Wise to Art

Some actors on the art market would like to reserve the term secondary market for a highly specific trade in prints. The term is however far too useful to be limited to such specific usage as its logical connotation, i.e. what is intuitively understood by the expression, is of general importance.

Here’s an excellent elaboration of a more generally accepted definition:

The primary art market refers to when an artwork comes to the market for the first time at a gallery or any other art exhibition. This is the time when the price for the artwork is established for the first time.

In technical terms, similar to the maker of a design product, a sail boat, or jewelry, the gallerist / dealer, in conjunction with the artist, establishes a selling price based on the cost of research and development / creation of the product. The age-old truism from the economic theory on “supply and demand” defines this pricing structure. When the demand grows for the works of a particular artist’s work, whether paintings, sculptures, photographs, or graphic prints, the value and the price of the art increases. Generally, speaking, the greater the demand, the higher the price the artwork would command on the primary market.

Once the artwork is purchased on the primary market and the purchaser, whether a collector, a business, a foundation or a dealer, decides to sell it, it enters the secondary market. For example, most artworks at an auction house form part of the secondary market, as the artwork has already been purchased once. In simpler terms, one would refer to the “secondary market” as the “used” or second-hand” market.

http://www.picassomio.com/art-appreciation/what-is-the-
difference-between-the-primary-and-secondary-art-market.html

In fact, Secondary market only means the sale of a work that is not coming directly from the artist.

Not dealing with the artist is an expedient way of not getting biased be his/hers personality or circumstances and to focus on the work of art itself. Artists are moreover always unequal in their production and often bad judges of their own work. In first instance, giving all one’s attention to the individual work and to that work’s precedent and aftermath, instead of to the maker’s person or ideas, is the far better bet for sound judgements on Art.

The secondary market implies that a certain time will have passed between the act of creation and the present proprietary transaction. This is of course not true in all instances but can be used as a convenient rule. The artificial hype that may have been created around the author at the moment of his introduction to the art world, or during his ascendance in the same or at his height, will in most cases have waned or stabilized and there is room for a more neutral and sober evaluation of the work itself. Only very few artists have the privilege of seeing their work entering the secondary market successfully during their own lifetime. And even so, this will of course in no way guarantee their immortality.

Though subject to the prevalent Zeitgeist, the secondary market is not so trendy and does not explore, to the same extent, the eventual momentary personal celebrity of an artist.

Here we are touching upon the old adage of ‘you need to be dead to become famous’. It is in fact very difficult to judge the creations of one’s own time and whatever we say today is most likely revised tomorrow.