and here we are 50 years later and it’s still the “modern era”. Most art books end with defining moments in the 1970′s, so the “authorities” are still deciding who they will crown as the next “revolutionary”. Place your bets, people, place your bets.
I’d also postulate that art becomes valuable only when someone buys it. Before that, it’s worth nothing more than the materials used to create it. Take a gander at this (one of my favorite artists…) http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/8/view/5440/money.html
Thanks for your very constructive and insightful comments.
We have one particular artist who exhibited at the Venice Biennale, was feted by the critics of the day, was cranky and has since passed away.
Meanwhile, the Damien Hirst / Chapman Brothers / Offili school of art monetization says you can do a “homage” to the South American fascination for Krystal skulls, take GBP12 million of diamonds and materials, make a skull, market it as “Damien’s Diamond Geezer”-type of sell and successfully auction it off for GBP50 million!
Sometimes I think of the random scribblings by pre-schoolers and wonder whether their parents are putting those up in the attics so that one day in the next century their great-grandchildren can claim these were better than Mondrian / Rothko / other minimalist and are worth US$ BILLIONS.
Art is different from tractors, though……..
In accounting terms, once you’ve bought the tractor you have to depreciate its value with straight line methodology, i.e. it loses a standard 5-10 percent every year factoring in interest rates and inflation.
Meanwhile, a piece of art’s value depreciation / appreciation is a lot more subjective and arbitrary.
Your postulation that “art becomes valuable only when someone buys it” is most likely the case. It becomes valuable to the new owner either for sentimental “I want to keep it in the family for enjoyment” reasons OR business “If I sell this on, I may make a tidy profit” reasons.