With just over two weeks to go until the seductive frenzy of Art Basel Miami Beach, I’m finalizing presentations that I am preparing to deliver to audiences in South Florida next week on art collecting and the contemporary art market.

As effortlessly as I manage to engage with art on a daily basis, providing a survey of my professional world in an hour or less is no easy task. There is just too much I could say about art, after all!

Close-up photograph of a sculpture by superstar contemporary artist Jeffrey Gibson (b. 1973), featuring his signature use of colorful beads and language, on view in the American pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2024 until late November, 2024.

(Credit for this photo goes to my NYC-based colleague Clanci Jo Conover of Clanci Jo Fine Art Services, who last week over drinks in New York City very meaningfully shared her personal impressions of encountering the Biennale in the wake of the historic 2024 U.S. Presidential Election.)

Yet for those not attending my presentations this week, allow me to provide three criteria for the benefit of anyone willing to seriously consider delving into art collecting that comprise Charting Transcendence’s “official” definition of an art advisor:

A dedicated professional with the training, capacity and knowledge to hold multiple perspectives on an ecosystemic marketplace of highly diffuse, heterogenous objects created for their own sake, viewed subjectively, reflecting a variety of choice in how meaning is made in the world.
A service provider who guides and consults for the benefit of the client while maintaining a broad view of the world of contemporary art from the top-down to the bottom-up; from the inside-out and outside-in.
A creator of consciousness who connects people with art, experience, and a wider world of wonder and awe.

Installation view of an exhibition of 25 photographs by Florida’s top contemporary fine art photographer Anastasia Samoylova (b. 1984), arranged by Charting Transcendence, at The Moore Club in Miami’s Design District, for a nonprofit fundraising event on November 7, 2024. Samoylova’s work captures the complexities of Florida as a contradictory place on the front lines of the culture wars and climate change.

At this point, our country and our planet are evolving more rapidly and consequentially than ever before.

Some art does a really good job of attuning us to the “twists and turns” that await our planet — and humanity — while reflecting back important truths about our lives today.

A lot of it, however, won’t get us there. Whether it’s “good” or not, galleries are awash in art that is, at worst, terrible, and at best “kitsch,” although kitsch is an important concept to understand in contemporary art.

In further preview of my presentations, allow me to share some summarized points on the art market and what constitutes “good” art:

Most art created has effectively zero market value;
Art can be used to decorate; but decoration ≠ art;
Most galleries sell art that isn’t very good;
Most art isn’t “good,” but the best art is what YOU like;
Good art is about ideas and keeps generating them.

Take it or leave it, these points lay the groundwork for your own personal journey into art and what I call “creating consciousness.”

I am fortunate to be passionate about my work, the ideas I encounter, the many things I am learning, as well as the relationships I am building.

One thing I will underscore, furthermore, for those of you who have been reading my twice-monthly newsletters for over a year now: everything that I “showcase” in this newsletter is deliberate, “important” (at least within context), and curated for a broader audience of both art aficionados and novices.

Therefore, my unabashed sales pitch for this week goes: if you’ve ever been curious as to what it’s like to really dive into a world of beauty and fascinating ideas, let’s search for art together!

Please join Charting Transcendence anytime remotely, by phone, or in New York, Miami, Los Angeles, Chicago, Texas, Washington, D.C., or any one of the other numerous cultural destinations where I regularly hunt for great art.

Primary Market Overview: Peak Fall Art Season in New York City Galleries

Mega-gallery Hauser & Wirth’s location on W 22nd St. in Chelsea is showing photographs by Annie Leibovitz (b. 1949), curated by the veteran celebrity photographer herself.

To cover the New York City art scene institutionally and commercially in a single visit is a challenge that rewards one with a broader understanding of how the “art world” operates.

Having just wrapped up my last of eight trips I made in 2024 to New York City, I now routinely browse as many as three dozen galleries a day, covering ten to twelve miles or more on foot, from Midtown to Chelsea to Tribeca and all over the Upper and Lower East Sides.

The ability to simply tolerate extreme levels of visual stimulation while selecting from hundreds of options and navigating a wish-list of exposure to multiple ideas is a skill that I take great pride in.

On this visit, as I typically do, I saw multiple examples of art being sold in different contexts and formats. I could see what was trending, what was selling, even as the larger art world focused on glitzy auction previews at the major auction houses — Sotheby’s, Christie’s, and Phillips.

For everything one looks at, there opportunity for choice and discernment in how one takes it all in and what one defines as “good.” This is an individual choice left up to each collector.

No one can ever see “all the art” and, and as much as I prioritize using every available moment of the day to look at art, I do not even come close to trying.

Cristina BanBan (b. 1987) is a figurative Spanish painter who gesturally explores the female form in a neoclassical style. Her work is collected by Miami museums as well as the Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid. Her current show at Skarstedt on the Upper East Side places is outstanding.

220 tons is the total weight of these dozen or so Corten steel sculptures by the late Richard Serra (1938-2024) at David Zwirner in Chelsea. Just walking along side them can provoke a visceral reaction for irrationally thinking that one might accidentally topple over (although it would probably take a dump truck running into it to do so).

Matthew Marks Gallery in Chelsea is showing new sculptural work by Simone Leigh (b. 1968) through December 21. Leigh’s work is extremely important, as she represented the U.S. at the Venice Biennale in 2022.

For decades Chakaia Booker (b. 1953) has transformed discarded tires into complex, sensual sculptures. Her show in the prototypically cozy Upper East Side gallery of David Nolan predictably smells like a childhood tire swing.

It’s worth noting that, by buying art on the primary market — that is, from galleries or artists’ studios — you are supporting artists directly and building community and connections in an ecosystem that helps them to thrive. Collectors reap rewards in terms of social capital and prestige, especially when it is possible to catch emerging artists on an upward trajectory.

Furthermore, with practice and luck, some emerging artists whose work you purchase directly from artists or through the galleries representing them may end up increasing in value.

On the flip side, gallery markups and prices are often quite high (there are reasons for this — galleries have massive overhead costs, for one, and promoting a sense of scarcity of quality artwork is another), and collectors may risk overpaying if they do not pay close attention to the market and its trends.

What’s more, most galleries do not consistently sell the kind of quality works that will amount to much years from now, and most works they are likely to never appreciate in value.

That being said, art galleries are still the most important players in connecting collectors with important new work so that artists and institutions thrive today and into the future.

Gagosian’s smallest NYC gallery space at Park Avenue at E. 75th St. just opened a show of gorgeous colorful abstract paintings by veteran German contemporary painter Katharina Grosse (b. 1961).

Highly in demand in 2024 are paintings like these by newly-minted superstars of the art world, such as Nigerian-British Jadé Fadojutimi (b. 1993), whose auction records have recently broken into the million-dollar range. Her current show at Gagosian on W 21st St. in Chelsea gives one a good sense for what’s “hot” in painting at the moment.

The Gibraltar Projects is a museum-quality show at David Zwirner by Belgian artist Francis Alÿs (b. 1959), which includes documentation of an action he orchestrated in 1997 called Don't Cross the Bridge Before You Get to the River, whereby he attempted to conceptually span Europe and Africa by having children launch lines of toy sailboats from either side of the Straits of Gibraltar.

Lincoln Glenn Gallery has a small space in Chelsea that features high-quality postwar and modern artworks by accomplished artists who have tended to be overlooked. Bandoline III (1978) by Sherron Francis (b. 1940) turned out to be a pleasant discovery and possibly suitable for clients of Charting Transcendence at a reasonable price.

On the Secondary Art Market: Fall Auction Previews in NYC

A luscious, larger than life Pumpkin (2022) sculpture by Yayoi Kusama will be auctioned off at Christie’s New York on November 21, 2024. Estimate: $6M-$8M.

For those looking to purchase art, it’s worth considering the various pros and cons of buying off the so-called “primary market” versus the secondary market.

Although there is overlap between the two, artists’ studios and galleries generally comprise the primary market while auction houses and dealers form the bulk of the secondary market.

On the one hand, auction houses are a great place to shop due to their price transparency. Artworks that surface there almost by definition have demonstrated an ability to retain value, providing potential for investment and eventual resale.

The best auction houses (namely Christie’s, Sotheby’s and Phillips) generally are a one-stop shop for collecting across the board and can be as tremendous a resource for learning about art as the best museums — not to mention that they cycle a wide variety of art through their doors on a regular basis.

Some less attractive features of auction houses include their high premiums and fees, which vary and are often very difficult to estimate in advance; the competition that one faces for acquiring the most desirable lots; and a high degree of volatility and speculation.

Furthermore, buying work from an auction house provides little-to-no benefit to or point of connection with living artists, who typically do not see any of the revenues from resale of their works. Furthermore, just because something appears at a reputable auction house does not guarantee the absence of issues regarding the artwork’s quality or provenance.

Maurizio Cattelan's Comedian (2019) is a conceptual artwork that first made waves at Art Basel Miami Beach 5 years ago when three editions of it sold for some $140k. One of these now heads to auction at Sotheby’s for an estimate of $1M-$1.5M. The work effectively consists of its own certificate of authenticity — the collector is presumed to provide his or her own banana and duct tape.

This 11-foot-long painting by Ed Ruscha (b. 1937), Georges' Flag (1999) goes up for auction at Sotheby’s on November 20. His end-of-life retrospective, NOW/THEN, was held this year at New York’s MoMA and later traveled to LACMA in Los Angeles.

Tschabalala Self (b. 1990) is a leading Black portraitist who typically sews fabric onto her canvases. This work, KLK (2017) is estimated by Sotheby’s to sell for between $150k and $200k.

The paintings of Hilary Pecis (b. 1979), known for her intimate domestic interiors, have been coming up at auction for some years now and are in high demand on both the primary and secondary markets. Sotheby’s estimates that this one, Clementine’s Bookshelf (2021) could fetch $500k or more when it sells.

Christie's, with its sprawling ground-floor showrooms in Midtown’s Rockefeller Center, generally features the most desirable multi-million dollar lots, including more work from the late Miami collector Rosa de la Cruz (1942-2024), who passed away early this year.

A little leaner and hipper than its primary competitor (and also the site of a speech that I gave back in 2019) Sotheby's on York Avenue between East 71st and East 72nd streets, presented an equally captivating lineup spanning from modern to contemporary. Its star lot of the season is Maurizio Cattelan’s conceptual artwork Comedian (2019) (a.k.a. a banana taped to the wall.)

Phillips, located on Park Avenue in Midtown and known for its emphasis on contemporary artwork, also presented a number of interesting lots, including two self-portraits by Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988).

No matter how much of Andy Warhol’s (1928-1987) output I’ve seen, it regularly surprises me to learn about parts of it I had no idea even existed. This diamond dust-laden screenprint of Trump Tower, New York Skyscrapers (1981) was created for a body of work that the future president was too “cheap” to actually purchase for the building’s lobby. It heads to auction at Phillips on November 19 with an estimate of $500k-$700k.

Jeff Koons (b. 1954) is an icon of late 20th and early 21st century American art, in part due to how he channels the spirit of the grandfather of contemporary art, Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968). One Koons’ most famous sculptures from his Equilibrium series, Two Ball Total Equilibrium Tank (1985) is also currently on view at Phillips NYC with an estimate of $4M-$6M.

This magnificent yet small (20” x 16”) Untitled (2017) painting by Matthew Wong (1984-2019) is a highlight of Phillips’ November 19 auction sale, not in the least due to the fact that the colors are magnificent and brushstrokes form many of Wong’s most intriguing visual motifs, such as trees, a lone figure, a dog, and a vagina-shaped canoe. Estimate: $1M-$1.5M.

Cristina de Miguel (b. 1987) is a Spanish painter based in New York whose work has attracted the eye of collections in the U.S., Europe and Asia. not in the least in part due to brushstrokes evoking Pollock, Picasso, and other hypermasculine masters. This lot, Procession VI (2021), is due up at Phillips New York this coming week with an estimate of $12k-$18k, although I wouldn’t be surprised if it sold for several times its high estimate.

Good Art is About Ideas… and Keeps Generating Them