Art For Amateurs The love of art is itself an art. Be passionate, but be prudent.

By John Pierson
April 1, 2000

(FORTUNE Small Business) – Jerry and Eva Posman were debating whether to buy the photograph. Jerry: “Am I buying a work from someone who will disappear from the universe?” Eva: “But it gives us joy.” Jerry: “What will the resale value be?” Eva: “But we love it.”

Love won the day. The Posmans bought “Isolation Ward–Ellis Island,” by little-known photographer Chad Kleitsch, for their Manhattan apartment. To be fair to Posman, he was playing devil’s advocate. As novice collectors–with 20-some works, none priced above $2,250–the Posmans don’t see themselves as investors. “Maybe someday,” says Jerry. “For now, we just want to wake up in the morning and say, ‘Wow, we like this.’”

The word “amateur” comes from the Latin word for love. But even amateurs need to learn a few things about this affair of the heart: One, what kind of art, from old-master drawings to post-modern sculpture, will make you happy, and why you should meet it in person, not just online. Two, how a dealer can help you avoid grief. And three, how to protect yourself in a volatile market.

Mario Castillo, a consultant in Washington, D.C., may have had the ideal amateur’s education. He fell in love with art at age 12, stopping in the Fort Concho Museum in San Angelo, Texas, on his way home from grammar school. “I didn’t really know what I was looking at,” says Castillo, “but there were colors, and there were cowboys and Indians. A boy could dream.” In college he took art courses, and as a congressional staffer he roamed Washington’s rich trove of galleries. Castillo started by collecting realistic art (“An apple looked like an apple,” he says). But his taste changed. A turning point was his $750 purchase of “Sirocco” by impressionist Donald Nix–courtesy of an understanding gallery owner who let Castillo buy the work on an installment plan. Now Castillo leaves time to browse galleries on every business trip.

You may have reached a ripe age without knowing an impressionist from an expressionist. But you can start your training anytime. Plumb your taste by looking through art books–the beautiful, weighty kind that anchor coffee tables. Better yet, absorb the vibrations from real paint and canvas or steel and granite at a museum. Find a school or college course. Go to auction previews to get close to a work, then to the auction itself to feel the collective excitement.

But when you start to spend money, build a relationship with a good dealer who will teach you. The Posmans’ dealer helped them take the plunge on one work by offering to buy it back if they changed their minds. Castillo found his dealer only after walking out of one gallery after another in New York City’s SoHo. “I’d spend five minutes looking at a piece; they’d rush me to buy,” he says. When he walked into Franklin Bowles Galleries in New York, the dealer told him to take his time and then spent two hours discussing the artist on exhibit. (That approach can obviously pay off for the dealer too: Castillo returned, planning to spend $3,000 on a single work, and walked out with a pair for $27,000.)

While plenty of collectors love to gamble on an artist’s rise to fame, many side with the Posmans in putting heart above purse. In 1993, Steve Glick, a William Morris agent in Los Angeles, and his wife bought three works by Irish painter Graham Knuttel, then unknown in the U.S. When Sylvester Stallone later commissioned a portrait by him, it put the artist’s prices into overdrive. But Glick says he isn’t interested in profit taking, at least for now.

Still, plunking down money can make you feel vulnerable–especially with today’s breathtaking prices. Some art-market players think the price for a single work will soon hit the $100 million mark; that would break the record set in 1990, at the end of the last boom, when a van Gogh went for $82.5 million. But prices are volatile. Some of last year’s hot artists are barely selling this year.

Dealer Yancey Richardson of New York City cautions that buying at auction is especially risky. A client of hers won the bidding for a Mapplethorpe photo–without Richardson’s input–then discovered a small crease in the print that sharply lowers its value. Lesson: Take your dealer to the preview, then let her bid. She’s less likely to get carried away.

The hottest new auctions, of course, are online. “The Internet is the future,” says New York City consultant Renee Price. “But it doesn’t replace seeing an object and feeling it beam its aura back at you.”

Jose Soriano knows the feeling. A collector all his life, Soriano once bought a painting signed by the French impressionist Eugene Louis Boudin, for $800. Though he learned years later that it was a fake, Soriano is still fond of what he calls “my little Boudin.” We’re talking about love.

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