aP – IHF and Deacon – a man of taste. It was a perk of my old job transporting art exhibitions to get to have a snoop around Richard Deacon’s studio. Finlay’s son Alec puts out some very good book works too,
In my art transport days I used to meet a lot of real proper addict art collectors. Real art buyers, in the sense of people who buy real art and who really buy art, are a rare breed.
There is something like 1.6 percent of the population who are the ‘type’ who wouldmight buy contemporary art, but they might just as likely be into audiophile hifi or thoroughbred horses or high couture, or even niche bike bling. People who are real collectors do it thoughlessly, regardless of their means or the practicalities.
I had to collect together all the work for a massive Surrealism exhibition once – examples from galleries and museums all over the country. But the vast majority of the show, and I mean about 90%, came from a wee house in the suburbs of Leeds. We’d sent a guy up the day before and he’d spent the whole day wrapping two truckloads of art, and when I arrived the next morning there was was another work hanging on every empty hook. He had this big painting in the the living room that was so big he’d had to cut notches out of the ceiling joists to fit it in.
I know another guy who has been collecting one artists work his whole life, he started buying when he was a student, spending a quarter of his years grant on a painting.
People who buy like that don’t do it because they have loads of money, or because they are investing, or because they want to show off. They do it because they can’t help themselves.