Inversion Art Interview - Shlomi Rabi, Founder of Greenhouse Auctions
Our first interview features Shlomi Rabi, Former Head of Photography Sales for Christie's and Phillips; Founder of Greenhouse Auctions (acq. Artsy); and VP of Auctions for Artsy
Today we are posting our first in a series of interviews with experts across the art market. It's particularly fitting that this expert was the first that I ever forged a close relationship with back in August of 2020, four months before Inversion Art was even an idea.
At the time, Shlomi Rabi was building a company called Greenhouse Auctions, an online auction platform designed for the primary market. Shlomi was an expert on art auctions, having been Head of Photography Sales for both Christie's and Phillips, but he was new to technology startups. Shlomi and I met regularly over Zoom and I provided whatever advice I could about building tech companies. Little more than a year later, Shlomi's company was acquired by Artsy, where he became the head of their auction division.
In December of 2020, when I began developing the idea for Inversion Art, Shlomi was the first person I called for advice, so I thought it fitting that he be the first expert in our series of interviews about the market and artist development. Enjoy!
Shlomi Rabi
Former Head of Photography Sales for Christie's and Phillips, Founder of Greenhouse Auctions (acq. Artsy), VP of Auctions for Artsy
How have digital platforms like Artsy transformed the way collectors and investors discover and acquire ultra contemporary art? What do you think the future holds for online art transactions?
The online market is relatively new to the art world, which is notoriously averse to change and generally slow to adapt to technological advances. Marketplaces like Artsy have really pioneered a new way of collecting art and they have legitimized online transactions. To be clear, they were not the first to do so; bigger auction houses such as Christie’s and Sotheby’s had been holding online auctions well before the formation of online marketplaces. However, with those more traditional auction houses, online sales were generally considered the receptacle for lower-value and largely unappealing sales. Put more crassly, they were dumping grounds, whereas at marketplaces like Artsy there was no hierarchical legacy that prioritized in-person versus online.
When the pandemic hit, the art world was turned upside down somewhat, and the online community was vindicated as a perfectly valid and normative way to discover, bid and purchase art at all levels, including blue-chip. Suddenly online was the norm, and businesses realized that so long as you provide collectors with sufficient images and details to make an informed decision, they will buy. It was a great paradigm shift that also led to the seemingly endless spread of art fairs, which put a huge strain on galleries, particularly the smaller ones.
Now that the pandemic is thankfully in the rear view mirror, it’s fair to say that the pendulum is done swinging and has settled in the middle, which puts the online world in a much more respectable and profitable position than it was pre-pandemic. I certainly don’t ever see that changing. In an increasingly globalized society and the growing presence of digitally-native generations–particularly millennials and Gen Z–online only stands to gain ground from here on out.
Given your experience as Head of Photography Sales at both Christie's and Phillips, how do you evaluate the potential of photography as an investment compared to other art forms? What should investors look for?
Photography is a fascinating category, and a highly underappreciated one. For one thing, it’s one of the very, very few fine art departments at auction houses that is medium based, as opposed to region or period. It’s much more comprehensive and it’s gone through so many delightful permutations over the last two centuries. It’s very much a connoisseur’s market, particularly for the classic material, given the endless intricacies within the medium’s history. These are the most precious of works on paper, coated with chemicals and metals and pigments and there is a beautiful alchemy that is unique to photographs.
As far as the photographs market, overall it’s steady, even if the market for various owner photographs-only auctions has seen a big decline. The market for collectors who exclusively focus on photographs has been stagnant for a long while, and new collectors are much more keen to collect cross-categorically. In that regard, I’d say that Philips is probably the only auction house that has managed to sustain the action around photographs-only auctions, and they have mostly done so by focusing on contemporary photography, including fashion. The rest are doing better offering photographs in their contemporary art sales, which have been much more receptive to photographers such as William Eggleston, Robert Frank, Richard Avedon and Nan Goldin.
Overall, I’d say the market for classic photography remains strong for rare works, early prints of iconic modernist images, and contemporary artists. The others–particularly later prints and open editions have sadly weakened somewhat. In that regard, photography remains a great investment, but it has to be just the right piece by the artist. Case in point, over the last few years we have seen a stratospheric rise in auction results for exquisite early works by Man Ray, Edward Steichen and Helmut Newton.
What advice do you have for collectors interested in identifying and investing in emerging artists before they become widely recognized in the ultra contemporary art scene?
I get this question a lot, and for good reason. Collectors are seeing staggering prices achieved–some in excess of $1M–for artworks that were created within the last few years and originally sold for under $10,000. It’s created the impression that buying emerging artists is a great investment, not unlike a lottery ticket but with a much higher likelihood for success. In reality, the market is much more discerning. For one thing, those astronomical prices are achieved for only a small fraction of artists. For every Emily Mae Smith and Louis Fratino there are hundreds of talented artists who have not benefited from a similar rise. In that regard, what I tell collectors is go for what you want to live with, not what will make a good investment because that’s too much of an unknown.
Now, it’s not all one giant black hole. There are certain parameters that will increase the chances of the artist having a strong career. Graduates from the MFA programs at Yale, Art Institute of Chicago, Columbia, Hunter, RISD, Royal College of Art and the Slade School of Art (the latter two being in the U.K.) have seen a great success rate. Likewise, artists who are represented by tastemaker galleries such as David Kordansky, Dargent’s Daughters, Anat Ebgi, Henry 56 and Taymour Grahne have also been known to crack the top echelon of the art market. But still, there are no guarantees.
How do you envision the future of art auctions, particularly for ultra contemporary art, and what do auctions need to do differently when selling primary market works directly from the studio vs. those held by collectors?
Let me answer the first part of your question before getting to the second one. The market for ultra contemporary remains very hearty and in-demand. I don’t see that subsiding any time as the supply of fresh talent is indefinite, as opposed to categories such as Post-War or Modern that have a pretty finite number of artists that are eligible. That said, we’re already seeing a certain cooling–which was much needed–in the ultra contemporary market. It’s better for the artists’ careers and for collectors. For a minute there it seemed that collectors were willing to throw exorbitant sums of money at artists whose career was largely nascent, which was somewhat worrisome and even disheartening since it implied that scholarship and depth had given way to splash and fireworks.
As for the second part of your question, auctions could work closely with the primary market. In fact, I think that’s probably one of the most under explored opportunities. When I founded Greenhouse Auctions, which exclusively worked with artists and galleries, I made sure that we honored the ethos of a gallery. For example, we introduced the buyers to the artists, did not publish the final selling price, folded in right of first refusal and a 5-year no resale restriction. This meant that with the exception of the actual transaction–which honored the last bidder standing as opposed to the first vetted collector–everything else remained authentic to the primary market ecosystem. It’s crucial in order to get the buy-in of artists and galleries, and collectors, too, feel better about buying primary at auction when they know that the artist will directly benefit from their participation.
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