WANTED: Someone to restore Arteri and give it 2nd life. Interested? Email: mail.sharonchin.com
Smaug the Magnificent sleeping on his hoard. A illustration by JRR Tolkien for his book The Hobbit. (Hey, here’s a of bit geekery: This painting wasn’t used in the original impression of The Hobbit, 1937, which included no coloured illustrations, but appeared in the second English impression of the same year and in the first American edition, 1938. The caption was ”O Smaug the Chiefest and Greatest of Calamities’)
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There’s no doubt that art collectors play a significant role in the Malaysian art scene. Dedicated collectors are a small but passionate group of people. Their buying power feeds the commercial gallery system, and is a source of real income for artists, especially painters and sculptors
Besides spending money on art, they also invest alot of time in getting to know artists and gallery owners. Chances are that a really serious art collector attends more art openings than the three ARTERI editors combined! My casual conversations with collectors have convinced me that, alongside art objects, they are owners of huge ammounts of information, much of it amassed firsthand through direct contact with the artists they support.
Institutions like Balai Seni Lukis and Galeri Petronas have policies (and budgets) to acquire works of art. However, lack of consistency, transparency and let’s be honest, competency, means that many important artworks are in private collections.
All said, art collectors continue to lag behind in one aspect – progressiveness. Under the forward-thinking directorship of Hasnul J Saidon, Muzium & Galeri Tuanku Fauziah at Universiti Sains Malaysia has recently started to acquire experimental and new media art, works that don’t subscribe to the overwhelming status quo of art as commodity objects.
In this BFM 89.9 podcast, local collector Bingley Sim speaks candidly to Shazmin Shamsuddin about why and how he collects art. I wish interviewers would do a little more research so they could have better, in-depth conversations. Many of Shazmin Shamsuddin’s questions seem shallow (‘when did you buy your first art piece?) and merry-go-round (how do you know what to buy?), but it’s an enlightening listen just the same, so stick with it! The highlight is when Bingley describes buying art as ‘quite a gentleman’s game’, and reveals that there is an informal club amongst a group of collectors who share knowledge and basically just hang out together!
Click on the icon below to play. You can also listen directly or download the podcast here.
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my precioussssss
All said, art collectors continue to lag behind in one aspect – progressiveness.
What is the reason that collectors are not progressive enough in their taste? Do they come into art with a biased view or understanding of what contemporary art is? Are gallerists failing to help mould collections that is representative of the progressiveness of the Malaysian contemporary art scene? Or are collectors themselves resistant to newer forms and mediums because there is as yet a guarantee in terms of value appreciation?
Collecting is a capitalist’s highest raison d’etre, or perhaps an evolutionary adaptation similar to the bower bird…
It is not in the nature for collections(standing still) to be progressive (moving forward): imagine things piling up higher and higher, becoming a formidable mountain of stuff, the good collector will make sure that the best are always kept in easy reach and full view of others, while his costly mistakes are hidden in the bottom. Bad collectors simply
Progress is best expected from those who travel light and with nothing to loose in the current regime.
I think for a collector to be progressive, he has to understand art history, the art scene where he is currently residing and the trend of the global contemporary art. A collector must be sensitive to all those aspects and consider his collection not for current times but its value in the future. Most collectors I have met and talked too comes from diverse backgrounds as law, business or architecture/design. I find that collectors who are either designers or architects tend to be more progressive in their search for art pieces as they are aware of visual history probably from art school thus are able to spot out imitations of ideas or trite works from original thought provoking works and well-excuted works. Just wondering, if these new armies of ill-informed collectors swarm the galleries and start to consume pieces without actually analysing or thinking when they buy, what would happen to the scene in the future????