2013

Many researchers state that the art market is divided into the primary and the secondary art market. In these markets, art dealers and auction houses have the biggest market share and therefore it is accepted that they have a big influence on the price determination process of artworks. The last decade, the internet and social media have changed the traditional art market and made it more transparent. However, art specialists still play an important role when it comes to the price determination of works of art. These experts use their expertise and experience to determine the quality of an artwork objectively. In this research, the role of art specialists working at auction houses is examined. The aim of this inquiry is to find out how these art critics determines the price estimates of a painting. Therefore, the pricing process that leads to the estimated prices is examined by doing in-depth interviews with experts working at different auction houses, operating in the Netherlands. Although, the data that was collected led to a solid answer to the main question, there are many aspects left for further research.

courtauld.ac.uk

It is an old point, but consider how alike are art and money. And how more alike they are becoming. Recently, both have tended to dematerialise, to shed their physical form. Both have greatly increased the speed at which they circulate, and have made thoroughly international the scope of that circulation. Both are also increasingly switched into and out of for their short-term yield. So these ever more weightless artefacts are blown this way and that by the gales of fashion and opinion. A sympathy seems to exist between objects which have very nearly no use (works of art) and those which have nearly every use (banknotes). Art and money represent an almost pure form of exchange: in the opposition between use value and exchange value (to grasp the difference, consider how much use a bottle of water is to someone after a long walk in the heat, and how much they are likely to have to pay in exchange for it), 1 their weight is on the side of exchange. In the pricing of art, exchange value is tied above all to aesthetic judgement. The association is so familiar that it has developed the power of truism; if people say an artist's work is undervalued, they generally mean that it is a good investment prospect. People rarely say that some body of work is fine, but the market does not recognise this and, what is more, never will. This is not to say that money and art have no use value, but it is marginal and tends to be redeemed only in extreme circumstances. Duchamp's famous quip about using a Rembrandt as an ironing board makes the point that works of art can have use value if they are no longer looked on as works of art; likewise, money can be burned to provide warmth, or used to write poems or make drawings upon. 2 But when things swing along happily, as they do at the moment in Britain, with only average suffering,

RICS Property Journal, 2014

Short survey of the different approaches to value Heritage items.

Value in Culture, Economics, and the Arts, 2007

Some of the following discussion draws upon results of a separate research project on the history of notions of economic and aesthetic value that was one of the unintended outcomes of the workshop; see further in Hutter and Shusterman (2006).

Through looking at the notion of intrinsic motivation, the emergence of Internet Art, its alternative valuation system, and the new Post-Internet Art of today, this short literature review will attempt to set foot in answering the research question: to what extent has the Internet Art movement in the 1990’s affected the valuation practices of contemporary visual artists?

The GENEVA Papers on Risk …, 1994

2018

He turned to the desktop in his small corner office at Bobst, and pulled up an image of a Lichtenstein from the late 1950's. "What do you think of this?" he said. I looked at the screen over his shoulder. It was a rough sketch of Donald Duck smothered in what appeared to be black benday dots. "What is that?" I asked. "It's a transitional Lichtenstein," he said. "My colleagues and I have been debating it for years…is it more valuable than his iconic works from the 60's because of its rarity, or is it less valuable because it's not the real deal?" "What do you think?" I asked. "Why don't you tell me?" he smiled again.

2020

The text presents some features of the contemporary art market and a few specific issues related to the valuation and circulation of works of art. The specificity of the art market, the role of experts and intermediaries, difficulties in valuing works of modern art, have an impact on the scope and content of the protection of moral and material interests resulting from artistic production, the scope and content of freedom of artistic creativity. Processes of valuing artworks bring questions on the necessity of the introduction of regulatory mechanisms to increase the transparency of transactions, in order to protect the value of works of art and the freedom of artistic creativity. 2 https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-what-you-need-to-know-about-theemerging-art-market-right-now (17.05.2020). Among others: Y. Bouvier, the famous owner of the gallery, inflates the prices of works in an unauthorized way, see:

The Values and Valuation of Modern and Contemporary Visual Art The Role of Reflective Practice — the Collection of The Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź (1931 — 2018), 2020

This monograph looks at the role of reflective practice when analyzing the complex qualities and valuations of The International Collection of Modern Art at the Muzeum Sztuki [The Museum of Art] in Łódź in Poland and later collections of the museum. The collection comprises 112 art works, gathered between 1929 and 1938 by art theoretician and painter, Władysław Strzemiński, the sculptor Katarzyna Kobro (Strzemiński’s wife), the painter, Henryk Stażewski, and the poets Jan Brzękowski and Julian Przyboś. Operating under the collective title: “a.r.” [revolutionary artists] this group initiated a process of exchange with other contemporary avant-garde artists such as Hans Arp, Sophie Taub-Arp, Alexander Calder, Max Ernst, Ferdinand Leger, KurtSchwitters and Theo van Doesburg in order to create a collection of early modern art that would be one of the first of its kind to be made available for public viewing. The commitment on the part of artists to the process of creating an art collection is considered to have been be a unique proposition. It involved interaction among other artists, the Museum and the public. The Museum itself became an art work which exemplified a “human vision”. The synergy of all modern and contemporary art collections gathered at the Muzeum Sztuki has been refined over the course of decades vis-àvis a direct engagement with avant-garde art. The unique character of the Museum owes much to the priority it gives to presenting art at the cusp of creation, all the while maintaining its own syncretic attitude to styles. Since its establishment, the Museum has maintained a degree of freedom from the tyranny of trends, fashions and the pressures of the art market. By presenting upcoming neo avant-garde artists such as Ian Hamilton Finlay, Alina Szapocznikow, Tadeusz Kantor, Mirosław Bałka, R. H. Quaytman, the Museum has been able to boast the continuous discovery of new forms and participations in art. The process of collecting works has continued to be supported by the artists themselves through bequests (Georges Vantongerloo, Christian Boltanski, Laurence Weiner, Chris Burden, Sam Francis, Joseph Beuys — Polentransport 1981) or international exchanges (Peter Downsbrough, Dan Graham, Richard Nonas, David Rabinowitch). As a result of this direct activity, the collection continues to change and evolve: a fact that makes it an exemplary subject for investigation into how a diverse range of artists’ ideas and intentions, plus materials and fabrications, should be valuated and conserved. Bolstered by the multidirectional and interdisciplinary approaches to art movements, the strength of the collection lies in its wide range of works. These approaches have also made explicit the problems and difficulties inherent in making decisions about conservation and strategies for presentation. This book aims to determine methods for analyzing the value of art works in the “a.r.” and other collections in order to envisage a conceptual framework and so as to develop strategies for future curatorial and conservatorial practices. I am also concerned with ways of defining those as-yet undetermined values, which are currently emerging in contemporary art-making, and establishing guidelines for their identification and protection. To this end, this work seeks to advocate for clear strategies when it comes to decision making in conservation practice. The primary subject for this investigation will be the collection of the Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź, which has a composite valuation system. Research into this system will take into account the following theoretical and practical stages: research in the light of contemporary art conservation theory (Riegl 1903, Dvořák 1924, Brandi 1963, Muños Viñas 2005, Szmelter 2012, 2016 and Jadzińska 2012); valuation based on literature and the six steps outlined by the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands (RC E) in Assessing Museums Collections (2014); archive investigation in Łódz; investigation of RCE models in practice — with an emphasis on the extent to which values and valuations are articulated in the discourses and practices of conservation itself, particularly using case studies that include the works of Alina Szapocznikow, Strzemiński, Beuys, Tadeusz Kantor. The aim of this comprehensive study on the valuation process is to arrive at a universal system with flexible, interactive fields that can be adapted to the individual characteristics of works, as well as those of specific collections. The role of “reflective practice” in the Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź is analysed here with regard to various social aspects and involves not only disseminating but engaging a broad spectrum of users, conservators, curators and recipients. Looking to the future, it is expected that such values and valuation systems will contribute towards a multidimensional and multidisciplinary analysis of modern and contemporary works of art and art collections, as well as underpinning the strategic decision processes that inform conservation projects which have been adopted for the care and presentation of existing art collections.