By Maria Bregman
Why the Art Market Still Needs the Masters
There is a certain kind of story that the modern art market loves to tell itself. It is a story of the new, the now, the next. It is a story written in the bright, and often fleeting, language of contemporary art, of NFTs, of a relentless, and often exhausting, pursuit of the future. And in this story, the Old Masters – that dusty, and slightly unfashionable, club of Europe’s pre-19th-century virtuosos – are often relegated to a supporting role. They are the revered, but slightly boring, grandparents at a party full of loud, and often obnoxious, teenagers.
But as a curator who has spent a lifetime in the quiet, and often deeply revealing, company of these old gods, I have come to see this story as a profound, and deeply damaging, misreading of the room. The art market may be obsessed with the future, but it is, in its very soul, haunted by the past. And the sensational, and often record-breaking, auction results for the works of the Old Masters are not just a matter of nostalgia. They are a powerful, and deeply necessary, reminder of a truth that we, in our breathless pursuit of the new, have all too often forgotten: that the most radical, and most disruptive, art is often the art that has stood the test of time.
The Return of the Titans
The year 2023 was a particularly instructive one. It was a year that saw the art market, in all its fickle and often irrational glory, once again bend the knee to the old gods. The sale of Peter Paul Rubens’s magnificent, and deeply unsettling, “Salome with the Head of John the Baptist” for nearly twenty-seven million dollars was not just a transaction. It was a sermon. It was a reminder that the raw, and often violent, power of a great baroque painting can still, after four hundred years, leave us breathless.
And then, there was the Rembrandt. The discovery of a new, and long-lost, work by the Dutch master, “The Adoration of the Magi,” and its subsequent sale for over thirteen million dollars, was a moment of pure, and unadulterated, art-world magic. It was a reminder that even in our own, cynical, and often deeply jaded, age, there is still a place for the miraculous. It was a testament to the idea that a great artist never truly dies, that their voice can still speak to us, with a startling, and deeply moving, clarity, across the centuries.
A Different Kind of Value
To see these sales as simply a matter of the rich getting richer, of the art market as a playground for the one percent, is to miss the deeper, and more interesting, story that is being told. The Old Masters’ segment of the market may be small, but its impact is immense. And it is an impact that is not just financial, but spiritual.
The works of these artists are not just commodities. They are time machines. They are windows into another world, another way of seeing, another way of being. They are a reminder that the questions that haunt us – the questions of life, of death, of love, of faith, of what it means to be human – are not new. They are the same questions that have haunted us for centuries. And in the quiet, and often deeply moving, company of these old masters, we can find a kind of solace, a kind of wisdom, a kind of perspective, that is all too often missing from the loud, and often empty, chatter of our contemporary culture.
The Unfashionable Truth
And this, I think, is the heart of the matter. The enduring appeal of the Old Masters is not just about their technical skill, their historical significance, or their investment value. It is about their unfashionable, and deeply necessary, commitment to a certain kind of truth.
They were not artists who were interested in being cool, or clever, or ironic. They were artists who were interested in the big, and often difficult, questions. They were artists who were not afraid of the dark, of the messy, of the beautiful, and often terrifying, complexity of the human soul. And in a world that is so often defined by the superficial, by the fleeting, by the relentless, and often soul-crushing, performance of the self, their quiet, and deeply serious, engagement with the world feels like a form of grace.
The art market, in its own, strange, and often contradictory, way, seems to understand this. And so, every so often, it takes a break from its breathless pursuit of the new, and it turns, with a kind of quiet, and deeply revealing, reverence, to the past. It turns to the old gods. And in the quiet, and deeply moving, company of a Rubens, or a Rembrandt, it is reminded of a simple, and profound, truth: that the art that lasts is not the art that is fashionable. It is the art that is true. And that is a truth that is, and always will be, priceless. The old gods are not dead. They are just waiting, with a quiet, and deeply confident, patience, for us to remember how to listen.
