Works by artists such as Pieter Brueghel the Younger still appear on the market, usually in excess of RM10 million. Courtesy of Christie's.
Works by artists such as Pieter Brueghel the Younger still appear on the market, usually in excess of RM10 million. Courtesy of Christie's.

AT this time of year, there are a lot of Old Master paintings on view. The Christmas-card market would be finished without them. There is, of course, more to the genre than Nativity scenes. There's everything from landscapes to portraits and much more. The problem is that they are, as the name suggests, old. Collectors with money would prefer something newer.

The market share of the Old Masters keeps decreasing while contemporary art grows in all, but the worst recessions. Sometimes not even new is good enough; it has to be sufficiently innovative that most of the world doesn't understand it at all.

NFTs (non-fungible tokens) are the latest manifestation of desperation to be at the cutting edge of the contemporary. In comparison, those old oil-on-canvas efforts are like cave paintings. Except they haven't acquired the age of a cave painting, which would give them plenty of cachet, but most are safely attached to cave walls and inappropriate for auction rooms.

To be very new or very old is desirable. To be an Old Master suggests stuffy old men's clubs and connoisseurship, and an absence of all the fun elements of contemporary art. At the top end of the market, there is still room for show-off acquisitions. What better example than the infamous Leonardo da Vinci's Salvator Mundi?

Probably bought by the Saudi Crown Prince for about RM2 billion in 2017, its entire value lay in being a buyable Leonardo da Vinci and not hoarded forever by a museum. This isn't art collecting, it's buying up the A-list items of human history.

The same goes for a sketch that sold last year for almost RM50 million. Once again it was by Leonardo da Vinci. This time, instead of being a largish oil painting, it was a 7cm x 7cm sketch of a barely visible bear.

BENCHMARKS OF GOOD TASTE

 A Dutch lady and gentleman by van Dyck can cost more than RM30 million. Courtesy of Sotheby's.
A Dutch lady and gentleman by van Dyck can cost more than RM30 million. Courtesy of Sotheby's.

Unless it's Leonardo, you can be sure that the highest prices paid at auction will be for 20th century works. What happened to those benchmarks of good taste that prevailed for so long?

The Old Masters (basically anything pre-19th century) have been on the wane for a long time. The really big stars still attract a lot of attention, but all those other unmemorable Dutch and Italian names are being forgotten. Although there's still plenty of recognition for Rembrandt, Rubens, Van Dyck and others, any artist who isn't in the handbooks of art history will not fare so well.

 A couple of 17th-century Amsterdam burghers will cost very much less when the artist is unknown. Courtesy of Christie's.
A couple of 17th-century Amsterdam burghers will cost very much less when the artist is unknown. Courtesy of Christie's.

It seems that there are just too many B-listers on the market, with too few buyers. One explanation for the second part of the equation is the importance of Asia. Obscure Biblical figures or bowls of fruit with metaphysical meaning exert a decreasing magnetism on Western buyers.

It's even worse for Asian buyers, whose interest in the Three Wise Men might be limited to the possibility that they came from Iran. What is happening these days would have been unthinkable 20 years ago.

Not only is it East Asian buyers dictating the prices in many genres of art; there are Chinese artists in the top-10 lists. Well, one at least: Qi Baishi's Twelve Landscape Screens fetched around half a billion ringgit in 2017.

The East Asian collectors, who can appreciate Picasso more than Gillis d'Hondecoeter, will no doubt be pleased that the Spanish master of high prices was influenced by Qi Baishi. There wasn't much influence going in either direction during the days of the Old Masters. One of the few that can be detected is Rembrandt's enthusiasm for copying what he had seen of paintings by India's preeminent Muslim dynasty, the Mughals.

ART AS PROPERTIES

 This anonymous Florentine painting circa 1500 fetched a high price at Christie's, with bidders no doubt hoping it was really by a big name such as Botticelli. Courtesy of Christie's.
This anonymous Florentine painting circa 1500 fetched a high price at Christie's, with bidders no doubt hoping it was really by a big name such as Botticelli. Courtesy of Christie's.

Ultimately, it's not influences that collectors are looking for. The art market has been transformed into an investment vehicle of such importance, making a profit has become more important than having something pretty — or at least a conversation piece — hanging on your wall.

"Flipping" art purchases has become as popular with art as properties. Contemporary is better for this. Artists with less of a track record have more volatile prices. Everything is down to marketing, which the big auction houses do with unparalleled slickness when the occasion demands.

Contemporary works also come with greater opportunities for fancy social events. These get even fancier if a collector of modern/contemporary art can get themselves onto the board of a suitable museum. The best parties can be accompanied by serious networking opportunities.

 Cute but anonymous Italian 18th-century paintings of the natural world can be had for less than RM50,000 — for a pair.
Cute but anonymous Italian 18th-century paintings of the natural world can be had for less than RM50,000 — for a pair.

The problem with Old Masters, which are not at the top of the first division, is that there are too many of them. At the same time, there are too few collectors. High prices are often paid by opportunists who are aware of those TV shows that rarely appear in Malaysia.

These programmes are all about undiscovered masterpieces. The jackpot might be struck with a baseball card that's worth millions, procured from a cigarette packet, or it might be a Titian painting hiding under centuries of grime.

The latter can raise the stakes by more than a few million. If buyers can convince others later that a "school of" whichever Old Master is truly "by the hand of" that Old Master, the profit margin is as great as people-smuggling and much more socially acceptable.

Apart from the element of serendipity and the virtuosity of Old Masters, there is one other benefit. The droit de suite system that means buyers have to give living artists and their heirs a share of the resale price does not apply to artists who died centuries ago. As it doesn't operate in Malaysia anyway, it's not much of an advantage really.

Follow Lucien de Guise at Instagram @crossxcultural.