You Can Hire an Artist

Half-Naked Thursday: Lucian Freud

Posted by Kathleen Benton on Oct 15, 2009

I’ve been painting specifically for a gallery show coming up in December here in Yonkers.   The Blue Door Gallery show’s theme is Small Gems: Arts For Giving and is promoted as an “affordable” holiday sale.   The gallery’s commission is to be 30% and so I must consider the price of the works with that in mind as well.  And when settling on prices the question is not only the value of the work but what patrons might be willing to pay for the art, especially in these economically challenging times.   When calculating the value of the art I consider the cost of  materials, my time spent making it, the previous price for similar works, a bit of a profit (if possible), and additionally then gallery commission is tacked on (when not sold directly through this website).  Lately, in order not not price myself out of a sale, those calculations rarely involve profit and even a lowering of the rate for my time.

Musing about the value of art got me to thinking about the value of art for artists with worldwide reputations.  I wondered what fluctuations the values of their works  have endured in a world recession.  It was widely publicized that in May of 2008 Lucian Freud’s Benefits Supervisor Sleeping was sold at Christie’s in Manhattan for $33,640,000 to Roman Abramovich, a Russian billionaire living in the UK.  This was a record for the sale of a living artist’s work.   At that time I’m sure some indicators of a severe economic downturn were already visible, as even the reports of the sale included the word “recession”.  Around that time President Bush was sending Americans an economic stimulus check for $600 with the hopes of avoiding a greater downturn.  (I wonder how much of that money was spent on art?   I bought Santa Clara pottery in Taos, New Mexico, and felt rather patriotic in doing so.)

By October 2008 a further slowing of the market was apparent; only 58% of lots were being sold at the big art auction houses.  Freud’s Portrait of Francis Bacon sold at Christie’s in London  for a mere  £5,417,250 ($9,404,346).  The sale was considered a blessing for the auction house even though the estimates hoped for as much as £7 million.  

 In the spring of this year several works of art owned by the victims of Bernie Madoff  were sold on the auction block at Christie’s.  Even with the “conspicuous consumption”  label daunting buyers, the prices achieved were more than adequate in my view.  When a late Picasso, Musketeer With a Pipe, 1968, sold for $14.6 million I thought the economy just can’t be as bad as they say.  (Do you know Christie’s only charges a 25% commission for the first $50,000?   Then the percentage rate actually goes down.  Many galleries charge as much as 50% commission.)   

I must say my opinion for Lucian Freud’s later painting is much more positive than my view of late Picasso’s.  I think I’ve been aware of Freud’s work since my college days, when his early work was included in contemporary art survey courses.  Then his portraits were much more stylized, simplified and flat, and always a bit odd-looking as portraits go (every subject had the same eyes).  As Freud has matured his eye for detail and individuality has become more keen and his paint application has become heavier and more textural.  The more true-to-life his portraits have become the more impressive to me.  Freud’s  unvarnished honesty regarding his subject is facinating, whether we recognize the sitter or not.  John Singer Sargent once said “Every time I paint a portrait I lose a friend.”  Sargent’s respectable portraits have nothing on Lucian Freud’s.  One must be very comfortable in one’s skin to sit for Lucian Freud.

Time marches on and the world’s ecomonic status seems to be improving a bit.  Lucian Frued is doing well and so are the owners of Picassos (even when your money’s been stolen you can always sell your art).  I would like to think that with yesterday’s close of the New York Stock Exchange ending with the Dow Jones Industrial Average over 10,000 as a bellwether for the economy.  Let’s hope that there are also better times ahead  for art collecting  and  a generous holiday season as well.  Let’s hope that trend finds it way to Yonkers.  Still, what price art? 

 Kathleen Benton
 

PS – It’s Half-Naked Thursday and therefore I’m including this clip of Lucian Freud talking to Omnibus director Jake Auerbach in 1988.    Freud seems very uncomfortable having to express himself verbally, perhaps as self-conscious as being half-naked (Perhaps that’s not a good analogy.  Freud is rumored to have fathered over 50 children).  It’s one of five segments all available on YouTube.

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Lucian Freud (British, b. Germany, 1922), Benefits Supervisor Sleeping, 1995, Oil on canvas, 59 5/8 x 86¼ in., Private collection