Can We Compare Art and Watches?

Source:  Images and content by A Collected Man @ ACollectedMan.com.  See the original article here - https://www.acollectedman.com/blogs/journal/art-and-watches

The act of buying both art and watches can be done in extremely private ways. These days, almost any transaction concerning large amounts of wealth can be carried out with surprising amounts of anonymity. You can bid at auction over the phone, or by proxy, and then there is the option of going through a dealer with even the purchase price remaining a secret. At the highest levels, you can also contact the artist or watchmaker directly and commission one-off creations that never see the open market. Given these secluded routes to acquiring pieces in both worlds, it becomes harder to not only properly evaluate a market, but also the motivations behind such purchases.

However, Levin points out that while you can have a showy watch, you can also have a showy piece of art. “Just as some people might buy a Rainbow Daytona and show it off on Instagram, you might get people buying a KAWS piece and doing something similar. The interesting crossover here is that non-watch people will realise that a Rainbow Daytona is an expensive watch, just as non-art people will recognise a KAWS.” Countering this, you have collectors like Lang who buy those small independents, only identifiable by the smallest minority of watch collectors. Equally, in the art world, you have pieces that can hang on a wall and never draw attention to themselves, yet could have been painted by an old master. Curiously, Levin points out that in both collecting spheres, these loud and quiet pieces can, and often do, live in the same collection.