Monet talks with modest art in articles from the artzine on artrepublic.comFeatured in The Argus Newspaper - July 2008 It was a case of "credit crunch - what credit crunch?" at Christie's last week after a mystery buyer paid a whopping £41 million for a painting by Claude Monet.Obviously not everyone has that kind of cash but there is affordable art out there which could turn out to be a cracking investment.Sam Thomson reports on how savvy collectors can be laughing all the way to the Banksy. Monet, Monet, Monet. Monet makes the world go round. We're in the Monet...The recent sale of the French impressionist's masterpiece Le Bassin Aux Nympheas was not only a boon for newspaper headline writers around the world, it revealed that, even in these troubled economic times, people are still willing to pay silly money for art. But not everyone can be J Irwin Miller, the industrialist from Columbus, Indiana, from whose collection the painting was sold for almost £41 million - almost double the expected price. However, there are opportunities out there for budding investors and some of the returns can be astonishing. Demand for high quality, signed prints from modern artists such as Banksy and Sir Peter Blake can see limited editions soar in value from a few hundred pounds to a few thousand pounds in months. According to Lawrence Alkin, gallery director of artrepublic, in Bond Street, Brighton, Blake prints such as the Sources of Pop Art series are now so rare that one bought new for £795 was worth £2,500 in less than a year. That's a jump of 215%. Try asking your bank for that kind of interest rate. Mr Alkin said: "Smart investors know that hot artists are the new way to invest and they get really involved in buying art prints."Iconic artists like Peter Blake are probably very underpriced for the quality of prints he's producing."One of the secrets of investing in art is getting there first. A few years ago, no one had heard of "guerilla" artist Banksy but now almost everyone can recognise one of his stencilled, satirical works which have appeared on walls up and down the country. Mr Alkin said: "We sold seven of his Kids On Guns prints back in 2004 for £350 each. One of them came up for auction last year and made £103,000." For people looking to invest, the first piece of advice Mr Alkin gives is to "buy what they like" but those unwilling to gamble on their own tastes can ask an expert to point them in the right direction. He said: "We are always selling things that we know will go up in value. We are selling a Peter Blake print of the Sgt Pepper album cover which, if it doesn't go up in value in six months, we will buy back at the full retail price."  |