Representational Art Work - Why Invest in it?

Representational art is no longer a style of the past and today’s smart art collectors are responding by purchasing art with form and aesthetics. Representational artists in the 21st Century are taking a well-deserved look to the renaissance and baroque masters to create today’s new masterpieces. For decades the art world has focused on modernism, post-modernism and whatever "ism" available to act as a crutch for a lack of artistic talent. However, many collections, galleries, and artists are becoming concerned with the intrinsic quality embodied in representational art.

Today, cities worldwide are adding respected galleries that are well versed in selling both 17th-19th Century paintings along with contemporary realism art collections. Effectively they are bridging the gap between the talents of historical realism in art and today’s representational art masters. Consequently, representational art is commanding larger prices for collectors and public commissions alike; in fact, there has been a steady increase in the value of representational art for the past ten years. Living realist artists are selling their works for hundreds of thousands of dollars while paintings from the late 19th century, once thought worthless, are being purchased at auction by celebrities such as Andrew Lloyd Weber and Sylvester Stallone for millions. Generally auction houses provide a fair indicator of current trends in art and these trends have far reaching effects in all aspects of taste and value in the art world.

More classical ateliers and traditional art academies for academic representational art have opened in the last decade than in the last one hundred years. Students want to learn how to create art using the techniques of the old masters, something that has been lacking from virtually all university education in the 20th century. Realism has now taken a firm root in periodicals as well. Evidencing this are popular publications such as Fine Art Connoisseur, Art and Antiques, Art in America , and American Art Collector which cover more representational art galleries and artists than ever before. Further, the pages of these publications are filled with advertisements concerning representational art. Money speaks volumes in the art world and in recent years the appreciation of representational artists has outperformed even the US stock market. Certainly the appreciation for the aesthetics of the past and the contextualization of contemporary masters has led to the success of this great artistic style. Clearly there has never been a better time to invest in classical realist artwork.