{"id":130,"date":"2008-02-22T15:20:09","date_gmt":"2008-02-22T15:20:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/twothirdsdone.com\/?p=130"},"modified":"2008-02-22T15:23:17","modified_gmt":"2008-02-22T15:23:17","slug":"i-am-not-a-collector","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/twothirdsdone.com\/it\/2008\/02\/22\/i-am-not-a-collector\/","title":{"rendered":"I am not a collector"},"content":{"rendered":"

About 30 years ago, I bought my first painting. As a musician (sort of) I was always puzzled about visual art where one copy of a work exists or in the case of photos and prints, as small series. <\/span>With music, the more people that have a copy of a work, the more successful one is. <\/span>But with visual art, success is kind of linked to the resale value of a work (and positive critical review). <\/span>People that acquire visual art are called collectors. <\/span>But people with a large library of music are generally known as music lovers. <\/span>Visual art takes up a lot of room. <\/span>Music takes up very little room and now with digital distribution it takes up no room (I am a <\/span>big fan of Rhapsody). <\/span>I once visited the home of a senior executive at a major media company. <\/span>This man was an art collector. <\/span>His house was filled with wonderful and very valuable art. <\/span>I told him that I had been buying art but there were almost no suitable wall space left in my house. <\/span>I asked him what he did when he got in that situation and he said, \u201cit is easy, you just buy a bigger house\u201d. <\/span> <\/span>Over the years I bought more art. <\/span>I did not know and still do not know much about art or artists. <\/span>I just bought pieces I loved but also integrated well within the space I had for them. <\/span>Being the businessman that I was, I always gave some thought for the value of the art that I bought and have been good at negotiating discounts from art dealers who normally have a very high mark up.<\/font> <\/font>My wife (I can\u2019t mention her name because her goal is to be the last person you cannot find via Google), loves visual art at lot and actually as a graduate of an art school, knows a lot about it. <\/span>So we sometimes visit galleries. <\/span>About four years ago, we randomly walked by a gallery <\/a>in Chelsea NYC, and I saw a piece that really drew me to it. <\/span>It was \u201cThe Flood\u201d by Barry Frydlender.\"The<\/a><\/font> <\/font>Not only did I love it but I was fascinated to learn about how Frydlender created it<\/a> using hundreds of digital images taken from the same place at different times. <\/span>I did not realize that you could actually create art with Photoshop. <\/span>I bought that this piece for what I thought was a lot of money but since then Frydlender has gotten a lot of recognition including a show at the MOMA in NYC. <\/span>His work has gone up a lot in value and I would not feel comfortable spending that kind of money for art now. <\/span>I ended up over the years buy three more works of Israeli photographers. <\/span><\/font> <\/font>Recently, I was asked if I would lend these <\/span>four works to the Magnes Museum<\/a> for as six month show they were putting on of Israeli artists in celebration of the 60th<\/sup> anniversary of Israel. <\/span>I agreed of course having had some guilt for a while that so few people could actually see the art that I own. <\/span>My wife and I went to the opening of this show and then to a reception. <\/span>People kept coming up to us and saying, \u201cwhen did you start becoming a collector\u201d or things like that. <\/span>I guess it was meant as a compliment. <\/span>Being a collector must be some kind of status symbol. <\/span>I wanted to scream \u201cI am not a collector\u201d and run. <\/span> <\/span><\/font> <\/font>I guess when anything is in a limited supply those that buy these items an be called collectors. <\/span>But what about the digital word. <\/span>I have a friend (btw he is almost 70 year <\/span>old). <\/span>He discovered bit torrent and how you download music and videos for the net for free (pirate). <\/span>He has been building up a vast library of films and feeling hard disk after hard disk with them. <\/span>Would he be called a collector of films?<\/font> <\/font>At the same show where my photos are being shown is an Israeli performance arts named Sigalit Landau. <\/span>Her work is recorded and sold on DVD. <\/span>I loved this work<\/a> which I saw briefly at a lecture at the opening. <\/span>So I looked it up and it is sold as an addition of nine. <\/span>That means there are only nine DVD\u2019s. <\/span>Obviously, if you make nine you can make nine hundred or nine thousand. <\/span> <\/span>It makes some sense that there might be a limit on the productions of various visual art works that actually have a physical component. <\/span>For instance, \u201cThe Flood\u201d is a very big piece and hard and expensive to reproduce. <\/span>But limiting the production of a DVD is totally artificial. <\/span>The buyer is paying for scarcity. <\/span>The buyer is paying so that someone else cannot have the work. <\/span>I wonder how long this business model will last. <\/span>Yes, Sigalit needs to earn money or her work but what will keep someone from ripping the DVD and putting it up on the Net. <\/span>So will Sigalit who often performs in the nude have to look or advertising as away to earn money. <\/span>Will we see her up on YouTube with an add across her naked body?<\/font> <\/font>What will be the business model or art when art is digital? And what will happen to the collectors<\/font><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

About 30 years ago, I bought my first painting. As a musician (sort of) I was always puzzled about visual art where one copy of a work exists or in the case of photos and prints, as small series. With music, the more people that have a copy of a work, the more successful one […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":607219,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_wpcom_ai_launchpad_first_post":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[536881,5426],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-about-life-in-the-last-third","category-new-media"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2v2x-26","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/twothirdsdone.com\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/twothirdsdone.com\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/twothirdsdone.com\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/twothirdsdone.com\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/607219"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/twothirdsdone.com\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=130"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/twothirdsdone.com\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/twothirdsdone.com\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/twothirdsdone.com\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/twothirdsdone.com\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}