Podcast transcription: Inside the Fine Art Market with Warren Winegar

Glen Nelson: Hello, and welcome to season four of The Center's Studio Podcast. I'm your host Glen Nelson. Before we begin today, a big thanks goes to all our listeners of these interviews, and to the artists who have been so gracious and generous to me in monthly conversations. I've always loved the idea of oral histories, the capturing of stories of people directly from their lips. In hindsight, I can see how the dozens of artists who have been interviewed for our podcast have left a valuable record of their craft and personal history. It's pretty amazing when you think that the transcription of each podcast is well over 10,000 words. And so the total word count for The Center's Studio Podcast is approaching half a million words now. The archive of podcasts on our website is becoming something quite impressive as a historical record. For myself, I can say it's such a pleasure to have access to these fascinating people. Every month, I get to interview them, but before that I spend a lot of time researching and reading about them and their work. It's been a terrific excuse for me to enter their world in depth. Since last March, most of these interviews have been over the phone for obvious reasons. Today I'm speaking with Warren Winegar, an extraordinary art professional who works in the highest echelons of the fine art world. Welcome Warren. I can't wait to get started.

Warren Winegar: Pleasure to be here, Glen, with you today.

Glen: Warren graduated from BYU with a master's degree in art history and then received another master's degree from Sotheby's Institute of Art in England, specializing in fine and decorative arts. He worked at Sotheby's Institute of Art for four years and then became the Head of Client Services at Sotheby's, one of the world's largest brokers of art and collectibles. Along the way, he was also the director of the Hilde Gerst Gallery in New York City. 10 years ago he hung out his own shingle as owner and principal of Winegar Fine Art, which advises private clients and institutions on acquisitions, valuations, and sales of art and objects. All that adds up to this statement, 'Warren knows what he's talking about'. It sounds like you have a really fun job. Like, what do you love most about it?

Warren: I do have a really fun job. And I am grateful every day that I get to do what I do. Truly, it's an endless path of discovery. That is really just an exciting place to be. I'm a very curious person by nature. And so having the opportunity to learn about a lot of different artists and a lot of different movements and the political things that also motivate artists and history, really all converges when it comes down to art and art history. And I love all the various rabbit holes and other pathways that I get to discover in the normal course of doing what I do.

Glen: You're never going to run out of material to learn about.

Warren: Never, ever. Exactly.

Glen: Your background is more historical, right? What kind of period did you specialize in, in school?

Warren: At the time that I was at BYU, they focused very much on old master paintings, Dutch paintings, Italian Baroque paintings, and there wasn't a lot that was offered in modern and contemporary. There's one class that everybody has to take. But you know, you kind of de facto, do focus on older art. And so I spent a lot of time on Italian Baroque painting and have a deep love for Caravaggio, and 17th and 18th century paintings is something that I hold very, very dear in my heart. So when I went to London to go to Sotheby's Institute, that was a very concerted choice on my part because I wanted to know more about objects, mostly furniture and other decorative arts. And that particular program at Sotheby's Institute married fine art and decorative art together. And so it was really this apex moment for me to look at the holistic story of of our history. I wrote my master's thesis on the French furniture industry as it kind of changed from the end of the kings of France, the reigns of the kings of France, with the French Revolution, and then how it picks back up, meaning the 1815 to 1830 period, where the kings of France were restored to the throne. And there's still this tradition of incredible high level furniture that's being made, but everything about the world is different at that point.

Glen: So in your business today, are you are you doing a lot of work selling furniture and decorative arts? Or have you...

Warren: Very little, very little and I do nothing really older than probably 1915, 1920 at some point. Very, very, very rare, even though I know a lot about that. But the interesting thing is that it all informs everything that follows it. Everything prior informs everything after.

Glen: It is a continuum, and that's definitely one way of looking at art history. But I mean, another side of it is, like, how many Caravaggios are there for sale that you could get involved in?

Warren: Almost none. Exactly. And there actually was a rediscovery of a Caravaggio painting. Last year, the painting was discovered in an attic in France. And they brought it to New York for a short period, because ultimately, the person who bought it lives here in New York, and so that was a smart move on their part, and they had it up on display. And it was so exhilarating for me to go and see that painting. And for my own hypothesis as to why I think it really is an actual Caravaggio, where a lot of experts, and you know there was a lot of debate around this, around this piece. So, I do like to keep my toe in that field, even though it's not what I'm principally doing every day.

Glen: Right. Well, today, let's talk first about the art world generally, and what's going on right now. And then we'll get to the psychology of collecting, and how it works on identity a little bit. So how would you describe the effect that the pandemic has had on the art market?

Warren: You know, it's a really interesting look, because the art market in general has thrived, despite all of the turmoil, economically, socially, you know, and just on the physical retail landscape of people not being able to go in and look and see and feel things in a way that they have in the past. Larger galleries that had a bit of a war chest to sustain themselves have obviously done better than smaller galleries. There have been a lot of small galleries in New York, and then other major centers, that have had to close because they may run on a shoestring to begin with, and then all of a sudden, you've got no more foot traffic. You've got a lot fewer venues for you to kind of show your work. And that is really, really, really unfortunate. I read an article several months ago, about how the French art market, which is quite small and fairly specific to France. They anticipated that up to 70% of their galleries were going to close as a result of this, which is just devastating. You know, America's bigger, broader, and more diverse. And so I don't think that you can come up with that kind of number for the American art market, but there's definitely been major shifts in how artwork is viewed and sold and introduced. But I wouldn't say that there's been broadscale havoc wreaked upon the industry as a whole.

Glen: At the same time, I can imagine there are all these artists all over the world who are sort of using this lockdown as a time to make a lot of work. I can't wait to see what's happened, how this year has affected their work. I think it could be quite exciting. Do you have any insight into that?

Warren: It is really exciting. I totally agree with that. And it has been interesting at the end of the year, in art that has been shown in October, November, December through a couple of different venues. There's a lot of artists that have shown their “quarantine show” or the “lockdown show” and what they were able to do, and for some, the themes are very much about a kind of isolation, and maybe they've shifted in color scheme or something like that. But there are a number of shows that have come out of this with whole bodies of work that are done in a different way. And that will continue, I think, as we as we go into 2021, and probably 2022.

Glen: I think this is all going to be quite, quite exciting. I think of artists who are easily distracted, right? But if you got stuck in your house and can't leave, and, or if you have a studio that you have access to, and you can't leave, and you're not going out at night, you know, maybe you're making big series of paintings, or maybe you're saying, “I could work on a different scale that I have in the past, or I can take time to explore some ideas that I had made notes about, but not really investigate thoroughly.” So, I don't know, I think this is going to be a pretty fascinating recovery.

Warren: I totally agree with that. I totally agree with that. And that initial lockdown that happened, I think, generated one set of ideas, but unfortunately, there may be more of these in various parts of the world. And so I think that there will be the maybe second and third wave production of art that comes out of this. And it is going to be fascinating.

Glen: Yeah.

Warren: It is going to be exciting.

Glen: The art world itself has a certain kind of annual rhythm to it. In a normal year, it has a recurring calendar of art fairs and auction house sessions and museum and gallery openings, commercial publications, and so forth. You travel a lot to art fairs, all over the place. So let's start a little bit of a discussion about art fairs. Can you give us some examples of them and describe what one of these big fairs is like, under normal times, or how they operate now?

Warren: Yes, yeah, under normal times.... So digging, what seems like deep in my recesses as to what those experiences were like, there is, as you rightly mentioned, a very, very distinct rhythm to how the art world runs on an annual basis. There are specific art fairs that take place in specific cities at given points in time. And you kind of plan your life around those events. I go to Los Angeles in January to go to the Frieze Los Angeles. And then there is the Armory Show. And the Art Dealer's of America show that takes place in March in New York. And then there's Frieze New York, in May, and Art Basel in June in Switzerland, and the Frieze London fair in October. And then Art Basel Miami, that takes place in Miami in December. And that's the rhythm that I've done. I don't attend every single fair every year. But those are the things that you know, I go around, and then the the major auctions at the auction houses principally take place in April, May and a little bit of June and end of October, November, in the fall in New York, and London, so you kind of cycle around and move according to what those events are and where your prospective clients are going to be. And going with very specific things in mind, if you're going to an art fair, I'll typically invite clients to go with me, and we'll spend time walking around those fairs. It's not always just one fair. For example, Art Basel in Miami, which is arguably the largest kind of event fair, because there can be up to 12 to 15 little fairs that are going on all around the city of Miami in that first weekend of December. So it turns into a lot of different things. You might need to dedicate a week, at least, to seeing everything, and even then you're not gonna see it all because there's just so much that's out there.

Glen: For somebody who's never been before--and people listening have probably seen movies where there have been auction houses and they have an auction going on and they kind of imagine what that's like, but a lot of people have never been to an art fair--can you describe what one looks like? What the experience is like?

Warren: I can, and I'm going to put it into terms which I'm completely borrowing from The New York Times, because I think it's one of the greatest headlines that was ever produced in The New York Times. But they were talking about Art Basel Miami Beach, and they said, you know, "The Costco for Billionaires" and I think that the majority of people within our Latter-Day Saint culture understand and know Costco. What an art fair aims to do is to really consolidate a number of different galleries that can come from all around the world, put them under one roof, or one very large tent in the case with the Frieze fair franchise, and allow people to come in and look at a very, very broad swath of what's happening in the marketplace right now.

Glen: Yeah, they’re big, big open spaces usually, and galleries rent a booth, and they can make that booth whatever they want, basically.

Warren: Correct. And things have to be vetted. It's not like you can just bring anything and do anything. The organizers of the fair are typically very concerned about making sure that you have good quality work. For certain fairs, you'll have to go through a vetting process to make sure that if it's older artwork, that it is what it says it is. You can't just bring something and say, "This is a Botticelli." You need to actually prove that that's what it is. And they have independent experts that come in and do that vetting, to make sure that it's all proper. When you're talking about contemporary art, authorship is not so much a question because contemporary artists can kind of vouch for themselves.

Glen: So let's say there's a large gallery in the city, and it wants to go to multiple fairs. Is that common? A lot of these fairs all over the world have some of the same exhibitors. They overlap?

Warren: There's definitely overlap. And in many ways, it creates a real conundrum for the galleries. Because let's say you've got a stable of artists, that is 10 to 15 artists. You've got to figure out and get in the pipeline artwork that's going to be able to fulfill—let's say you do four to five, or maybe six art fairs, internationally throughout the year. And you've got to stack your calendar so that you have artwork for all of those fairs, in addition to whatever you're going to be showing in your gallery. And try and kind of give people equal time, in terms of how they're represented and opportunities that they're given to have their work shown. So there's a lot of planning that goes into that. You might be thinking almost two years out to make sure that artists have enough work made, because some artists work fast, some artists work very slowly.

Glen: And I've noticed some trends, that are shifting, that a gallery now will frequently not do a group show of their artists, but will curate a single artist's work or will bring an outside curator and really tell a complete story, almost like a mini museum show.

Warren: Yeah, that's true. That's true. And part of that is just this logistical issue. They may not have had the opportunity to show an artist's work, or if it makes more sense to really introduce that artist to the broader market by having a solo booth where people can come in and say, “Wow, okay, I see everything that this artist does, and I have a real context for their work now that I wouldn't have had if it was just one or two things that are showing up along the way.” So it's it's a smart strategy that I think can be very effective if it's done right.

Glen: So were these fairs all canceled in 2020?

Warren: They were. So Frieze Los Angeles was the last fair to take place, along with the sister fair called Felix. Ironically, I had something else that I opted to prioritize in New York, and I didn't go to that fair. So I have not physically been to a fair in 2020. Well, actually, that's not true. Everything shut down right after The Armory Show in March. And so I was at The Armory Show. And actually, you know, that was a pretty good business fair for me. But that was the last fair to really happen, along with another fair in the European Fine Art Fair, called TEFAF that happened in Maastricht. And those two fairs were running concurrently. But everything else in terms of physical fairs has shut down in 2020.

Glen: When do people think they are going to start up again, do you think?

Warren: Well, I saw some news just yesterday that they're trying to have a physical fair, in Dubai in March. I don't have any intentions of going to that fair, but we'll see if they can actually pull that off. And if it there's an appetite to do that.

Glen: So in 2020, were the logistics of a sale getting a lot more complicated when people couldn't travel to see a work? I mean, how can you properly look at a work and evaluate it and everything if you can't actually get to it?

Warren: You know, it is really, really tough. And I think the biggest casualty of the pandemic is that if you are an emerging artist, and you're just getting started, and maybe you've got representation by, you know, a smaller gallery, I think it's really hard to just get your work out there and sold, right now. Something that's being introduced, I think, is really, really challenging. And what I've seen with my clients is that we're tending to just go back and revisit things that maybe we had seen and not focused on. But it's not necessarily trying to find something brand new. But more about looking at more established artists and seeing what we can find by those artists at this time, and build up that way.

Glen: You have regular clients who are buying and selling things all the time. Did they slow down or stop during the pandemic? Or did they shift, or what was their mindset?

Warren: Things definitely slowed down in that initial period, I think. The world needed to understand what was going on. Nobody really...

Glen: Everybody was waiting for this giant Wall Street collapse that didn't really materialize.

Warren: That didn't materialize, exactly. And quite frankly, money holds up the art world, and those with discretionary incomes that could spend, didn't take too much of a hit in this process. And so that kept things alive and going. And I'm grateful that that portion of the arts has been kept alive. You know, unlike other kinds of institutions that just had to shut down and this has really decimated their situations. That part of this whole thing is completely tragic.

Glen: Right. I mean, with with art fairs, though, just to kind of button this up a little bit, I can see “the Costco,” and it makes perfect sense. It's a one-stop shop. And I can see why customers would like it, and I can see why gallerists like it. But what about the artists? I mean, I came across a quotation by a blue chip painter, Chuck Close, who said, "I love Frieze," then he added, "I don't want my work to be in a fair. It's like taking a cow on a tour of the slaughterhouse." I'm not entirely sure if I know what he means by that.

Warren: Well, Chuck's a really interesting guy. I think that artists have a very complicated relationship with fairs. And rightfully so. They work very hard at producing what they make. And they want it to be seen in its best possible light. And I don't think that fairs necessarily show their work in the best possible light. Because you're going down aisle after aisle after aisle of galleries, in what could be, potentially, very large fairs where you might have over 300 galleries that are all showing work. It feels to the artist like they're just kind of being thrown in with everybody else.

Glen: Yeah, I can see that, I can see it.

Warren: And I think that that's the primary complaint. But I will say this. The beauty of it is that you can get people who might be cash rich and time poor. It's an opportunity for them to go see work. And they may discover you or learn more about you, and then they can become a patron for what you do. And that is a result of having this consolidation, you know, the Costco effect of being in there and being able to see a lot of different things. And it does get overwhelming. I mean, you definitely can't take it all in. But it does help to give you an opportunity to see a lot of things, put it into a context, and then build up from there.

Glen: Right. Well, let's talk about people who are both cash poor and time poor. You mentioned a minute ago, some of these satellite fairs, and I'm really fascinated by them. So I know in New York here, there are a whole series of fairs that go on and their price points are very, very different. My guess is that most people when they visualize these big fairs, think of them as all big ticket items. But the satellite fairs have art that's affordable to a lot wider of a spectrum of customers, isn't that right?

Warren: Yes. Yeah, it is. I really strive not to be snobby in this because, you know, “big ticket” is relative. And so something that is $500 can be big ticket to certain people. And $5,000, and $50,000, and $500,000. So, you know, there's the scale to it, but I do feel like in today's market $10,000 is kind of the number where emerging art starts. That's kind of a base limit. Between $5,000 and $10,000 is really most of these fairs, you're not going to find much that's less than that. And what's interesting about the smaller fairs or the satellite fairs, I should say, is that these are younger, scrappier galleries and gallerists that just have a pulse on something entirely different from a Blue Chip. And there's a lot of stuff that I don't love, but there are a lot of things that can be super interesting. And you start to see trends of what is going to be coming, at those fairs.

Glen: Yeah, I think that's completely astute. And I'd love to talk about that in just a second. But before we end up with our discussion on fairs, I'd like to get listeners to have an idea of the scale of the number of works that are around. I mean, it's a lot of work. So let's take as an example, of New York during The Armory Show week. All right, so all of those fairs. So if you had to estimate the total number of works on view at the main fair and all the satellite fairs, how many works would you imagine are being exhibited in that one week alone? It's got to be a huge number.

Warren: That is a really incredible question. I would have to say, doing this completely on the fly, but between the variety of fairs, and I'm thinking of four that would be running around that time, possibly five, I think you would be looking at probably around 10,000 to 15,000 different objects that could be displayed over that week.

Glen: I mean, it's incredible. It's really...

Warren: It's incredible.

Glen: You can see who really wants to either be immersed into it, or kind of catch up, or see trends or all of those things, in addition to just the actual buying and selling would want to come by.

Warren: Right.

Glen: So let's pretend that I'm a wealthy collector. And we're gonna have to do a lot of pretending to make that seem plausible. Okay, so I'm a wealthy collector, and I'm sort of new to the idea of acquiring fine art and objects, and I come to you. What are your initial conversations like with me? What kind of questions do you ask?

Warren: Well, I like to understand as much as I can about you as a person. What your life experiences have been, what you're naturally attracted to. Are you more of a minimalist? Are you a maximalist? Do you embrace color in your life? Or are you more of a kind of monochrome person? It's interesting because I've often had clients who say, "Well, you know, I like things that are impressionistic." And that's a really loaded word. Because it's like, "So are you saying impressionistic, like, Monet? Or are you saying something that leaves a good impression? Or are you saying you like things that have loose brushwork, or that are colorful?" You know, there's a lot of things, and so it's as much about helping clients understand a vocabulary to talk about art as anything else. And when I'm working with new clients, I don't anticipate that we're going to be buying things right away. There should be a period of discovery. Unless they know exactly what they want. And that's something different. But if people maybe are totally uninitiated and find themselves in the position to be able to spend on art, it's more about helping them understand what they like, because they honestly might not have spent a lot of time thinking about it.

Glen: That's right, it's an exposure issue. But I would imagine that a lot of people who might be coming to you, or a person in your business, they're successful in their line of work, and they have expertise, and they're used to being decisive. And this might be quite disorienting to them, because they kind of feel that they don't know exactly what they want.

Warren: I think that's a very fair statement. And the artworld doesn't operate the way that the rest of the world does. It's a very particular and unique industry with its own set of rules and mannerisms that has to be understood. And I learned a lot about that working at Sotheby's and just going to auctions over the years. And you can have people who are incredibly smart, and talented, and masters of their own universe, and they get in a room with an auction where you have maybe two minutes to actually make or lose that deal. And it can be very, very disarming.

Glen: I'm sure.

Warren: And it's a whole different psychology to anything that we've been talking about so far. I mean, an art fair is a walk in the park compared to getting all the psychology you need to be successful at winning an auction, and that's something entirely different.

Glen: One of the things that I really admire about collectors is how they become such experts on their given thing—if they're car collectors or watch collectors or painting collectors or whatever that is. They can become such connoisseurs of it. They probably know as much as people writing dissertations. I mean they really, really, get into it.

Warren: They can. You're absolutely right and those are really fun people to be around. If you like to geek out like I do on history and process and production and things like that, when you get with these really, really knowledgeable people, they are so passionate and driven by passion. I think they're all seekers, because they all just want more knowledge and more understanding and you appreciate whatever the object is that they happen to be collectors of. I have this friend who had run several different museum programs, and a very well known guy, and one of his passions are these miniature antique potbelly stoves. And they're like what you would find in a dollhouse. But you go into his house in Washington DC, and there's like 150 of these going all around his dining room. The entire dining room of these miniature potbelly stoves. He can tell you everything about those.

Glen: Yeah, really specific areas.

Warren: Very specific, right? And so I never thought in the world I would want to be passionate about that. But he really incited passion to me about that after I've made that visit.

Glen: Well that's what's so fascinating. The world is just…, everywhere you look, there's something you could really become very, very skillful at understanding. This whole psychology thing you've referenced just a couple minutes ago, it really it does impact collecting a lot. I used to sit on the board of directors of a club of art collectors in New York. And the vocabulary I often heard was that someone had "caught the collecting bug." I'm sure that's a phrase that you've heard too.

Warren: I have.

Glen: It's like this primal hunting and gathering thing. I've read the histories of American industrialist collectors, you know, Morgans, and Gardners, and Fricks, and so on. And I see that at a certain point, collecting became their life's focus and ultimately, their legacy. But it's not always rational, is it?

Warren: No, no.

Glen: Morgan's biographer wrote that JP Morgan spent most of his life building stable financial structures, but when it came to his collecting, "He simply opened his hand and let them go."

Warren: Yes.

Glen: In your experience, what makes people want to purchase art and objects? That goes to the psychology side of it.

Warren: That is a topic as vast as the sea, right? And I've had this question asked to me so many times in different venues. That motivation is entirely individualized. But when it happens, it can happen in such profound ways that it really does consume people's lives. And I wouldn't even say that's tied to big budgets. There are people who collect all kinds of things and become fanatically focused on on finding whatever that thing is.

Glen: Absolutely.

Warren: We'd like to think that it's more fun to tell the stories of eccentric, wealthy people. But I think that there are plenty of incredible stories of people who collect a lot of other things.

Glen: Well, even whole cultures. I was talking to some friends who are Russian, and they said, "Oh, in Russia, everybody has a collection of something. It's just in the water. Everyone has to have something."

Warren: You do find when you really start to ask questions about people, you learn a lot. And it's one of the kind of icebreaker things that I love to do when I'm meeting new people, "What's your passion? Do you collect anything?" Because it's really interesting to see what may just be a distraction, initially, and an area of interest really can take on these incredible outsized levels of influence and importance in our lives. And we do give up a lot of rationality in that process because it is something that we become passionate about.

Glen: It's a physical representation to answer the question, "What is meaningful to me?".

Warren: That's true. Absolutely, absolutely, absolutely.

Glen: The art market is so large, I was recently reading a press comment by Art Basel and UBS. They said, the global art market is valued at approximately $64 billion. So there's a lot of stuff out there. How does somebody develop an eye for art to decide what they want? Is it kind of like a chef who develops a palate for flavors? My guess is that your big selling point is your eye and expertise. I mean, how does somebody develop that?

Warren: So I think it's twofold. I think an eye, to a certain degree, can be developed. But I also think that it is something that you're born with, you either have it or you don't. I think the most important aspect in developing expertise and anything is just seeing. You need to see, you know, it's "Look, look, look look." And when I'm working with clients, or anybody that gives me the opportunity to talk about art, which I'll always take, it's like, "Let's go look at something. Let's break it down. And spend more than 10 seconds looking at it, and then ask critical questions," you know?

Glen: Well, let me do that with you. So let's say I'm a customer of yours, and we're at a fair, and we're looking at an artwork, and I don't get it. So how do you talk about it? What is the conversation like?

Warren: Well, this is a great question because I think particularly when it comes to contemporary art, a lot of people say, "I don't get it," or they think of that statement, "Oh, my child could have done that". And I have a lot of responses as to why it would actually be impossible for your very, very gifted and talented child to ever have produced what we are looking at in front of us. Because so much of contemporary art is rooted in what it is, conceptually. The concept has as much to do with what the art is, as the physical manifestation. Not having a visual to use and walk through that will make sense to our listeners, puts me at a little bit of a disadvantage. But you know, you take something that seems like a bunch of scribbles on the page. And you break that down into what the artist... what was the artists' intent on that? And in some cases, they don't have an intent. And they want you to be the one that makes the discovery and connects the dots for whatever it is, for you.

Glen: I'm sure you've had this experience, but I'd love just to verify my own thoughts about it. What happens when someone is looking at something, the kind of work that you're describing, for example. And you're talking about it, and you're going back and forth. And you see the light go on, for them. What does that feel like for you?

Warren: Well, I love that moment! Can I just tell you how much I love that moment? I'll share an experience from just earlier this year. I was asked by a client to go with her and a group of her friends to the Metropolitan Museum, and we went on a little tour. And we stopped in a room where they have six Mark Rothko paintings, right? And Mark Rothko's someone that anyone listening to this podcast can Google and understand, you know, very minimal abstract expressionist work, principally based upon fields of color, and blocks of color. And I made everybody just stop in front of one painting. And we just kept our eyes on that painting for about five minutes. Which is a long time. And we talked about what happened after the first minute that you spend time just looking at this. And then what happens in minute two. How these things slowly reveal themselves to you when you give them the time. Not all art does that, right? Some things are purely superficial. You're never going to get that if you're spending a lot of times with a Jeff Koons, for example. That just is what it is. But there are things where those concepts, and everything else come out of the piece, when you give it time to reveal itself. I think that's why it's important to look. That's why it's important to understand what artists are trying to do. What are they trying to say? And of course, that takes a lot of time. And most people don't have that ot take that, to be able to go through that process. And that's where it's fun for me to bring that knowledge to the table and really talk about things. But to your point, I was with this group of ladies and after we walked out of that Rothko room, they mentioned it throughout the rest of the time that we were together. It's like that was the most incredible experience, "I finally understand Mark Rothko. I finally understand this." And that was extremely gratifying to me, because these are people that didn't really ever think about that before.

Glen: Was art a part of your childhood? I mean does your family, do you come from art loving people?

Warren: So my parents did, they did collect Southwestern Native American art and rugs. That had to do with my Dad spending a lot of time there in his professional career in New Mexico, in particular, and in Arizona. And so we had original paintings around the house. We had a lot of pottery and textiles and things. And there's a difference when you live with an original painting, and I don't care how good or bad it is. But when you live with something that's actually handmade, as opposed to a poster, there's a difference. You learn different things, you see the life that gets imbued into these objects through their creative process. And I'm a huge advocate of it, regardless of what your budget is. Buy original things. Have real stuff.

Glen: Yeah.

Warren: Don't just have posters.

Glen: Do you remember the first thing you acquired for yourself?

Warren: Well, I remember the first thing that I didn't acquire, that I always wish I had.

Glen: Every collector has a story.

Warren: Every collector has that. But I had an opportunity to buy a really great Andy Warhol print for about $1,500 when I was a senior in high school, and I had the money, but I let my very rational father talk me out of buying it. And you know that that print I have seen offered up and sold now for over $100,000. So, I should have done that. And that's my biggest regret. But I was very excited when I got a Chuck Close work, a print that I have. And that was a really kind of exciting day.

Glen: What do you make of the people who..., I mean, some people are passionate about art, and other people just have absolutely no interest in it. It's like, there are certain people, I have some friends who don't understand why I like cilantro. They have this olfactory receptor gene that makes them think that they're eating soap when they're eating cilantro. So I don't know if art’s a nature versus nurture thing.

Warren: Well, I've never seen research that would you know. Cilantro, that's a physical reaction you either can tolerate or you can't, right? I haven't seen research where art can't be tolerated, but there are people who just don't have an affinity for it.

Glen: Yeah. There's a sensitivity that some people have to it, that as you described earlier, just seems to be innate. I would say that there's a distrust of art that I believe is learned.

Warren: I agree with that. I agree with that.

Glen: It's a kind of a prejudice all its own.

Warren: And you're talking about a very vast category when you're talking about art, right? And some things are incredibly propagandistic and come with a very distinct message. You know, positive or negative. And I think we always have to be careful with that. What are the visuals that we're bringing into our brains and into our lives?

Glen: Right.

Warren: That has a tremendous impact upon your thinking, upon your world view, and upon a lot of other thing. And personal habits can come from that. So, there are definitely reasons why people may have strong opinions about art one way or another.

Glen: Let's talk about messaging a little bit and specifically about Latter-day Saint culture. I think that all religions have strong identities that link to art and objects. Wouldn't you say? It's in their places of worship, but it extends beyond that. I can't think of a faith tradition without some kind of art attached to it. And then I think about the way that I grew up. I was raised in the Church and was baptized at age eight. And long before I could read the scriptures, I had flannel board stories that told all of those stories through pictures. And I've been surrounded literally every day of my life with a wallpaper of visual imagery of the Church. That has to affect me, right?

Warren: Absolutely, it does. Absolutely, it does. And if you just think about how you picture Christ. What is that image? Is it the rendition that Harry Anderson has painted that everyone in the Church knows? Is it a composite of different things that you've seen? Is it maybe just a field of light or color? There's a lot of different ways that we do this. I have very little imagery of Christ in our house. Simply because, in my mind, He manifests in a certain way, and I don't always want all the other images that have been produced. But I want my children to be able to have their own image. And so I've let them choose different pictures that make a representation for them. So that becomes their own vocabulary, or their own imagery.

Glen: For myself, I am comfortable with the unknowability of it. I don't want to put a single image out there as being what I would think is representative. I don't have a sure knowledge of anything more than that. Our church buildings really are covered with art. Although for the most part, the chapels themselves are free of images. There are a few really notable examples of LDS buildings that have paintings in them, but most of them do not. Which is not the case with other religions. What effect does that saturation have on LDS culture, would you think? My guess, to answer my own question, is that we we go to church to worship, and we like that sensation. And when we come home, and we want our homes to be a place of sanctity, we try to duplicate that sensation with some kind of representation that signals to us visual correlations.

Warren: I agree with that. And, look, the visual representations are important. It's obvious that they are because humans keep making them, right? And in all their iterations. It's clearly something that we need. And so I think that there are certainly ways that we can broaden our lexicon because we have very distinctive imagery that we would consider to be ours, you know, that tells our visual language. But at the same time, going back to the Mark Rothko experience that we talked about, there can be just as powerful a feeling in something that is maybe just color, and form, as there can be in a narrative depiction.

Glen: That's right. And that takes us all the way back to the beginning of our conversation today. When I go to people's homes, who are LDS, I'm always surprised how many artworks and objects they collect and display. I can think of very few people who are not collectors at some level, even if that's family heirlooms or memorabilia, and so forth. But you know, you and I spent some time together this last weekend at a mutual friend's home in Connecticut, and every wall of her house had LDS artists' works on them.

Warren: Yeah.

Glen: She had a story for each one, why it meant something special to her, and often she had worked with the artists and even collaborated on a few. And I think for her the art reinforced her values and tastes. So what do you make of that connection of art collecting and identity? Because that wasn't really the case with JP Morgan and Clay Frick. I think they just wanted the best works that they could get their hands on. I mean it burnished their status. But I suspect it's different than what we're discussing about identity and wanting art to do something for us.

Warren: Absolutely. And I think that collecting bug we mentioned, how vast those motivations are. For JP Morgan, and the Whitneys, and a lot of these other major collecting families, it was about burnishing their status. But they also were very philanthropic in how they shared that with the world.

Glen: And we're still talking about them today, because of that.

Warren: Exactly. You can go to the Morgan Library and see phenomenal things that you would never have the opportunity to see otherwise. And in fact, the Morgan Library houses such an incredible collection of illuminated manuscripts and other religious objects, you know, that feed into the religious vocabulary that everything within Christianity comes off of. But as we think about our particular Latter-day Saint vocabulary and what motivates us, I think it is important to find things that reflect our values. But at the same time, I don't know that what reflects my values might manifest in a very, very different way than what's being produced. And I think it's exciting. We're in a very, very exciting moment, as a worldwide people, because we have more visual artists that are telling their point of view. And we get to see what it means to espouse the restored Gospel from a lot of different perspectives.

Glen: Yeah, that really is beautiful. I go to people's homes who are LDS, and I see their beliefs and religious identity playing out in really surprising ways. For the most part, these are not devotional artworks. These are not sacred artworks. It's not like they're trying to create domestic altar pieces or private chapels. They're not duplicating the experience that I've had, you know, in countries that are predominantly Catholic, for example, where there are items in their home that mimic the exact things that they have in their most sacred public worship spaces. I don't think for the most part, LDS collectors at home are going that way. And often, they've found some artist that kind of speaks to them, that they have some kind of shared elements. But it's not necessarily like church-sanctioned in its way.

Warren: Correct. Correct. And again, there are plenty of artists that create work that is based on truth. Truth in all its forms, right? Truth is always truth. And the Gospel allows for us to embrace all that is true. You know, there's, a sculptor who's based in California, who's not LDS, named Elizabeth Turk. And she makes these incredible sculptures that are all fashioned almost like, it looks like ribbon work. But it's one piece, all carved out of the same piece of marble. And I think that these are so spectacular. And I think that they represent the eternal families and the great continuum that we espouse, you know. And that's not what she's necessarily making, as she makes these works, but that's what they represent for me. And I can imbue those views on that work.

Glen: I had a really powerful experience as a teenager. I remember I was thumbing through an issue of Architectural Digest. And I probably was in like, you know, I don't know, junior high or something. And there was a couple featured in the magazine who were African-American, and their townhouse was full of art and objects and furniture by Black artists. And the interview described their passion for art and their love of and pride of their culture. And that article made a really big impression on me. Maybe it was even a turning point. It was the first time I saw collecting as a way to express identity. And it had consequences, too, regarding patronage of artists in a culture. I wondered what the equivalent for a Latter-day Saint might be. And that kind of got me thinking about all of these issues that I spent decades working on since then.

Warren: And which we are all benefiting from, I might add. So thank you Architectural Digest for getting Glen going on...

Glen: There you go.

Warren: ...a wonderful path.

Glen: All right. Now I can't let you go without getting some free advice. Are you game?

Warren: I'm always game.

Glen: Okay, I think I have three questions here. Okay? What are three common mistakes new collectors make?

Warren: Well, a lot of people will buy things when they're on vacation.

Glen: I've had friends who've called me from a cruise that they went on. There was a gallery on board.

Warren: Okay, there we go. It's a logical time to buy because you have time, right? You might be in a place where you are relaxing. You're walking down the street. There are art galleries around, you go in, and you buy something. And I've had plenty of people say, you know, "We bought this when we were in X, Y, or Z location. But you know, it's really not our taste anymore. But it was such a wonderful day." And they talked about the day, and how much fun they had. But it wasn't perhaps the greatest choice that they ever made. And so taking just a little bit of a pause to really think about what you're doing. And if the money doesn't matter, and you just want the experience, then go for it. But my overall experience is that people generally don't love those pieces as much as they would with something that they took a little more time to learn about the artist and understand it more. The second thing is, buy the best quality object that you can. If you're going to spend the money.

Glen: Whatever that is.

Warren: Whatever that amount is, and I don't care what that amount is, right? If it's $500, if it's $5 million, doesn't matter. Get the best quality thing that you can in all cases because quality always matters. The third thing is that your taste will change over time. The more you see, the more your eye and your palate are going to broaden. And you're going to want different things. And I personally think it happens in decades. Every 10 years people want to shift and do something a little bit different.

Glen: It kind of becomes a diary, though, doesn't it?

Warren: Absolutely. Absolutely. Which is wonderful. I mean, one of my favorite things of my time at Sotheby's was--they don't offer as many of these sales now as they used to--but there would be whole estates that would be brought in. When I first started there, in about 2004 or 2005, Johnny Cash's entire estate was brought in. And they set up that sale right outside the door of my office. And so I was walking through it all the time. And we had the Kennedy sales, and we had all these different things, Katharine Hepburn and so many different estates that happened right there outside my door. But you get somebody's entire life that tells their story from the inane to the very, very intimate that just all gets put on show for three to five days of preview, and then maybe six to eight hours worth of sales. And it's gone.

Glen: Yeah.

Warren: It's just gone, forever. And you have this opportunity to really look at someone's life through what they've built and what they've bought and what was of interest to them. And that overall arc is super fascinating to me. I love those single owners sales.

Glen: In LDS culture, we really don't have that very often because people tend to have large families, and they don't take their collections to auction. Usually, it goes to a will and it's given to children, grandchildren, and often never seen in public.

Warren: Yeah.

Glen: Which makes the scholarship side of it hard. Because it's hard to know what's out there.

Warren: It's true.

Glen: You have to track it down a different way. Alright, question number two. You did very well, by the way, on question number one.

Warren: Oh, thank you.

Glen: Well done, sir. Okay, question number two. What is the art object in your home that is the most meaningful to you? And don't cheat, and say it's like, you know, a family member.

Warren: I love all my family members. But you mentioned Chuck Close earlier. And I mentioned this in one print I have. It's a very, very unique print, because it's in a two-sided frame that sits on top of a table top or something. And it's made through watermark technology. So just like when you hold up a dollar, you know, a $100 bill, to see the watermark in it. Chuck Close worked with the same printer who prints money to make this particular work. And so it is a piece that just looks like a gray sheet of paper when it is in shadow. But once light goes through it, it has one of his signature self portraits that comes through. And I love this piece because it's dependent upon light to show its whole meaning. And I think it's such a metaphor for us, as individuals. We need the light of Christ, and we need the Atonement, and we need all of the things that are spiritual and our physical aspects brought together. Then the whole person is revealed. And so I do think that's one of my most cherished objects, for that reason.

Glen: Excellent. Alright. And finally, who are some artists right now who have your attention? You mentioned this sculptor in California.

Warren: Yep. I love Elizabeth Turk. And some of these are, you know, I like different things for different reasons. There's a painter in the UK named Sarah Ball that I'm very interested in her style of portraiture. Amy Sherald, an African-American artist in the US. I'm quite interested in what both of these women do. I like a photographer out of California named Genevieve Gagnon, who is doing very interesting kind of continuation of what Cindy Sherman did years ago, but in a very different way. And I really like the work of a Native American artist named Jeffrey Gibson, who I think is making some really interesting things from a perspective that is not usually seen within American culture. And probably the last one is a Brazilian painter working in a very old fashioned medium of casein, which is like a wax medium and pigment, named Janaina Tschäpe. So those are some people that have my attention right now.

Glen: How did you encounter these people? Was it mostly through fairs?

Warren: Well through fairs and galleries. Jeffrey Gibson's work is someone that I've followed for a number of years now. And I've had the pleasure of placing a couple of his pieces with clients, which I was really happy about. Janaina's work, I found at an art fair, and Sarah's through my relationship with the Gallery in London that represents her. So I like them. And if you looked at all these, you would think, "Well, okay, here's like an ADD moment."

Glen: Because they're all over the place, you mean? Stylistically?

Warren: Because they're all over the place. They are all over the place stylistically, but I like them for different reasons and for different merits.

Glen: But wouldn't you say that one of the characteristics right now of the art market is it's not just a single style?

Warren: Oh, no, there isn't a single style. Yeah, there isn't a single style. And it is a lot of different voices coming together and telling different perspectives. And I think that that's wonderful.

Glen: I'm very excited to hear just more stories of people.

Warren: Definitely. And we'll get to it.

Glen: If someone wants to contact you to learn more about what you do, perhaps to engage you in some professional way. How do they do that?

Warren: You can go to my website, which is current being redesigned at warrenwinegar.com.

Glen: This has been very illuminating, Warren. Thanks so much for joining me today. Last night there was a big blizzard, and talking to you has warmed my cold, New York heart.

Warren: Thank you. It's always a pleasure, and I hope that people will continue to follow the work that the Center for LDS Arts is doing and, and the great things that are yet to come from Glen Nelson, as well.

Glen: Well, I try. Let's just say that. And I'll echo that. I want to thank all of the listeners. Thank you very much. When you get a free minute, take a look at some of the earlier episodes. Each one is a gem in a specific way. Happy New Year, everybody. Bye.