By Michael Hall
The “Salvator Mundi,” a long-lost painting from renowned Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci, was purchased for at a 2017 auction in New York for an enormous $450 million. But more interesting than the record-setting price tag for the 500-year-old depiction of Christ as savior of the world, is the category of art under which it was sold: Contemporary.
Jeffrey Boloten (left) chatting with UCSB students after his presentation for the History of Art and Architecture program.
Technically, it should fall within the "Old Masters" category which includes artists such as Rembrandt, Michelangelo, and others who lived before 1800. But because the Salvator Mundi was only recently discovered, authenticated and exhibited, it was sold under the ‘contemporary’ umbrella, says Sotheby’s art expert Jeffrey Boloten, who spoke to a UC Santa Barbara audience last week.
Many experts would say the term ‘contemporary’ applies mainly to a piece of art made after World War II. But what constitutes contemporary art today is loosely defined and frequently debated within the art world, said Boloten, a faculty member at Sotheby’s Institute of Art in London. His talk “How the Art Market Works” was hosted by the History of Art and Architecture program.
Boloten delivered an overview of the contemporary art world. But the main focus of his presentation was the boom contemporary art has seen in recent years, currently comprising more than half of the $67.4 billion international art market.
Part of that is because contemporary artists are still alive and creating, unlike artists from previous eras. But Boloten cited a number of other reasons why the market is growing, including lower levels of connoisseurship needed to access it, the “cool” factor, and an increasing number of young tech millionaires.
Michael Schumacher’s Formula One race car, sold for $7.5 million as a contemporary art piece.
“It used to be that people started collecting art when their parents passed away, when they came into money in their 40s or 50s or 60s. They started collecting the art of their time,” Boloten said. “Now, tech wealth is a young wealth, and they want to collect the art of their time.”
The category known as contemporary art has also become more and more flexibly defined. Boloten recounted that in 2017, Sotheby’s sold a Formula One Ferrari race car piloted by Michael Schumacher for $7.5 million. So why not put the vehicle for sale at a car auction instead?
Boloten has a theory that merely adding the ‘contemporary art’ label increases a piece’s value. “People at a car market sale are probably not going to pay that money for a car,” he said. “But contemporary art collectors are this group of consumers who are into things that are buzzy and newsworthy. A lot of things are shifting into contemporary art that aren’t necessarily contemporary art.”
Which brings us back to the “Salvator Mundi.” Leonardo da Vinci died in the early 16th century. And though that work is closer to the traditional definition of art than the Ferrari is, it’s not contemporary.
But Boloten says the same principle was at work as with the Ferrari. “A bunch of crusty, old people sitting in a room are not going to pay $450 million,” he said. “It’s about where the money is, and it’s where the attention is. Everything in the contemporary art world has a big spotlight on it.”
Michael Hall is a fourth year Film and Media Studies major at UC Santa Barbara. He is a Web and Social Media Intern for the Division of Humanities and Fine Arts.