Essay

Why buy art?

By Kit Pancoast Nagamura

At dinner with friends recently, someone raised the question: Why buy art? There's plenty of art to be seen on TV, in books, at museums, and these days you can even download a slide show of Picassos on to your computer, he argued. So why buy the real thing?

People give vastly different reasons for purchasing art. For some, it's all about the financial investment, a wager that a certain artist's work will appreciate with time. For others, it is a sentimental souvenir of where they've been and what they know. For still others, the appeal is in the artist's technique or labor. Some purchasers choose art that matches their home's interior design. For a few, art simply penetrates down into the molten core of their imagination.

In my case, owning art was a given. My parents were artists, my grand- and great-grandparents as well, and I'll bet even my earliest ancestors doodled on cave walls. Naturally, I studied art in college, too. I never thought I'd have to pay for art; I figured I'd just inherit it or make it myself.

One day, however, to thank me for a stack of handmade torinoko paper I sent her, my mother mailed me an original ink drawing by Brazilian landscape artist Roberto Burle Marx. When it arrived, the work sprung from its mailing tube as muscular and startling as a live zebra in the house. I saved up for several months to get it framed properly, to showcase the lines and layered depths of its ink washes. I gaze at it daily now, with pleasure.

It's taught me that a good piece of art defines a room, imbuing the space with an atmosphere of its own. It begins conversations, comforts on rainy days, and connects one intimately with the imagination of another. Also, I've realized that good art, though high-priced, is one of the best bargains going. If you buy a painting for 300,000 yen and keep it for 20 years, that's just 41 yen a day, less than the price of a postcard stamp. Of course, the most altruistic reason to buy art is to support artists both financially and through encouragement. This, in turn, nurtures the cultural environment where one lives, which is a priceless benefit.

Writing this, I recall a college friend of mine whose tiny apartment had no view to speak of. She preserved one whole wall for her "air-conditioning" art collection. She would hang a single piece at a time, changing with the seasons. In winter, she put up a huge oil painting of bathers in a steamy room, to warm the room. In summer, a gigantic photo of green bamboo cooled and brought the imaginary shush of leaves into her dark and unventilated space. She showed me how art can make windows into other worlds, and how it can even ease the struggles of day-to-day living.

Shukan ST: FEBRUARY 17, 2012

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