Compared with ordinary luxury, there are three biggest properties of art:
The first characteristic is that the artwork has an indelible nature. Even if there is a damaged artwork, it is still the original after the restoration. Paintings and calligraphy that are not worth restoring are not works of art. A true work of art is worth spending a lot of time and money to protect and restore.
The second characteristic is that the artwork has a nature that does not depreciate. Art does not depreciate over time, but becomes more valuable the longer it is used. Everything that can be devalued is a line painting that has a short validity period, and it is not a real work of art. Once a famous calligrapher depreciates, it means that he has been eliminated by history, and his calligraphy and painting are only short-lived paintings, not works of art.
The third characteristic is that the artwork has the only characteristic of history. That is, from ancient times to the present, there is only one thing in the world. Those that can be reproduced in large quantities are not works of art. Those art derivatives that can be copied in large quantities, the day they are bought, are the highest price, and in the end they are worthless.
Leng Jun's works
These properties of art are somewhat similar to land, because the earth will not shrink, so the commodity of land will not shrink, it is also indelible, and the land will not depreciate due to the use of time, but will become more and more valuable.
Since ancient times, the only thing that does not depreciate is art, and art is the only commodity in the world that does not depreciate, and art not only never depreciates, but also becomes more and more expensive. Art is one of the most expensive commodities of mankind. Over the past 30 years, the S&P 500 has grown by 930%, and the top 2% of the pyramid has returned 1560% on art, far outperforming the return on art investment in the stock market.
Between 2005 and 2008, prices of high-end modern and contemporary art soared by 426%, while prices of mid-range modern and contemporary art soared by 339%. During the same period, the return on investment in modern and contemporary art was much higher than that of stocks in the same period. Since the 80s, the price of modern and contemporary art has soared, Warhol's price has soared 481 times, Rothko's price has soared 40 times, and the price of modern and contemporary art at the top 10% of the market has increased 21 times. The trading price of art continues to break new records, with Leonardo da Vinci's oil paintings selling for 3 billion and Qi Baishi's Chinese paintings selling for 900 million. The price of art has far exceeded the limits of personal financial resources, so the art market goes against the usual rules of the commodity market and does not deviate from the usual economic principles.
Why is art so expensive? And it's getting more expensive? If you look at the present moment and look around, you may not find the reason. But you only have to look back and find out why.
What is the most expensive thing in human history? That's the pyramid. Each pyramid took decades and effort to build. What is a pyramid? The pyramid is a huge mausoleum, the largest mausoleum in human society, and the once most sublime spiritual totem of mankind. The pyramid is the rich human being, out of the greed and fear of life and death, after death to the endless desire for life, the cost of building the pyramid far exceeded the wealth limit of human beings at that time.
The poor are desperately buying houses, the middle class is buying stocks indiscriminately, the rich are crazy to buy paintings, why art is so expensive, even almost more expensive than the pyramid, maybe you already understand. The price of art has been so high that it far exceeds the maximum limit that personal wealth can afford. Because the artwork is a spiritual mausoleum built by the great wealth of mankind out of greed and fear of life and death, and a material totem with a shimmering halo of great wealth.
The poor, the middle class and the rich, these three classes of people, their life values are very different. The poor desperately buy houses, that is to enjoy the happiness of the world while alive. The middle class buys stocks and funds indiscriminately in order to increase their assets. The rich frantically buy calligraphy and painting artworks, which are for the glory after death.
Buy a house for 10 years, buy a painting rich for 3 generations, you raise a painting for ten years, paint for three generations. Your purchase of a house goes up 10 times, and people's buying of paintings goes up 1,000 times. In fact, it is common to earn 100 times more by buying paintings. It is also easy to earn 1000 times, and it is not difficult to earn 10000 times. No matter how expensive the painting you buy, in the end there will be a takeover man, who is those dying rich people who will do whatever it takes to buy the art in your hand as a spiritual monument to him.
The immortal character of the artwork is the greed for life after death. Human fear of death transcends all human emotions and desires, and also transcends human desire to control material wealth. In the face of the fear of death, all material possessions are like dung. Therefore, some of the rich and wealthy of mankind, out of fear of death, devoted their personal resources to buy sky-high art and built a mutant mausoleum for themselves that thousands of people admired before their death, which is a desire to continue to covet life after death, in order to continue to brush the glorious sense of existence after death.
For the rich, wealthy merchants, wealth is nothing in the face of the fear of death and the lust for life. Extremely rich businessmen have to do something before they die, so that they can brush their sense of existence for a long time after death. The very rich merchants were looking for some items with immortal characteristics, so they found works of art, which had immortal characteristics. The immortal nature of artworks makes artworks the most important funerary objects of human wealthy merchants, and one of the most important inheritance methods of human artworks is from mausoleums.
The inheritance of the immortal will, which continues to brush the sense of existence after death. All human religions have the same ultimate goal, that is, to create an immortal deity, so that believers believe in the immortality of the soul, so as to eliminate the fear of death among believers. But birth, old age, illness and death are the fate of human beings, and no one can achieve immortality, and the same is true of the extremely rich businessman. In the face of the fate of inevitable death, the only thing that the extremely rich businessman Jia can do is to leave an immortal material and spiritual mark after his death, and in the long river of history, he can continue to brush the sense of spiritual existence. For some great people with genius and creativity, in order to achieve a long-term sense of existence after death, it is necessary to make great creations to realize the continuous inheritance of personal will in human civilization.
The best carrier of personal will inheritance is words and artworks, such as architecture, fine arts, literature, music, etc. In human civilization, artworks are the only material carriers with immortal characteristics that can inherit the immortal spiritual will. Therefore, aging and extremely wealthy businessmen will eventually put their wealth and spirit on art to inherit their immortal will.
The inheritance of the leader's will is the greed for life. And those ordinary human beings who are not creative can only put their craving for life on the group leader, and even deify the group leader, or shape some virtual group leaders, in order to alleviate the fear of death under the halo of the group leader and find the instinct to continue life under the aura of the group leader. This has created the most important inheritance of human civilization: the inheritance of the will of leaders. The development of human history proves that the transmission of the will of leaders is the best way to eliminate the fear of death among ordinary humans.
The inheritance of the will of leaders is mainly the community civilization and norms established around the worship of gods and the deification of leaders, such as religious regulations, tribal family laws, clan systems, industry norms, etc. Film and television star worship, industry leader shaping, and group leader deification are the products of the inheritance of the will of human leaders. These are the spiritual needs of ordinary human beings. As long as science has not advanced to the point where ordinary people can live forever, religion will continue to exist. As long as science has not advanced to the extent that it can immortalize the rich, as long as the rich still have money, the price of art will continue to soar.
The artwork carries the will of the leader and is the best spiritual funerary object. Extremely wealthy businessmen are generally human beings who have super group organization ability, but lack extraordinary personal creative ability. Therefore, the extremely rich merchants are not capable of inheriting their spiritual will. Extremely rich merchants can only inherit their own spiritual will by pinning their spiritual will on items with the will of the leader.
Therefore, the very rich merchants will spend all their wealth to buy art, just to pin their spiritual will on the art with the will of the leader. In the group of super-rich businessmen, sky-high art carries a strong leadership will. The extremely rich merchants chose sky-high art to build their own mutant spiritual tombs to alleviate the fear of death, in order to continue to brush the glorious sense of existence after death. As the personal wealth of the super-rich merchants soared, the price of sky-high works of art with the will of powerful leaders soared. Sought after by wealthy merchants, art prices soared to the pyramid, approaching the limits of personal wealth. Some extremely wealthy merchants in ancient times even directly used a large number of exquisite works of art as personal funeral objects to place their incomparable covetousness for life.
The habit of collecting will make you richer. Collecting can obtain a high social status, in addition to burning money to brush the sense of existence, you can also get a high profiteering return, appreciation is a hundred times is commonplace, appreciation thousands of times is not difficult. But many people mistakenly think that I have money, I will collect, in fact, developing the habit of collecting, is likely to make you richer, maybe there is an opportunity to get rich. In every era, the works of hundreds of artists have skyrocketed tens to hundreds of times in a short period of time, which is a historical law. For example, in the years from 2003 to 2007, the price of works by thousands of artists in China skyrocketed dozens to hundreds of times.
Over the years, many people who have immersed themselves in collecting have become rich, and countless people have become extremely rich by collecting in history. Qi Baishi's paintings, which could be bought for tens of yuan in the 70s, can now be sold for hundreds of millions of yuan, a 10 million times increase. The well-known Rockefeller family is the world's first art collector, and the volume of art collection is even richer, reaching hundreds of billions of huge wealth. The Rockefeller family only took 1% of the art collection out for auction and sold it for 5 billion, how much money do you say the Rockefeller family's art collection has? In 2007, David Rockefeller sold his collection of Rothko White Center (Yellow, Pink, and Lavender on Rose) for $500 million at Sotheby's New York, which Rothko created in 1950. David Rockefeller bought this Rothko work for 70,000 yuan, which appreciated by 7,000 times.
The American financial magnate Morgan is one of the world's greatest collectors, and after Morgan's death, his collection of 1,500 pieces of Chinese porcelain was bought by Rockefeller II for $1 million. Now this batch of porcelain, any piece can be sold for tens of millions of yuan. In 2013, the sensational national treasure bronze "Dish Fang" returned to the event, this "Dish Fang" is one of the Rockefeller family collections, worth tens of millions.
Winchin Gallery privately negotiates with the original works of top international artists (if the client has the needs of other specific artists, we will use overseas art resources to find it for you):
Pablo Picasso, Andy. Warhol, Vincent. Van Gogh Vincent Gogh, Henry. Matisse Henri Matisse, Frida Kahlo F.KAHLO, Gerhard Richter G. Richter, Wilhelm Adolf Bouguereau W A Bouguereau, Marc Chagall M. Chagall, Claude Monet C.Monet, Rembrandt Hallmansson van Rein, Guercino Guercino, Mattia Preti, U. Boccioni, Lucio Fontana L.Fontana, Francis Bacon F. Bacon, Jean-Michel. J. M. Basquiat, Rafael Sansi Raffaello, A. Canaletto, Paul Veronese, Pierre. August. Renoir P.A. Renoir, Paul. Cézanne P. Cezanne, Rennie Magritte R. Magritte, El Salvador. Dalí S. Dali, Amedeo. Modigliani A. Modigliani, Hieronymus Bosch H. Bosch, Francisco. Goya F.Goya, Peter. Paul. Rubens P.P. Rubens, Tintoretto Tintoretto, François Boucher F. Boucher, Antoine Van Dyck, Francisco de Subbaran F. Zurbaran, Yayoi Kusama, Kaws, Yoshitomo Nara, Zao Wou-Ki and others