Art in Times of Crisis | How to Enter the Art World in Difficult Times

Hey, welcome back to my channel. I know this is not a typical video, not how to sell your art, or visiting an art fair together. Crisis. You might ask me, why crisis? Well, you clicked on this video, so you are probably fully aware that the world is not a peaceful place, and we are going through crisis on many different levels. Humanitarian crisis, financial crisis, and also environmental crisis. Maybe professionally and personally you are going through a crisis right now that makes this subject very relevant. And that's not the only reason. Actually, this is the title of our current show. Yesterday we opened a solo show of our artist in residence, Mary. And as a parallel event, I interviewed Professor Dr. Osterling, he co-authored a paper titled Art in Times of Crisis. Here is the video. The video is divided in different parts. You can click on the timestamps below to navigate to the parts that you want to watch.

 

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Hi, everyone. Welcome back to our channel. Today, we have a special guest, Kim Osterlink. He is a professor of finance at the Solway Brussels School of Economics and Management. So that is Université Libre de Bruxelles. 

 

That's correct. Université Libre de Bruxelles. Thank you. 

 

He holds a Master in Management, a Master in Art History and Archaeology, and a PhD in Economics and Management, and also did a postdoctoral stay. What's really interesting is that he co-authored a paper called Art in Times of Crisis. Can you tell us a little bit more about your research? 

 

Yes, of course. So in this paper, that's a joint work with Géraldine David, Yuxin Li, and Luc Renneboek, we're trying to look at how art markets respond to crises. By crisis, we mean a lot of different kinds of crisis. So you have political crises, like wars, but also economic crises. And what we do, since crises are relatively rare events, we take a very long-term perspective. So we're looking at the UK market from 1906 to 2016, and the basic question is, okay, is art a good investment in times of crisis? Well, in general, art is not a great investment, even though if you love your artwork, and from a finance perspective, it has a relatively low return compared to the risk you take. You're taking a lot of risk because some artists completely disappear from the market. And so we were interested in knowing whether this was always the case, or if in crisis it did better than others. And so we looked at a series of crises, and what we find is that during major economic crises, artworks are not so good as an investment. They usually tend to do worse than stocks. So that's not a real hedge against crises. But in wartime, it's a much more complicated picture. So what we do know is that what we see in our paper is that at the beginning of the war, the art market is doing relatively badly in the UK. But as the war goes on, it's actually getting better and better. And this is an interesting observation, because you could ask yourself, well, why on earth would I need an artwork in wartime? That sounds pretty bizarre. Why? I mean, it's probably not what you need most. And it echoes other research I've done earlier on, where I basically showed that in some countries during World War II, and I'm talking now about France, which was occupied, investing in art was the best investment you could do. And this is even more bizarre. You're in a country that's occupied by foreign troops. Why on earth would you need artworks? And there are lots of reasons for that. One is you're trying to hide your wealth. And what I could show is that the price dynamics of small artworks is steeper than the price dynamics of large artworks. So basically, people are trying to find small, portable goods, which I call discrete assets, that you can actually take away with you in times of crisis. So if you need to flee, you have these things, you can take them away. But also, other people were making a lot of money during the war, black marketeers, for example, they were also trying to find ways to hide the illicit profits they made. And there again, artworks were something they were looking after. Also, in other cases, we find the same thing in the Netherlands. So our paper basically is asking this question about art in times of crisis. But what we see is that it's a very different thing. If it's an economic crisis, a financial crisis versus a war. Is this always the case? Well, we looked at one country. So we look at the UK, and we cannot claim that it's valid always and everywhere. And what we have, and this is important to note too, is that we only look at art that's being sold at auction, because that's where we have data. So the picture might be slightly different. If you look at galleries, it might also be different depending on what you buy. So what we, for example, could show in our paper is that usually what you have in when you have a crisis, an economic crisis, there is a price equal line for artworks in general, but some parts of the art market are more resilient. So for example, what we could show is that in the UK, artworks made by British artists tend to face a lower decrease in prices than artworks made by foreign artists. And this might be the result of people willing to stick to the art from their own country, or hoping that the market for their artwork, national artwork might be more resilient. And it seems that this is the case. The other thing we want to highlight is that in some cases, we have quotes from people during the Great Depression who say, well, at least my artworks, they didn't lose all their value as my stocks. And so what we show is an average result. But of course, for some people, they could have and they may have done better with artworks than with stocks. But we also have the counterexample of people losing everything because the art market is gone. On the gallery side during economic crises, it's extremely hard. So we have lots of closure in the latest in the Great Recession, lots of closure during the Great Depression. Our main takeaway is that in times of crisis, even though people hope it's a good hedge against crisis, art is not doing so well. During political crises and wartime, that's a bit different. There you may have more resilience. That's I'm not saying it's positive because wars are never positive. But it's something where the art world, the art market are actually doing a bit better. I'll stop here unless you have more questions or more precise questions. 

 

I have a lot of questions. But before that, I do want to say the reason why we are making this interview, particularly on this topic, crisis. This is because we have a live event right now in parallel to this talk, just downstairs. Right now I'm in the upstairs of our artist residency. That is a space where artists stay and leave. And downstairs is the office and exhibition place. And right now our artist in residence is having her very first exhibition. Her name is Mary. She's from Belarus. And I have her next to me. I would like to introduce her personal story because I think that makes artists and art, making of art in the times of crisis, very personal. It's not just like some abstract concept when we talk about crises. There is actually one person in concrete that I can present who is experiencing crisis on different levels as an asylum seeker currently in Spain, personally, financially, professionally and also politically as Eastern European between the turbulence. A good example to discuss. Can you hear me? 

 

Yes, I can hear you. I'm Mary. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. I'm from Belarus, from a small city, Vitebsk in the north. I've been living there until 2020. Did you know something about the revolution in Belarus? I'm familiar with the difficulties over there. Yes. I mean, I'm not a specialist, but I've read what's going on. And yeah, it's not easy. At that time, I've been there and I experienced some kind of not really good time with police arrest. And after that, I went to Spain. 

 

So did you experience police arrest because of your art or because of your activity? 

 

Because of my activity, because of my protest activity. And I can say one of the reasons why I'm here, why I'm living now in Spain and doing what I'm doing. I have a literature background. I finished a philological faculty and I was raised in Belarus and in Ukraine, Crimea. We know from art history that some artists were strongly influenced by the war. 

 

So how do you feel the war influenced your artistic practice? 

 

My work gets darker and deeper and more depressing because it's influenced me a lot as a person, as well as my mental health, if you can say. Yes. So everything goes in a very dark direction. 

 

If you take the other artists, you know, in Belarus, how did they do? Did they manage to also get their career restarted somewhere else or are you representative or are you very much of an exception in this respect? 

 

I could say, I don't know any artists in Belarus right now. I'm sure there are, but all of the young people, all young generations that I know, people of my age, they all escaped to other countries. Many of my friends live now in Georgia and do art in Georgia, for example. They organize events, they also organize some expositions. They also sell art to support Ukraine and send money to Ukraine. I also know some Belarusian young artists who do their work now in Poland, in Krakow, in Warsaw. So I think mostly all Belarusian artists now around the world are trying their best. 

 

I would have expected Poland. Spain was a surprise to me, but Georgia is really a surprise to me how they ended there. Because I was expecting, it's interesting how artists move and where they go and and what is the, how artists make that choice of where they go and work when they have to flee their country. 

 

So with Georgia, I guess it was very easy because now it's a big big big community of Belarusian. 

 

So there's one that comes there and attracts the others? Yes. 

 

Okay, it's a networking effect. Yes, everyone escaped there because there's some people speaking Russian, so it's a language thing. 

 

Yes, yes. And they all bring in our works in another culture and it still works, it's still growing, it's still developing. 

 

I mean, we know from history that wars are terrible things, but in terms of culture, the fact that artists move, it creates new movements, it creates new influences, it creates new ways of doing artistic work. I mean, we have this in the US after World War II, lots of artists from Europe had to go and flee Europe and went there and developed things. So in your practice, do you think you're also being influenced by the fact that you're in Spain and not in another country? Or is it just the influence of the war that is driving your artistic practice? 

 

I've been influenced particularly because of Spain. I can see many beautiful things that inspire me a lot. But of course, as an asylum seeker, my project is about asylum seekers, so it's like a combination between different files. It's like mixed influences. 

 

Yes, yes. When I think about artists in general, it's very hard for them to get a solo show when they're young. And you managed to do it in a country that's not your own, and you managed to have a show. So how did that ever develop? How did you manage to enter the Spanish artistic scene and try to develop what you were doing and go further? 

 

I could say it's a very interesting story. I've been deleted from asylum in August. So I couldn't be a refugee anymore. I don't have an official status. They said no for me. And that same day, I just went to the internet. So I just searched Art Business Madrid, and I found a program. I'm applying. And yeah, somehow it worked. World gives me that bliss to be here and do what I do. 

 

And sometimes it's a bit of luck and timing that things fall. I mean, you go from a horrible situation. And at some point, something nice comes up along. And that's great. I cannot see your art because I see you, but I see people behind you. Do you think it's possible to move the computer so that I could see some artworks? 

 

I can show you one of my installations. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I can see that. You can see a bed. A bed with paper. A pillow. Yeah. Pillow and sheets. They are made by my papers, different official documents. 

 

Oh, so you created the blanket and the pillows on the basis of all the sheets of paper you have to fill in? 

 

Yes, it's my documents. But also I should say I've been inspired by one girl that you can sell for that part. She did a double suicide. And after that, in one of the asylum centers, she was sent back to the same place. So her life is just about that. Just about a life of every migrant and every person who are in the system. I can say it's just about paperwork. You leave, you sleep, you eat, you... And your whole life depends on this paperwork. It's just pieces of paper determining the way you're going to live. Yes. And I would love to show you that part. That's a fridge. Documentation, different type of. And it's about process of our cases that are freezed in the moment, in the time. So you couldn't do anything. So they're just staying there. We're waiting for answers. Years. I've been waiting two years. So I've been like frozen for two years. 

 

So that's a metaphor for immobility and inaction in a sense. 

 

Yes, exactly. Impossibility to act. 

 

And in a sense, they put you in a cold place and don't let you do anything. I guess the cold has also symbolic value. And you couldn't move. You couldn't cross the Spain borders. You couldn't leave. You have only one choice. You're really enclosed in a cold place where nobody thinks of you. 

 

Yeah. There is a base on the documents of that person that you see in the portrait. It's a documentation about death of his mother. So as a base, I took a documentation of every person. So it's like he's the main biggest issue. He's the main struggle with that. We're alive. 

 

That's nice. 

 

Yeah, I can show you. It's more aggressive. 

 

Yeah, it is. That's part of it. Also, violence is also part of the whole process. 

 

So yes, yes. It makes sense. You can also see that it's a borders, not really into the main artwork. So you're always separated, but you're in stuck into the time and situation. You're in a sense prisoner and separated and you see what you want. Yeah. Wow. 

 

And you can also see that it's epoxy resin. It's glossy. So it's like going from the fridge idea of stacking in there. It's the next step after the fridge. That's the idea. 

 

Yes, yes. So there's a chronology in the whole show. I mean, is this supposed to be something where you move from one artwork to the other and there's really a way to follow the artworks that makes sense because it's a journey? It's all fully connected? So now you have this first show and that's great. So how do you view yourself in the Spanish art scene afterwards? I mean, do you have all the other projects or the other connections or what is your hope or what would you like to develop afterwards? 

 

Oh, I would love to do more shows and enter the art world in Madrid, but I have a lack of, how to say, connection. Yeah. And it's a big question here, big my problem, how to like what I should to do? Actually, I want to ask you because…

 

 I think what you're doing is already spectacular because you managed to start to be integrated in an art scene. You're doing interesting, interesting work. And now it's really going to be about critics. I mean, if you manage to have enough critics coming to see the show here, it will snowball. And it's also the fact that you managed to have Mo and Greg having you. They also have a YouTube channel with lots of viewers. So this may attract additional interest. Then it's just going to be meeting the right persons. And I guess the next step is going to get more of a recognition from the art critique that that's, I guess, the next big step that you could try to envision. As I said, I only saw your works for a few minutes, but I think they're very interesting and they have content. There's a message. And I think that's what people look for in artworks today. So I think it's very relevant. My view is that you're doing well. That's one of the messages here. That's a very good start. And then continue working. That's the next step. 

 

Thank you. Thank you very much. We're doing some quite chaotic change here because... 

 

It's less chaotic than coming from Belarus. The chaos there is minor. 

 

Yeah, we have some live guests from different parts of the town. 

 

I've seen that. It seems that there are people around. You have artists that are from a given country that can't get through. Whenever you have people who have more hurdles to go through, when they manage it probably means they're a lot more dedicated and have more things to say, and she has things to say. So I think it's a nice... I wish I could be with you. 

 

Thank you. 

 

And I have some questions because you are not only an economist, but you also studied art and history of art. As a young artist like her today, she hasn't entered the art market yet. When we are talking about the artworks in auction houses, it means it's already in the secondary market, but she hasn't gone to the first. I mean, what could she do? 

 

There are several things that... As I said, I think she's doing well because she's having a show, which is hard to do. You probably also have a network. I mean, you have a YouTube channel that's watched by a lot of people, so it's going to get garnered attention. She's doing interesting work. That's the basics, but from what I saw, there is a message, there are ideas, there are lots of things. I mean, there's content, so I think she's doing very well on that side. This being said, there are things that are harder to sell than others. Installations are always tricky. I mean, it's the way the word is. So that's one of the things, but I don't think she should change her artistic practice. I think what she should try to get is to get more attention for maybe other galleries, maybe museums, things like that. Try to develop and use what you have created there as a first step to build on that and to get attention from the critics. And then she has also works that are more bi-dimensional, that are probably easier to value, that have a message. From a market perspective, these ones are going to be more marketable than the installations. So I think she should have two strategies. One is getting more artistic recognition in Spain. And there again, I mean, she speaks of her art with interest and we can feel that it's real. I mean, it's not bogus. It's really something she has a message for and it's an interesting message. So I think that's very good for the art world. Then it's a question of getting exposure, getting more exposure, getting even more exposure, up till some collectors start to get attracted by what she does. One of the other things that plays and that's a bit more difficult is, of course, the theme of the artworks on the art market. The nice thing is there is a theme. She's talking about war. She's talking about human suffering. So this is something that everybody can connect to. The drawback is these are not... No. Who wants to buy them, right? Exactly. The drawback is it's harder to buy this. But then again, and I think it's also a mix of people also viewing these artworks as representing humanity in a sense. So it's suffering, it's humanity. So it's not just that you look at this and you think of the war and the suffering of people. It's also a way for you to connect with another human being. And this might be a way to think about it and to view the whole process of the art she does. Of course, it's always harder to sell things that are gruesome. I mean, nowadays, religious pictures with the Christ in thorns, they're not easy to sell because who wants to? I mean, martyr, a saint being martyred, it's not the light thing you want. But then you also have collectors who are more interested in the message, in the persons. And there again, I think she's talking about suffering. She's talking about exile. It's interesting enough that people can connect to what she wants to say, but it's not something that visually is awful to watch on a regular basis. No, it's not difficult to look at. It gets to you, you get interested, but it's not something where you feel like, oh, there's no way I could watch this more than five minutes. And sometimes this is the case. So I'm not saying it's going to be easy, but I'm saying there is something in there. 

 

I totally can relate because after the pandemic, I stopped watching the world news. I mean, I get the news from my friends and I must warn them to say, please just tell me in a nice way, like, are we going to die? Yes, I know we're all going to die. I mean, this is a fact. Nobody's getting out of this alive. Yes. Immediately after the pandemic, the year, the ARC Madrid show, I wouldn't say 80%, but I'm willing to say more than half of the pictures, paintings that are like a sunny beach, sea, animals, nature, trees. It's just sunshine and flowers because people needed that. 

 

Yeah. And there's a literature. So it's more about anecdotal evidence suggesting that in wartime people don't want pictures of war, but there again, Spain is not at war. It's a different thing. So you also, it can also, it also relates to all the sales that were made during wars for Red Cross, for things, for helping artists that have had a hard time, which is also an interesting market. Some people may be interested by the fact that it's artwork with a message, but there's also being a way to help people, artists develop that have suffered from this. So there's also this part of the market. Some collectors want to connect with the artist and say, well, okay, I'm buying this artwork because I think it's interesting, but I, I know I'm also supporting an artist that's gone through difficult things. So that also might be a motivation. Those buyers are normally institutional buyers. They could be, and they're probably the majority is going to be institutional, but you can also have private collectors. It all depends on, I mean, how much people feel connected to asylum, to the need to flee. And you can have lots of people whose family history is linked to that, and they connect even more than people who never had to flee. And so it also evokes something of their family history, which they may want to value afterwards. So this is something that's very hard to say, but, but institutions are more likely to be of help here. 

 

For example, Mary, as a case study, do you think the strategy is for her to sell a lot, sell cheap so everyone can buy a piece of her or just to continue doing what she's doing until she couldn't sustain and just go big or go home? 

 

What you're describing for her is true for any young artist, even that is in Spain. I'm taking away the fact that about the paperwork and any, any young artists will have a hard time in the beginning because they have no market. Nobody knows them. And so you are providing a first signal here. You're making a show with her, but not with someone else. So I could ask you why her, that would be a question that I would have to ask you. But then again, it's also something about being an artist. If you start to sell for two euros, whatever you do, you're moving away from being an artist. I mean, in my view, being from an artist that can live from his art or her art. And so you're changing category. You're doing things that may be interesting, but if you go very low in terms of pricing, you're signaling that you don't intend to live as an artist. Of course, you can tell me it's not sustainable if I want to price it at a price where I can live, but then at least you've tried. And if the market tells you, we don't feel like you're good enough or that there's interest enough in your work so that you can live as an artist, at least, okay, this is a clear-cut message. The worst that can happen is to start low and try to increase because it's a strategy, but if you start too low, by the time it increases, you're dead. So it's also something that I think want-to-be artists need to take into account. The price at which you sell your artwork is signaling that you believe you're an artist or not. That's my personal view. I don't have a paper to write on that. I don't have a signal, but I think it's an important thing to bear in mind. If you go too low in price, you're signaling that you're doing this as a hobby. 

 

First, I would like to answer your question, why her? I could, in a way, sense her frustration because in 2011, 2012, I was in France for six months in Normandy, terrible weather in the winter, raining every day. Unfortunately, my whole France experience was staying at home, waiting for my paperwork to come through, my carte de séjour. Because of Nicolas Sarkozy's policy, it was near the election, re-election, and I never got my paperwork. So with my frustration, I left, and I came to Spain, and I luckily got a job here working for the European Commission. I sorted out my visa just before my German student visa expired, so I could stay the whole time legal here. But it was a time that I was anxious every day, thinking, hoping, waiting, and waiting for life to happen. So when she told me she's in this situation, I could totally relate. We wanted, of course, to give a chance to support artists with irregular situations, to support her through the crisis. When it comes to pricing, I totally agree with your statement that once you're in a certain positioning, it's really difficult to switch. But how about supporting your price? 

 

For example, let's say I'm buying flowers or buying artwork, a beautiful piece to decorate my house. I just want the result that is aesthetic, that suits my needs, that serves the purpose, and then to see if I can afford it or not, so I can decide to take it or leave it. How can an artist say, I need this much to live because otherwise I won't be able to afford housing or food, so I need that much? That's not the way, right? I mean, it's a supply and demand thing. So basically, it's what people are willing to pay. But the question is also, that's how you could price. Well, what's the willingness of the market to pay? And there, of course, you may want to have a strategy where you sustain prices, where you give assurance to collectors because they don't know you. What I'm just trying to say is that there is a huge difference between a young artist that starts with a price of 200 euros for a small artwork versus one that starts with a 5 euro artwork, because the one that starts with a very, very low price is never going to catch up. So I think it's not that each artwork that you sell should make you live, and I'm not claiming that you cannot start at a relatively medium price or medium low price. What I'm trying to show is that the pricing strategy is not neutral in terms of how people perceive you. And I think that's an important thing that artists sometimes overlook. And so it's a very complex pricing strategy of artists. And what you eventually want is to signal that your intention is to live from it. Maybe if it's not today that you're going to, and you may have a whole strategy on that, but if you go too low, people don't view you as an artist, and then it's basically gone. I mean, you're never going to catch up. And also, she may need someone that helps her if she can't sell directly. There's all this thing about being reassured as a collector that the artwork and the artists are not going to disappear. So that's also something. So when I was telling her that she should start to think of the second show, in a sense, it's more reassuring for a would-be collector to see that you're buying a piece of artwork, but the artist has already something else planned. I haven't checked how much she communicates, but that's also something that you can start to develop. The market for contemporary artists is the most volatile one. You have no idea as a collector if the artist is going to make it or not. You don't know if he or she's going to go on doing artistic work. So I think where you can work as an artist is work, but also provide some reassurance. And reassurance comes from a series of things. Signaling, so positive signaling from critics, from curators, from museums. Signaling also by yourself that you show that there are other people that are collecting you, that you're not the sole collector. Everybody feels bad if he's made a mistake alone, but if you can show, if you go to a show and you see other artworks have been sold, it's reassuring. So this means that you may want to have some patrons that are ready to take some risk in the beginning. This is all something you construct, of course. That's the whole idea. And you could try to team with other artists. You can try to team up and get some platforms that help you get more visibility. When you decided to take her in residence, you also made a choice. And so in a sense, you're also part of this whole process. And I think that's why I was telling her it's good that you managed to pass the first platform where people want to have you in residence and want to give you a solo show. 

 

And when she first came here, she showed her photographic work, mainly black and white, mainly landscape, not a lot of faces. Actually, none of the pictures she showed me had any faces. Every day, me and my partner worked with her throughout the months. So it's kind of an education program as well. It's like I'm an incubator for artists. 

 

Yeah, that's also very nice as a project. I mean, the project you're running is interesting. You give a chance to people who are in need. It's linked to artistic quality. It's linked to artistic reflection. And then you see what happens. And I think that's a great initiative. 

 

You have seen many movements throughout history, art history, human history, history of war and peace. What do you think the next, I mean, our current into the next maybe 10, 20 years, what is the quality of the art that people crave for? For example, I think it's, I call it documentarism. That is a real nonfiction piece of art, new media, sometimes maybe interactive, immersive, but all based on the principles of, let's say, documentary filmmaking. 

 

Then you're back to realism in the 19th century, where it was also one of the ideas of these painters in France, I mean, or people who showed you the working class. I mean, you have artists that specialize in, you know, this hard life of labor. You can go from Millet 

 

or you can think of Bonjour, Monsieur Courbet. 

 

Courbet, yeah, exactly. I mean, you can think of these artists that are there and it's very hard to know what people crave, but especially because I don't think they all crave the same. You just said before, after the pandemic, people wanted a nice beach and a nice cat. I'm just making this up. But I mean, the artist, and that's what's interesting is that no, not every single person or every single collector is interested in the same thing. So I think we're past one, just one movement where you can have something that is valid for all collectors. What I think is most important today is artistic quality and messages. In contemporary art, if there is not a main message or a main theme or something that you can relate to and that you can, I think collectors are going to be less interested. If there's not, it might be a critique, it might be reflection, it might be anything. But I think artists tell about their lives and I think that's what they convey. And so in a sense, do they need to do documentaries to convey their lives? Maybe, maybe not. They can do other artistic ways to convey their lives. What we're seeing today, it's her life, but it's not realism as we would call it in the past. You could say it's a documentary, but it's not a documentary in the sense that you really go and see, but it's telling enough to understand what she wants to say. So I think the message is the most important part. 

 

That's a bit like artivism. That's the message in the strongest form, right? 

 

Yeah, it is. It is. 

 

What do you think about artists trying to change the world? Like, I mean, there are different layers. For example, if you go to change.org, you have artists calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. I mean, yeah, I would like to call for a ceasefire, but they're not going to listen to me, right? 

 

But I mean, some artists have a message, some artists want to change the world and sometimes it's both. And you know, it's all possible. That's the message they want to give through. The question is, how do they do it? And their job as an artist is to make people think and reflect and then react. And if the reaction is changing the world, that's good. But that's, I think, what artists are here for. It's making us think and react and feel. And so it might be for activism, it might also be for other things. So I think their job is to disturb people and get them to think and reflect. That's what art is doing and having emotions. 

 

There's a peak oil. We all feel that the resources are getting less and less and they are not in the exhaustive, right? So the economy is based on infinite resources. And now we have a finite problem. And it's not just now, right? 

 

For decades, we've been having this finite problem. But sustainability in the art market has been very present. I mean, the question of sustainability, because that's what you raise, it's something that artists have been working on for years now. And it's something where you start to have reflections in the art world in general. I'm the co-chair of the International Art Market Studies Association. And last year, our conference was on sustainability in the art market. How do you think the art market can remain sustainable? And what do artists do to challenge the visions we have of sustainability? So I think the art world has taken over this, and it's a message they're doing. As for the whole economy, who am I to say where it's going to go? I mean, you have part of people say, well, we're going to use resources better, we're going to manage. Some other thing we're going to change, we need to change the way of life. Some people say we should be less on the planet. I'm not qualified to say what is the solution. I don't think I'm the one to say so. What I observe is that you have lots of people having different ways of thinking about the problem and trying to solve it. And my view and what I find interesting is artists are part of this reflection. 

 

While the artists on my social media, I would hear them talk more often about selling NFTs. And this is a common observation as well. I think there are more people wanting to sell NFTs than people who want to make sustainability happen in the art world. What do you think of NFTs and their impact? 

 

I mean, the relationship between artists and money is extremely complex. I mean, think of Art De Povera, it's a movement that criticised the market and then it gets recuperated by the market. So we have this wrong vision of artists being poor and dying and having a hard time. But if you think of people like Rubens, I mean, he was okay, don't worry, he had the whole atelier, he was doing well. So in a sense, should we blame artists who want to make money? Is this something wrong? I mean, why wouldn't they, I mean, everybody has to live, so why wouldn't they try to be rich at some point? So the moral critique on artists willing to earn money, that's what it is, it's a moral critique. As for the market for NFTs, well, you know, it looks a lot like a bubble. I mean, it's very hard to say if it's going to catch up again. Digital art may have a market later on, and it's probably something that still will develop. But the NFTs as they were created, as you said, they attracted lots of attention because you had a high price, high money to make. And this was probably, you know, the beginning of something. And what we know from finance, we know that bubbles are very often related to new technologies or new ways of doing things. I mean, you can think of the 1929 stock market crash, it was quite, most of the companies affected were linked to new technologies of the time. The 2000, the dot-com bubble, new technologies, and there's a reason for that, it's very hard to value. And in a sense, when you come with NFT in an art market, where it's already per se hard to value things, you come up with a new thing. So you have it squared. It's hard to value squared, if you want. So of course, it's very hard to value. People don't really know what to do with it. You get a hype. But I'm not completely sure. I mean, I'm not sure it's going to disappear. My view is, okay, it has its birth and its infancy, which was bubble-like. After all bubbles, at some point, the markets realized it was a bubble, and they tried to think again about the whole concept. But it's very hard to say NFTs and other digital images are going to disappear from the market. I think they're going to go on, but I don't know which direction it's going to take. But I don't think it's going to die completely. And I think the whole contemporary art market is in a way a bubble, if you look at it as a whole, because you have artists selling tremendous amount of money that is unreal, that people start to question, is that the real value of this art? So from a finance perspective, a bubble, I mean, economists, how do they find a bubble? It's when the value you observe is disconnected from what they call a fundamental value. And the fundamental value for a stock, it's going to be, for example, you take a model, which kind of dividends is the stock going to bring me in the future, and I value it like this. Or it can be free cash flows, how much money is the asset going to generate. For artworks, artworks don't generate any cash flow. They just generate pleasure with the viewer and resell, say, later on. So it might, from a finance perspective, it's very, I mean, you can say either everything is a bubble or nothing is a bubble. It's very hard to pin down the concept of bubble, because usually what you try to do is to link it to a fundamental value. And this fundamental value is very hard to compute or almost impossible to compute in the art world. So my view is you could always say it's a bubble. And I think the bubble thing is for me a way for people to say that they find the price is too high to compare to what they would have been willing to pay, but nobody knows the fundamental value. So it's something that you feel is crazy, but of course we may disagree and you may find it logical and I may find it crazy or vice versa. The only thing I can say, if it sold that work at that price, someone felt it was worth that. I mean, you just need one person. And since we are talking about unique objects, most of the time, that person felt it was worth that. And we may not agree and quite often I do not agree, but I'm also not the one paying. And also I don't have the wealth of the person. I mean, as a million euro painting may seem huge or ridiculously small. If you're a billionaire, that person could pay that and wouldn't be feeling outrageously high. So it's also something we need to take into account what we have researched by Christoph Spanius and the Creditbook and Will Goetzman, where they show that income inequality is driving prices up. So if you have super rich people, their view of what is expensive is not our view. I mean, I don't know your salary, but I suspect it's not our view on what is super expensive. And so that's also something to bear in mind. 

 

When you just talked about income inequality, that reminds me of in many countries in the European Union, the despairing middle class. And now in my home country, China, we also have this slight recession with a despairing, compressed middle class. And how would that impact the art prices in your opinion? 

 

They should go up. The ones who want to buy something have the means to bid against each other at a higher price. And the lower middle class, if they can't buy anything, they will be outpriced. But I mean, if it's really about high-end artworks, they should go up. The likelihood is that income inequality is going to drive up prices. That's the result the authors I mentioned found for the US, but I think it's valid in terms of reasoning for many other places. The prices going up is ideal, is a dream, is a wish for the artists. No, because it's not going to be for all artists. It's a market where you have a winner takes it all. I mean, some artists get the big pie and other artists never make it. So it's not good for the average. I mean, it's not good. When I say it, it might seem good for everybody, but no, it's going to be very good for some and not at all good for others. From a market perspective, we know that something sells less well than others, but what they have to realize is that what people focus on or like may also change over time. So for the moment where we are in a period where paintings and oil paintings mostly are extremely highly valued by the market, if you go back a few centuries in time, tapestries were the high thing. So, it's also something that we don't realize, but if you think in terms of collectibles in general, there's a high chance that at some point it's something else that people will start valuing, but we don't know what it is yet. If you look at inventories, books, and if you go back a few centuries, they would mention there was a painting, but they would spend a lot more time describing the tapestries because these were the highly valued objects or the furniture. So, it's something to realize that it's not always the same thing that the market values. This changes. So, for the moment, we're in a world that seems to put most interest in paintings, oil paintings mostly. Is it going to stay? Maybe. Is it going to be disappearing tomorrow? Probably not, but I can't tell you in 50 years time where it's going to go, and if it's a young artist, I have no idea. 

 

Are you an art collector? Do you buy art? I buy art. What kind of art? 

 

That's very private. I'm not going to go into disclosing what I do buy. Paintings, sculptures, contemporary, old masters? I have all you said. I'm not very much into contemporary. I'm more into older stuff, but that's okay. Girl sculpture, they're there. Paintings are there. Also, other objects, but yeah. I can see that talking about art puts a smile on your face. So, when you decide to make a purchase, let's say the most valuable purchase you've had, what was it? Why? What was going through your head when you made that purchase? In French, there's a saying that says that the shoemakers have the worst shoes. And so, you know, I may be rational when I study things, but when I look at art and if I like it, I'm probably not very rational. I don't claim to be more rational than the others. So, the only thing is I probably pay more attention to provenance and things like that than the average buyers, but that's probably it, and that's where I am. So, no, no, I don't claim to be rational. If, again, I take my more scholar hat, what the literature shows you is that returns on art compared to the risk are very low. The good way to invest in art, in my eyes, is to buy what you like and say, okay, this is the money I'm ready to spend for it. This is what I can afford to spend on it. Sometimes, I think I would like to buy, but can't buy, and just live with it. And then, if it probably goes up, it's good news, but then I'm not investing thousands of billions of euros. I'm just doing it because I like it. So, I think that's the main message. 

 

I see. I see. And I saw that you have written papers on nepotism. I cannot pronounce it because I have Invisalign. You know, I have this lisp, terrible lisp. 

 

I have several papers, and some are more art history oriented, and some are more economics oriented. So, the one on nepotism and sexism, we're looking at 19th century France, and we tried to see how the Salon, which was the main place where people were actually showing artworks, was operating to give its medal. So, the medal was supposed to signal the best artists. And so, what we did with my two co-authors, Claire Dupin and Diana Greenwald, is to look at how the prizes were awarded and try to connect lots of things. And what we saw is that the Salon was a very complicated period because the jury system changes over time. But at some moment in time, having done your studies with one of the person that sat on the jury was really helping you to get a medal. So, that's the nepotism part. And the other thing that we could show is that women of equal quality than men were less likely to get medals, which is sexism, but that's something that's not a big surprise, unfortunately, I guess, for most people. But I think what's interesting and fun in this paper was working with my two co-authors, who are great, but also having a different take on this question of the Salon, which is very much looked at by art historians, but never with more a quantitative approach. And I think what we contribute is to say, well, I think you believed where might have been there, and we kind of show you it was there, but also think that the literature in general is in a way, and we showed it's a bit more subtle. So, for example, nepotism, if you say people, okay, well, if your master was on the jury, of course, you would get more medals. That's true on average, but our peers, that's not all the case. And that's where it becomes interesting because the jury system changes. And so, we'd say, well, this jury system, it's interesting to look at how it worked because the details matter because the outcome is not always influenced by, I mean, whom you know, at some points was a bit more fair than others. And this is interesting to think about these prizes. 

 

Would you be willing to say that the free market, selling your work out there, getting the buyers is the fairest of them all, of other competition, public markets? 

 

There is something that people don't realize when they look at prices. For most people, a price is a price, but the price is not a price. And let me explain this. If you have a price that you buy, let's say you buy an artwork in a gallery, then it's a price that's been fixed by the galleries, you may negotiate it and you get the artwork at some price. This is a price where someone decided this is the value, you negotiate it and you get something. When you're at an auction, the price is a mechanism that you create. So you're in competition with someone else. And in economics, we say there's the winner's curse. You win the auction, but basically you're signaling that you are the one person that was the most willing to have this artwork. And if you were willing to sell it tomorrow right away, nobody would be willing to pay that, presumably because you were the highest bidder. So when we look at prices, and in Europe, we're used to a system where the prices are fixed. But in other countries, you negotiate prices. And so when you negotiate prices, you're more close to your willingness to pay. How much are you willing to pay for that? In Europe, we take the prices that are in front of us and we say take it or don't take it. So presumably, if you buy the thing, it means you feel like you're making a good bargain. But still, it's a very interesting way to think about prices. 

 

So is there a more fair way to produce prices? Is the market price fair? 

 

I would say it really depends on which market we're talking about and how the price is constructed. What is your next project? If people want to reach out or listen to your lectures? Yeah, I'm working on a lot of things for the moment. For the moment, I have a big project that's linked to World War II and the art market in Belgium, where we work with a museum, the Musée Royal des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, so the Belgium Fine Art Museum, with a collaboration with people in Berlin, the TU Berlin and the archives from Belgium, to see how during World War II artworks were looted and try to grasp how the market works. So it's a historical project with ethical connection provenance, and that's one of the things I'm actually busy with. So that's part of the project. You mean like stolen? Stolen, yeah, yeah. Ah, it reminds me of last year in the... 

 

Tefaf, yeah, I know that. Tefaf. That's different. I'm talking about stolen during World War II, so that's a different concept. Well, it's the reverse, but... 

 

Yeah, yeah, it's something else. Yeah, thank you very much for your time. 

 

Thanks a lot for the opportunity and take care. Yeah, have a good evening. Bye-bye.

 

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Hey, sorry, the video is not over yet. I'm still here. After editing the video, I realized that there were so many things I spoke about that were not on the subject of art in crisis. And there are many things I wish to say I totally forgot. So if you know me, that's typical, typical me. So here are some final notes to share. First of all, I would like to give a big shout out to our lovely patrons. Thank you very much for your support, for your love. And without you guys, we would not be able to do all the things that we do, produce all the content that we produce. For those of you who don't know us in the video, if you just came for this video, you might hear that we are a residency, we have an office space, and we have an art blog as well, and we have this YouTube channel, of course. And you might be confused, like, okay, you're doing all the things or where did the money come from? Just to be clear, we're not receiving money from private or public entities. We do not receive sponsorship. We never made any sponsored videos up to this point, because we would like to stay neutral. And it's very similar to making art. You want to have all the creative freedom that you could get so that you can make the content, make the art that you wish to that reflects you as a person and to transmit your message. And that's exactly what we're doing. We only receive money from our lovely patrons. If you would like to check out our Patreon page, we will leave a link in the description below. We have monthly community talks and coaching. And of course, that helps us produce content and also YouTube ads, which I know is not a lot, but it does help in a way because I can get this positive vibe that people are actually watching and they're getting value from it. And that's why I get paid. So that's a good feeling and it's positive anyway. So if you could, give a like and leave a comment so that the algorithm knows that people are enjoying our videos. So yeah, that's pretty much it, I think. Yeah, of course, if you would like to apply to be a part of our artist residency, come and there is a link in the description below to our website and fill out a very simple form. It will take you a minute or two and voila, so we'll be in touch. In the next 24 hours, I'll be boarding a plane because wow, it's already Monday. Tuesday, tomorrow, I'll be boarding a plane to China to visit my family for Christmas. So I will be making my next video in China. Thank you very much for watching. See you in the next video.