I’ve always said the artworld has its fair share of unbalanced people, but it seems we may all be suffering from a chemical imbalance that causes “neophilia,” the syndrome Saatchi once self-diagnosed himself as having.  Based on neurological research in Japan:

It turns out some people may, in fact, be more genetically predisposed than others to wanting the newest toys, gadgets and fashions… it seems that genetic differences mean that people produce different variations of a mitochondrial enzyme called monoamine oxidase A. The researchers found that one form of this enzyme was “significantly associated with higher scores of novelty seeking.” In other words, people who produce that form of the enzyme are more likely to have novelty-seeking traits in their personality than others.

The artworld is full of dealers who love to talk to the press - I have the mobile numbers of roughly two dozen on my cell phone, many of them people I can call at 11pm for a killer quote when I’m on deadline. That said, among journalists it’s common knowledge that some dealers simply don’t talk to the press — Larry Gagosian and Jay Jopling are prime examples. You almost never see them quoted, and when you do the “quote” looks like something they signed-off-on rather than actually said.

Which is why I was surprised to see that Gagosian is doing a full-on public presentation next month. Well, it’s not public, per se, it’s in front of a room full of Wharton Business School students and alum. To wit:

Whenever Wednesday: Business of Art: Dealers and Collectors
wed oct 4 @ 5pm

“The art market is defying the laws of gravity. What went up isn’t coming down,” according to a gallery director in the 2006 ARTnews collectors issues. ICA Overseer and top 200 collector Glenn Fuhrman (W’87, WG’88) discusses the art market with dealer Larry Gagosian who Art Review magazine called “the world’s greatest art businessman.”

I’ve never heard of Gagosian doing this kind of thing before, but maybe one of you (or one of our readers) have. Then again, maybe its just a personal favor to Fuhrman (who is Michael Dell’s investment manager), or an opportunity to recruit Wharton finance types onto the gallery’s roster of collectors. After all, someone has to pay for the empire’s expansion.

Did you read the New Yorker piece last week on neuroeconomics i.e. the integration of neural-processes science into the study of economic decision making by individuals? I couldn’t help but think of the artworld when I read this section:

“When people make investments, they weigh the possible outcomes of their decisions and select a portfolio of stocks and bonds that offers the highest possible return at an acceptable level of risk. That is what mainstream economics says, anyway. In fact, people often have only a vague idea of the risks they face. … In one study, Camerer and several colleagues performed brain scans on a group of volunteers while they placed bets on whether the next card drawn from a deck would be red or black. In an initial set of trials, the players were told how many red cards and black cards were in the deck, so that they could calculate the probability of the next cards being a certain color. Then a second set of trials was held, in which the participants were told only the total number of cards in the deck.

The first scenario corresponds to the theoretical ideal: investors facing a set of known risks. The second setup was more like the real world: the players knew something about what might happen, but not very much. As the researchers expected, the players brains reacted to the two scenarios differently. With less information to go on, the players exhibited

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Greetings from Shanghai, where my party of journalists seem to be the guinea pigs for a new hotel here. Everything is new here, but then that’s the case all over Shanghai.

I came from the Singapore biennial and saw the Shanghai biennial yesterday. It’s an interesting contrast between the two. Singapore’s cultural scene is very much driven by funds from the state and local corporations (two sectors which in Singapore are functionally a single entity). The biennial was held in the former city hall courts and a military camp. We had an early-morning meeting with the National Arts Council leaders, who trumpeted their budget and exchange programs and showed us a slick video, talking about the arts using an ABC theory - “Art for Art’s Sake, Art for Business’s sake, Art for Community’s Sake.” Talking to locals, the reality is that most Singapore artists live on (often-generous) state grants. So it’s much like an extreme version of Holland in that sense - working the system is a key skill for artists, while galleries are minor players.

Except that as democracies go, Holland and Singapore could not be more different. Supposedly, Singaporean customs officials have the right to demand a drug test when you enter the country and you can get busted for Read More »