How To Invest in Artists, with Marine Tanguy
Marine Tanguy, CEO of award-winning talent agency for artists MTArt
💸We live in a world where Kim Kardashian has 70 times more Instagram followers than the Louvre. Why does that matter?
In today’s episode, Marine Tanguy, CEO of award-winning talent agency for artists MTArt, tells us why, as well as how she helps artists grow and accelerate their careers. She also covers how to get started investing in art and offers compelling insights into what is driving the market.
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“When I realised that pricing is just a representation of how many people desire something and how good of a job you have done at creating that desire, and I created that appeal, then I found that really exciting and creative, because you created it.”
Who is Marine Tanguy?
Marine Tanguy has been hailed as the ‘the CEO Breaking the Rules of the Art Industry’. She opened MTArt in 2015, and it is now an award-winning talent agency for the most exciting up-and-coming visual artists worldwide.
MTArt was recently recognised by The Times as the 17th fastest-growing company in the UK, with sales reaching £8.3 million last year. It recently raised £1 million to expand in the Middle East. It is opening an office in Doha and is helping Hyundai and Fifa to open the World Cup 2022 with an art display by Lorenzo Quinn.
It was also the first certified B Corp® in its sector, and a big part of its mission is to empower artists economically. On average, MTArt Artists have seen their works grow 150% in value year on year while signed to the agency, offering collectors promising investment opportunities with artists.
On what drives art pricing
Marine believes pricing represents how many people desire something and how good of a job has been done at building that appeal. She says the way to look at art is like anything else in a B2C business: it is about creating desire through marketing. For example, Charlotte Tilbury makeup is more expensive than Boots classic makeup partly due to an incredible brand.
Part of her Marine’s job is to help people get excited about meeting the artists her agency represents. “We create desire around people who are talented. It's not like we’re creating desire out of nothingness, but we are doing marketing, and the marketing is proving that our artist is constantly achieving.”
In her agency, marketing is about proving the artist is constantly achieving milestones. Those career milestones can vary from public art projects to institutions, to auctions, to big features by well-known journalists. The milestones depend on the career of the artist, but this is what goes into building that market pricing of the art.
On investing in art as a beginner
Marine says to, first of all, take a tiny step back and do some research first. If you were suddenly saying, ‘I want to buy stock options’, then her advice would be to read a little before randomly buying options. The same goes for art. There are a lot of online resources.
It can be better to invest in art with friends - then you can share articles, compare what you find and have been been told, and build confidence that you can invest with any budget. Some of Marine’s earliest investments included a Conor Harrington piece, which was £600 and would now probably sell for £7,000 to £7,500.
If you're not an art insider, it’s best to research, get to know insiders, or do it amongst friends. Even on a limited budget, it's a matter of looking through the upcoming shows and the reviews and seeing who is coming up on the scene.
Having a small portfolio of at least three or four people means you can take different risks. For artists who have been successful for the past ten years, when you save up and buy a work of theirs, it's unlikely not to continue to rise if it's got that strong track record.
Smaller budgets come with higher risk. It might also, at times, be better off to save up over two years and go for something slightly more established with a track record.
It’s about understanding your comfort level around risk. Then research can be acquired through insiders, yourself, or can be amongst friends, where you make it a fun thing or go research art as a couple, say twice a month, go and see stuff together.
On the role of tech & always learning
MTArt uses social media and various tech tools and is planning to buy land on the metaverse as well. They’ve also used blockchain to track certification. Marine has always seen tech as a tool and does not think it should ever be more than that, albeit an incredibly efficient and powerful one.
Not integrating tech in running your company is challenging when building on a large scale. But Marine does not relate to the whole cult obsessiveness of some of the articles on token art.
Even though MTArt has now been running for seven years, Marine finds herself in learning mode – she’s now learning about building a company in five different countries and relearning about the structure of her firm.
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