In these tough economic times, on any given day I get at least five phone calls from people who are looking to sell art.  I used to buy and trade art, but no longer do it as it became more of a headache than it was worth. Even though I am an art dealer, there are things that I might sell, but experience has shown me  that some things, including art, out of fashion may come back.  Whether we like it or not, there is always an element of fashion and hype, an element of the “art of the moment”, although I should clean up some areas of the collection.  The other thing that happens has to do with the really bad works you have bought to be nice to somebody, or that you did on the impulse of the moment, etc.  I have so many of these pieces done for exactly this reason.  They are so fair that they are not worth anything, so I figure why sell them. I dont want fair, I want exceptional.  Except for cleaning up my inventory, there is no reason to do it, because I cannot sell them. The good things that may not meet my taste of the day now, may be the the taste of the day in ten or twenty years.  I can open up any art magazine from the 1980′s, and you would probably recognize only a few names. It will be exactly the same in another twenty years for the last issue.

     One of the mistakes that too many people make is to equate a piece of art with its total value and its price on the market.  “It went down so why should I keep something that has lost its value? I think you need to take a longer -term view and a more quieter view of the market.  The market is one dimension, but some artists come back later.  Ed Rushcha never had a market unti about ten years ago. Some people come back and, as I said before, if a piece isn’t worth anything, why sell it? Or if a piece you paid $100,000 for is now worth $2o,000, is it because the market collapsed, or because the artist was hyped and his market collapsed?  Except for food, shelter, college or taxes, I don’t see any reason to sell.