Been offered a haring baby drawing from someone who met keith on the streets of nyc in the 88. Thoughts on a fair price Been offered a haring baby drawing from someone who met keith on the streets of nyc in the 88. Thoughts on a fair price
Anyone?Been offered a haring baby drawing from someone who met keith on the streets of nyc in the 88. Thoughts on a fair price
Iโd steer clear of any original works not obtained through Martin Lawrence Gallery. IMO
I am certain it is legit. So working under that assumption anybody have a fair price? Your question cannot be properly considered in isolation, or directly replied to โ because the answer would first require knowing additional details, which have thus far been left undisclosed.
In addition, I would posit that you are working under the wrong assumption.
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As a quick preface, the focus of this post
excludes safer-bet items like
Keith Haring's widely-recognised limited editions, and works previously given the nod by the Keith Har
ing Foundation's authentication committee before it was dissolved in 2012.
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For collectors of genuine artworks,
the Haring market is exceptionally high-risk due to a massive prevalence of fakes. And
"massive" is no overstatement. The counterfeiting industry with Har
ing has long been fuelled by his unremitting popularity, his art-world status, the resulting great demand for his works, and therefore the high prices they command.
Great demand and
high prices tick the
Motive box. Not just for counterfeiters, but for their art-world enablers and facilitators too โ the corrupt sellers and resellers, whether they be collector-individuals or institutions, dealers, gallerists, or auction-house staff.
Moreover, with:
(i) his cartoon style being so deliberately basic, i.e. easy to replicate; and
(ii) his preferred art materials (acrylic, chalk, marker, pen and pencil) being so readily accessible, familiar, and simple to master,
Keith Har
ing could well be the most faked artist on the planet. He is a regular favourite of professional fraudsters, as well as hordes of amateur opportunistic ones.
Easily-copied style and
readily-accessible art materials tick both the
Means and
Opportunity boxes, for just about the entire population.
To illustrate, if given 72 hours to practice the requisite arm and hand-flow techniques, execution speed, and application pressure, I am confident that I myself could produce signed fakes convincing enough to dupe a frightening number of Keith Har
ing collectors, let alone novice Har
ing enthusiasts.
In fact, 10-year-old schoolchildren in art class might also achieve reasonable success with this exercise.
And based on years-long, casual but regular observations of the market, my completely unscientific assessment would be that
less than 1% of unauthenticated
purported Har
ings which come up for sale on various platforms are actually genuine.
Show me, for example, an auction house that repeatedly sells unauthenticated Har
ings, and I'll show you one where it's a near-certainty the directors, specialists, or other decision-makers are corrupt scumbags. They will have made the conscious decision to turn a blind eye, prioritise profits over probity, and defraud the more ignorant among their own buyer-clients.
Either that, or those decision-makers are seriously incompetent and naive, but to a degree that is truly incredible. A degree that
stretches credulity. In other words, if such auction-house professionals really
do exist, then they must surely fall within the hyper-exclusive target market of fight attendants who tell us how to put on our seatbelts.
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This was a longwinded way of saying that, for an unauthenticated Har
ing, there can be no guesstimate as to what constitutes a
"fair price" without first evaluating the strength of the
seller's evidence in support of authenticity and provenance.
If there is, say, accompanying video footage or a photograph of Har
ing actually drawing the work, or taken immediately afterwards (e.g. showing Har
ing and the seller holding up the drawing), then things
do become interesting.
Perhaps less-strong but still-compelling evidence could in some cases include the seller having a verifiably-documented professional or personal relationship with Har
ing.
Provided this evidentiary prerequisite has been satisfied, other factors relating to the work can then be considered, including:
(i) whether or not signed and dated;
(ii) size (e.g. small doodle vs larger drawing on US Letter-sized paper);
(iii) specific medium (e.g. ballpoint pen vs thin marker vs wide chisel-tip marker);
(iv) historical or other interest that the substrate may hold (e.g. a drawing on a gallery show card, receipt, restaurant napkin, dollar bill, etc. โ especially if the substrate has some connection with the artist, and/or the location where or timeframe when the drawing was purportedly created);
(v) quality of the drawing, its visual appeal, and the apparent care taken during its execution; and
(vi) condition of the drawing.
However,
in absence of any objectively-persuasive evidence of authenticity and provenance being offered by the seller (as I suspect is the case in your situation), for the reasons expressed above, I would value the drawing at
$0.00. Or possibly a negative sum, given the opportunity costs involved in taking the time to consider the purchase.
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Regarding
your certainty that the drawing is legitimate, that could well influence its
personal value to you, and the price
you might be willing to pay. Sentimental factors may increase that price level too. For example, if the seller happens to be a family member or an old friend of yours.
But none of this has significant relevance to the drawing's
market value โ which is what you appear to be asking for guidance on.
Market value is just another term for resale value. And you
knowing that an artwork is genuine matters little, unless you can also
prove it (on the balance of probabilities, if not beyond a reasonable doubt) to the next buyer down the chain.
Without credible evidence, your pool of future potential buyers would pretty much be restricted to:
(a) the tragically ignorant or stupid (in other words, the kind of vulnerable collectors each of us has the choice of either exploiting or not); and
(b) anyone who, rather amazingly, is privy to documents or other information supporting authenticity and provenance, which not even your seller currently has access to.