Julian Roup – Intersecting triangles of support Ep18

In Episode 18 of his new book, author Julian Roup considers his lifelines during Covid-19, and the current vagaries of the art and wine markets.

In case you missed Episode 17, click here.

Life in a Time of Plague

Sussex, 24th April 2020

By Julian Roup

Lying in bed this morning listening to the birdsong and enjoying my first coffee of the day, my thoughts go out to those people with whom I am most closely walking this walk and how much they mean to me. There is, as they say, nothing like a hanging to concentrate the mind. I’ve just listened to a podcast of a 60-year-old Bristol based pilot who survived the virus in intensive care, and it has made me think some sobering thoughts.

Inevitably, it’s made me think about death and about my own possible demise, and they take me out of my sunlit bedroom across the world to family and friends whose daily emails and calls are helping me so very much to cope with our current troubling reality.

There are intersecting triangles that start with my wife, Jan, here at home with me, our son Dominic and his partner Stephanie in Brighton Marina and our daughter Imogen, staying near Rye with her godmother. Then, further afield, there is a three-cornered construct that forms the other part of my intimate world, the tight links 6,000 miles south to my sister Jay and brother-in-law Guy in Cape Town, South Africa, and 6,000 miles due west across the Atlantic and America to my brother Herman and my sister-in-law Teri, in Santa Barbara, California.

Then there is my sister’s daughter Nikki Louw in Cape Town, and Jan’s sister Gail and her husband Tich in Bristol, from whom I hear regularly too.

I am lucky also to hear regularly from friends, Ivan in Exeter, Devon, Elma in Johannesburg, Jacques and Barbara in Cape Town, Richard in Cape Town, Larry in Melbourne, and Adrienne just down the road from us, near Eastbourne.

Each of these people have enriched my life greatly with their love and friendship and have helped me survive mentally, physically, financially and in so many other ways too, with laughter and good advice and the odd admonition too, when I’ve needed it, but maybe not always appreciated it at the time.

These people make up my tribe, my landscape, my world to a greater degree than they might imagine. If I die, it is in their hearts and minds that my life will echo longest.

Before I can get any more maudlin, I am cheered to hear on BBC Radio 4 that a week from today human trials on a vaccine will begin here in the UK. Volunteers are being interviewed on the radio. There will be two groups, the first will get the Covid-19 vaccine, the second will get a jab against meningitis as a control. They have been told not to put themselves in danger, and to abide by Government regulations on social distancing. Scientists at Bristol, Oxford and other universities are working flat out on research they have been doing on the Coronavirus for some years, and they sound hopeful.

The debate about how long we will be in lockdown has got a little clearer this Friday morning April 25. It seems it will not be totally lifted until June. The great fear is that if we get a second or even a third wave, these could be worse than the first, matching what happened with the 1918 Spanish Flu epidemic that killed 50 million people worldwide.

During the day, I issue another story for H&H Classics, on a 1970 Dodge Challenger like the one in the 1997 cult movie Vanishing Point with its car chase across America. It is estimated to sell for £60,000 to £80,000. The story generates a fair amount of press interest. Among the responses is a note from Jim Waterson, the Media correspondent of the Guardian, who sends the following note: “Julian, I have no idea why you put me on your mailing list and the chances of me covering any of your quirky auction items are zero, but I absolutely adore the weird details of your emails and they are a constant delight. Thank you in these strange times, Jim.”

I Google him and find that he is a Jesus College Oxford history graduate. I write back to apologise for sending him press releases he is not interested in and say I will remove his name from my mailing lists. I add my thanks for his amusing note, which as a Guardian reader myself, and husband of a former Guardian journalist, I very much appreciate. He replies immediately, as follows: “No please do not remove me! I adore them. The Cheshire wood piece a few months ago gave me enormous delight. I just wanted to respond.” I thank him and said I would continue to include him in mailings.

I then share this exchange with my client, Damian Jones, Head of Sales with H&H Classics who then reveals that his brother Sam Jones is The Guardian’s correspondent in Madrid, whose copy about Covid-19 in Spain I have been reading for weeks. It is such a small world, as we are currently being reminded. Sam then reaches out by email himself to say hello, and to say too what a small world it was. We are all connected.

In the evening, Jan and I take Gus for a walk on the forest, the big central section that we call the ‘Big Bowl’ which runs down to a little waterfall in the stream known as the ‘Garden of Eden’. There are very few people about at 6pm, just three sets of dog walkers and two lads on mountain bikes we pass on our hour-long stroll. The temperature, after a warm sunny day, is still around 20 degrees, and the petrol and coconut smell off the huge waves of bright yellow flowers on the gorse bushes is all around us. We stroll with Gus up to the high point stand of pines, and sit on a bench there looking west towards the lowering sun. It is peaceful, and no-one could guess that the world was in turmoil.

It’s strange what you focus on in this time and food plays a large part. You can be forgiven for wondering if as Rupert Brooke asked: “Is there still honey for tea?” With death stalking us it seems a trivial concern.

I’m sitting in the garden today working on a client request to analyse the art and wine markets for the past 40 years, from 1980 to 2020, from an investment perspective. My time at Bonhams still gives me insights as well as access to art market specialists and Masters of Wine. I reach out to everyone who may be able to help and start typing fast.

But it feels good to have a deadline and have my feet held to the fire once more. Life goes on, and this job is a wonderful way to escape all worries about the virus for a few hours.

There have been huge changes in art market investment potential over the past 30 years. At the end of the 1980s we had the Impressionist boom, fuelled by Japan, which burst almost overnight as the decade turned, and the Japanese economy tanked. Since then, the general growth in the art market, combined with the globalisation of the market, particularly with the development of the internet, has created a much more stable series of micro markets that are not so dependent on just a few investors.

While trophy works by blue chip names in the Contemporary and Modern Art markets – Jean-Michel Basquiat, Andy Warhol, Jeff Koons, Francis Bacon – remain the most bankable of any artworks as they sell for tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars, they depend on a relatively small selection of ultra high nett worth collectors, which renders that area of the market potentially volatile.

Key to rise of the art market as an alternative investment market was the financial crash at the end of 2008. With even bonds and gilts affected like never before, the relative risk of investing in art diminished and a whole industry grew up around that, including everything from specialist investment funds to new investment arms of existing banks.

From 2003 to 2015, the most successful investment market of all – not just within the global art market – was the classic car market, and although that has softened, micro markets within it, for cars from the 1970s and 80s have picked up. Modern British Art has also enjoyed a second wave of success in the past ten years or so, as collectors have moved beyond the Abstract Expressionists to invest in the previously lesser celebrated representational artists, such as Eric Ravilious, Edward Bawden and the artists of Great Bardfield, as well as other names who have come into the limelight and been selling for tens if not hundreds of thousands of pounds, like Cedric Morris.

Looking to the future, areas to watch include Contemporary African Art and Photography, African-American Fine Art, Post-War design, especially Scandinavian Furniture, studio pottery and designer jewellery from the late 1960s onwards, like Grima and Kutchinsky. Other areas that do consistently well are designer watches and rare limited edition toys in their original boxes or packaging, especially Star Wars figures. If you’re going to buy any of this, buy the best you can afford as that is what will accrue more value in the long term.

On the subject of investing in wine the situation is simpler. I am briefed by Richard Harvey, a Master of Wine and head of Bonhams Wine & Whisky Department. Most fine wines, particularly Bordeaux, outperformed most other investments from mid 1980’s through to around 2011.  Since then, it has really been only top Burgundy that has increased in value significantly but even that has fallen back in the past year.  Richard says: “Apart from these two areas, vintage Champagne, some top Italian, Californian and Australian wines have performed well but I would not advise anyone now to look at wine as an investment.  After all, it is made to be drunk and when the bottle’s empty it’s worthless!” He certainly has a point.

When thinking of investing in the art market, the financial and stock markets have much to teach us. So the first principle is to educate yourself or use experts whose advice you trust because they have delivered for friends and people you know, over a long time.

The art market goes in seven-year cycles, so in the 40 years we are talking about, there have been five separate periods of highs and lows. Art and wine are both subject to fashion – just because an artist is doing well in one period does not mean he or she will always be doing well. Just like a company on the stock market.

Currently, for reasons of the world economy and Brexit coming on top of a general slowdown the art market is depressed. In fact, it is no coincidence that the art market follows the curve of the international financial markets – when rich people are flush with money, they spend more on luxuries and art is the ultimate luxury.

When buying or selling, the art and wine auction markets are very useful as they are to some extent transparent – you know what something sold for, so there is a benchmark. Private art gallery sales and private wine dealers do not offer prices achieved to the public. So study auction market results, they are a rapid way to learn about what is hot and what is not.

Sage advice to would be investors in the art or wine markets is to follow your heart and your taste buds, because then, if your purchase falls in value, you will still have something you enjoy.

As I finish writing, I wonder to myself why anyone just now is even thinking of alternative investment opportunities. But of course it is people who think like this who will bounce back fastest, make a quick buck soonest, and be off and running in the rat race the moment the starter pistol goes off. Such is the way of the world, and the coronavirus is not going to change that.

Click here for Episode 19

Visited 684 times, 1 visit(s) today