People no longer trust their own instincts for buying art. And the obfuscation perpetuated by all involved in the contemporary art world makes even otherwise intelligent buyers wary of acquiring the “wrong” work. Imagine the horror of having spent Rs16 lakh on an oil and acrylic when video art was the toast of the cocktail circuit. It doesn’t, of course, matter if you actually like that oil and acrylic, or if looking at it makes you happy. What matters is that you’re so last season. And you’re obviously not reading the right pseudo-arty magazine or hanging out with the person who decided what was passé and what was not.

International auction houses like Sotheby’s and Christie’s make things easier for insecure buyers. They bring to you the readymade collections of other discerning buyers (with established taste). These buyers put their collections together over a period of time, back when art wasn’t so trend-driven, and back when personal taste still had some currency.

Sotheby’s will have Lord and Lady Attenborough’s private art collection up on exhibit tomorrow (and on sale on 11 November) in London. This is how the Gandhi director’s art collection is described in the auction catalogue:

A superbly representative collection of modern British art,
put together by one of Britain’s most prolific actors, directors and producers, with enormous discernment and tenacity over some 60 years with enormous discernment and tenacity (sic)- paintings having taken precedence over curtains and carpets in the family home. Much of the collection has not been seen in public for decades.

The overstatement of the “enormous discernment and tenacity” of the collection not withstanding, some of the works on offer are truly marvellous, and include several lovely pieces by artists such as Graham Sutherland and Paul Nash.

But apart from the personal branding that the filmmaker provides to the collection, what is the sense of it all? How can someone else’s lifelong art collection possibly have the same emotional value for you? For instance, the collection includes an oil on canvas by the English artist Sir Matthew Smith. Smith was Attenborough’s neighbour at some point and must mean infinitely more to the Attenboroughs than to the random buyer at Sotheby’s who could well spend his money on art that comes to him in more organic ways— art that speaks to him and not art that spoke to Attenborough.

By buying from these collections, you buy not just the artwork itself but also a part of Attenborough’s aura. The Christopher Wood that you plan to hang above your sofa might have graced the star director’s library sometime. I would have loved to own something ( anything) that hung in Kubrick’s library if I could own it, so I understand that for fans of Attenborough this is a great opportunity to buy what he is selling because “he has been led to the absurd position of possessing more paintings than his walls can contain”.

But this is not about Attenborough. And this is not about this collection. This is about how name branding has become a marketing tool in the art market. Sketchy deals have rendered much in the art world gray (though this is far more true for antiques). The provenance of an artwork is such a difficult area for galleries and auction houses today that being able to say that such and such is from so and so’s personal collection gives everything on offer a clean chit. 

But it is when the provenance becomes more important than the art itself that we have a problem. This is The Attenborough Collection and that’s why you’ll buy it. You know it: He stamped your art.