FRES Trust Through The Rockefeller Auction
Value of Art In Blockchain Age
Provenance & Promotion
“Collectors and dealers generally agreed that the provenance of the prominent couple, together with Christie’s savvy marketing campaign (“Live Like a Rockefeller”), amounted to a magical alchemy of sorts that resulted in strong sales across the board.”
— New York Times, May 11, 2018
The Rockefeller collection culminated at $833 million in total, the new high for a private collection.
Surprises come from not only the rare Picassos and Matisses, but the unimpressive households. The very same piece that can be bought on eBay at a few hundred went a hundred times more.
Most of us didn’t expect that the Rockefeller estate would bring a powder compacter or a cufflink to auction; yet what surprised us more is that a these personal objects were sold at tens of thousands each.
During the marathon auction at Christie’s, the room keeps hearing about a bidder from Texas, from London, from Hongkong, from Zurich, and any other place you could possibly imagine of.
Even Christie’s did not fully anticipate such a massive rocketing. An averaging realized price was about five times above the estimate range.
Back in 1903, Alois Riegl proposed the value of art as in six categories: age value, historical value, deliberate commemorative value, use value, newness value, relative art value. The model speaks little about the current art market. What essentially affects the market right now might be some other values of our time.
The experiential value backs for museum acquisitions of some hardly conservable installations; the rseproducible value denotes how the work will catch the public attention through a variety of mediums; the collectible value evokes an immediate surroundings of transportation, storage, insurance, and importantly, the resell.
What is the essential value of this art collection? What magic do the Rockefellers and Christie’s co-orchestrate?
It’s all about Provenance. The name of Rockefeller does not guarantee a rare quality for each object; instead, it holds up to an aura of market acceptance.
This is the major reason why those normally accessible collectibles unexceptionally soared to a Rockefeller price in this auction.
Not everyone can entitle a Rockefeller to his or her collection. So what is the alchemy behind a Basquiat bought for $15,000 but now estimated to reap $30 million later in May?
Another phenomenal auction star in the recent years is the Chinese-French painter Zao Wou-Ki. Zao moved to Paris in 1947 and rose to fame with his abstract gestural paintings. His art went through a series of radical changes but was always admired for its subtitle colors and landscape-evoking lines. Collectors from New York, London, and Paris began to recognize his work in the 1960s but did not promote his work with much effort.
Zao’s works remained relatively affordable till the early 1980s despite his public recognition in France, but later witnessed a radical surge along with the awakening of Chinese collectors. Quoting Artprice on Zao’s vital market at the turning point of the 2000s:
The artist became a safe investment sought after on both sides of the globe. His prices soared, posting a 620% increase over the decade (2003–2013) and culminating in four new records at the end of 2013.
After Zao’s death at the age of 91, his market was galvanized from the $5,000 canvases in the 1980s to at least 35 auction results above a million dollar in the year of 2013.
Why do you need FRES Trust
If you’re still unclear about the how a history of ownership adds weight to an artwork’s value, FRES Trust can better explain the phenomenon.
FRES Trust speaks for the Gestalt. One poorly-made chair from the Rockefeller family might be barely noticed among a group of masterpieces from notable names, but everything changes when they come in bulk.
Every Louis IX chair, every pair of Paris porcelain vases, and every set of Venetian tableware from the Rockefeller collection, adds up to one another.
FRES Trust, by recording a chain of ownership and relating artworks to every player in the market, projects the future.
FRES Trust speaks for the market potential of a work of art. Instead of calculating an obscure index that can never eliminate arbitrariness and limitation, it introduces a direct and simple indicator.
With FRES Trust, you don’t need to have a million-dollar Modigliani to create another whopping record at $313.8 million.
A lesser-known artist can become a supernova within months, as long as the decentralized community believe in his or her future.
FRES Trust speaks for everyone. As how academic standards help to propel a cross-cultural communication, regardless of what language each scholar employs, FRES Trust creates a common language for all the different roles involved in a market.
Artists, curators, collectors, galleries, museums, and art fairs can all adopt this language to leave behind their radically different vocabulary.
How does FRES Trust work
You can take FRES trust as a catalyst, something accelerates the market reaction while itself being intact and recyclable.
The value of art is usually considered in so many nuanced dimensions that no one so far, and probably in the foreseeable future, can propose a perfect model to understand an artist’s market and predict its trends. The “upon-request” prices and “likely” provenance further intimidate unexperienced collectors and investors.
To expand the market and intrinsically benefit the art ecosystem, FRES Trust challenges the centralized power of pricing and promotion of in the market, opening up the access to gathering first-hand information and participating in the lucrative art investment.
Artists can invest in their own future and promote valuable works together with their supporters.
Importantly, the network of FRES Trust does not merely embrace newcomers and deplete the current stakeholders.
Art is never a zero-sum game.
Galleries and collectors are starting to be frustrated by the archaic models. The Frieze art fair earlier this month is a good example.
Some would argue that the hustling art fairs are still a spectacular event that attracts numerous collectors, but this year collectors might say no. And A/C is a big problem.
“Probably millions of dollars were lost because Frieze didn’t want to spend an additional few thousand to turn the AC on a few hours earlier,” one dealer complained to the artnet reporter.
You see how the fragile model now is subject any minor error. That’s the problem with centralization, with physical limitations, and with people wanting a change but simply don’t know how.
So galleries, here’s the plan. You can put your artist at the center of the world, simply by placing more trust value on him or her, without necessarily hurting or limiting others. You’re not labeling them with a price tag. It’s about the trust you have on them, and you can always have more trust.You can save 95% of your time spent in talking about the market potential of an artist while worrying about talking too much on the market side.
FRES Trust also serves collectors, those who have had enough of the flamboyantly confounding work descriptions. Your five-year-old daughter can discern the value of a work with the help of FRES Trust. You can prove your devotion to and an eye for the art with the least effort possible through a wallet address.
Ultimately, art lovers from whatever backgrounds, from savvy collectors to the community newcomers, are equally welcomed.
The number marked as FRES Trust on each work indicates its acceptance on the market, to save you the trouble of grappling through all the complex factors and harrowing analysis.
In short, while the FRES Trust incorporates and reflects the various factors considered by today’s art world in considering the artistic and market value inherent in works of art, it is primarily manifested as collectors’ judgement of artwork’s current value, and it also indicates every expectation they anchor for the work’s future performance in the art market.
In November last year, an artnet article was devoted to delineating how Leonardo’s ‘Salvator Mundi’ Went From £45 to $450 Million in 59 Years. Some people love the thrill of this market; some people despise it. The question is, do you want to be a part of it?
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