New Kids on the Block

We keep hearing about the new Asian and Russian collectors snapping up Warhols and Picassos before the eyes of breathless auction-goers. But kids? A piece in the Wall Street Journal calls out the under-18 crowd as the most recent addition to the art market demographic. (Unfortunately, you have to subscribe to wsj.com to read the full story.)

Among the startling anecdotes are that collector Aby Rosen's 11-year-old son Charlie placed the winning bid ($352,000) on a Jeff Koons gnome sculpture at Sotheby's contemporary evening sale last November and nine-year-old Dakota King began her collection, which includes a Warhol, at the age of four. Teaching your kids about art is, no question, a worthwhile endeavor (especially since that don't learn much about it in school). But how does a child who can't read the first volume of Warhol's catalogue raisonné collect his work?

You don't have to possess a working knowledge of art history to get something out of a trip to the museum — that's why there are wall texts and audio guides — but if you're dropping big bucks to actually own art, you should know about and understand it because you're influencing the artist's market and, then also, career. Which seems to be the real problem with the idea of kids collecting art.

Couldn't it be damaging to be known as the artist whose work was included in a collection inspired by its owner's love of candy? 14-year-old Taylor Houghton owns an image of a chocolate syrup painting by Vik Muniz and Jan Albers' Untitled Chocolate #8 because he loves sugar. Doesn't that obscure the more serious intent of the work, in Muniz's case, that he deals with illusion tempered by humor? And potentially even relegate the painter/sculptor/printmaker to the lowly status of "decorative artist"?

And career concerns aside, it's got to be embarrassing to have a reputation as that painter who's popular with the tweens.