Can Art Basel and Treasure House Lure Collectors to Buy as They Once Did?
Eva Dichand belongs to a family of art collectors. Her father-in-law, Hans Dichand, who published Austria's largest-selling tabloid and died in 2010, had a major collection of Viennese art by Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele. In fact, Klimt's 1907 painting 'Danaë' now belongs to her husband, Christoph.
Dichand — who in 2004 founded the free Austrian newspaper Heute — collects, too, and is on the Metropolitan Museum of Art's international council. She buys work by living artists such as the Swiss painter Miriam Cahn and the German painter Daniel Richter. Yet these days, Dichand said in a phone interview, she buys less, and less impulsively.
A few decades ago, there was 'a lot of prosperity' in the West, she recalled. 'Everything was growing, and everybody was having good business, making more money,' she said, so people felt as if they could afford it. She went as far as spending millions each on works by Fernand Léger and Alexander Calder.
Today, 'I don't make as much cash as I did 10 years ago,' she explained. The world is 'in a very negative mood right now, with all these wars and all these bombs going off in Tel Aviv and Tehran.' As a result, she said, 'you buy less, and think more about it, because you can't spend so much money anymore.'
The art market is not what it used to be. First came the Covid pandemic, which paralyzed activity across the planet. Then came Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which sent energy prices soaring, setting off inflation and rising interest rates, and making it more expensive to buy art with borrowed money.
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