In 2003 ex Black Cap Adam Parore established an art finance company, which came “from the fact that when-ever Sally [Ridge] and I bought a painting we didn’t want to pay for it … Mr Parore saw art dealers struggling to make money and thought that if he put the money in, art dealers would get paid immediately.” Hooray!
Circa 2004 Mr Parore was seen skulking out the back door of a very flat Webb’s sale. He was later dished in the media for ‘dismantling’ a Bill Hammond painted umbrella so that it could be hung on the wall and appreciated in two dimensions. Enter the recession and seemingly the end of Adam’s Art Adventure. Sadly no one else in New Zealand has managed to pull off anything similar.
One of the intriguing things about the New Zealand art market is that it’s still relatively young. The better artists of this era will inevitably feature in future art history texts and related media and their artwork must appreciate over time as a result. Any dealer worth a fraction of his or her weight in art can place their better artists’ work with public institutions, secure features for those artists in magazines and so on. This is then a passport for future sales. So someone in New Zealand (with sufficient vulture-like tendencies) should be out there offering to finance clients into decent artwork, and lending against good artwork. Surely there is money to be made!
New York based Art Capital Group offers a product that works in a similar way to transactions (and I use that word loosely) undertaken by the likes of Cash Convertors and the Pawn Shop in New Zealand. Some would say tragically, many high profile artists and collectors have had to pawn their artworks during the last three years as a result of finding themselves financially stretched.
A classic case is the celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz who narrowly avoided bankruptcy recently after she bought back control of her photographs and homes following a renegotiation of a US$24 million loan from Art Capital Group. As well as generating what one would imagine to be a hell of a good profit, Art Capital's chief executive, also acknowledged that his company was pleased to "assist Ms Leibovitz to achieve financial stability and proud to have been of such value to her at this juncture in her life and career".
Bring back Adam.
Pictured: Obama Family Portrait by Annie Leibovitz (October 2009).
