Hayffiield l, Exposición de cuadros en Rauma, Finlandia, Unsplach

Art is full of rituals. It wraps itself in mystique, guards its pricing, and acts as though beauty cannot be determined by something as vulgar as money. This leaves many new collectors wondering: is it acceptable to ask for a discount on something “priceless”? And if so, how?

The answer is yes, but there are nuances you should know before you ask.

Before we get into specifics, it helps to understand one fundamental difference between art and almost everything else you buy. There is no price list. No catalogue. No way to open another tab and find the same painting cheaper somewhere else — we are talking about original works. The price of a piece of art is always the result of multiple subjective factors: the artist’s reputation, the gallery’s standing, the timing, the provenance, and, ultimately, what a particular person is willing to pay for something that resists measurement. This makes the conversation about price both more complicated and more human than in almost any other industry.

So, let’s get straight to the point.

Discounts depend on where and how you are buying.

1. Buying directly from an artist

The most flexible option — whether you are buying through their website, Instagram, Saatchi Art as an individual seller, or at a personal exhibition. A 10–20% discount is realistic, especially if you are buying more than one work or paying in full upfront.

Interestingly, accomplished artists (not the same as popular ones) tend to price conservatively, leaving little room to negotiate. The better the artist, the less flexibility there usually is. They know the value of their work, and frankly — most artists dislike negotiating. Keep it brief, keep it respectful, and do not push.

2. Buying through online platforms (Artsy, Saatchi Art, etc.)

A quick distinction worth knowing: on Saatchi Art, artists usually sell directly. On Artsy, you are typically dealing with galleries, so the negotiation dynamics differ accordingly. With artists, see the section above; with galleries, see the section below. According to Artsy’s own data, around 74% of buyers who ask for a discount on their platform receive one, with an average of around 15% and discounts occasionally reaching 30%. Whether the work is listed at a fixed price or on request, it is always worth asking.

3. Buying directly through galleries or at art fairs

Art fairs are essentially galleries on the road — most booths are run by galleries, so the same rules apply in both contexts. At Art Basel 2025, galleries were offering reductions of 20–30% below asking price for works under $1 million. For smaller galleries and more affordable artworks, 10–15% is a standard and reasonable ask. One practical note: discounts during fairs tend to be lower, as galleries have invested significantly in their booth and arrive with higher expectations for demand. The best time to negotiate is between shows, when there is no urgency on either side. And avoid discussing discounts in front of the artist — it is awkward for everyone.

4. Buying through an art dealer or art advisor.

These two roles are often confused but work quite differently. An art dealer typically builds their margin into the asking price, so any discount usually comes out of their pocket — less room to move. An art advisor, on the other hand, works on your behalf, negotiating with galleries and dealers using relationships that a new collector simply does not have yet. Their fee — typically 10–15% — is paid by you on top of the sale price, but a good advisor can often more than offset this through better access and pricing. One important piece of advice: always ask your advisor directly how they are compensated. Some have undisclosed arrangements with galleries that can work against your interests. A trustworthy one will answer without hesitation.

If you are negotiating a discount with a middleman — whether it’s a gallery, an art dealer or an art advisor — keep in mind that the price cut is sometimes split with the artist, while other times it is absorbed entirely by the intermediary.

5. Buying at auction.

You do not negotiate at auction. But remember: the hammer price is not what you pay. Buyer’s premium — typically 25–28% — is added on top. Factor that in before you raise your hand.

Geography matters as well. In the United States, asking for a 20% discount is completely normal — part of how business is done. In Europe, the standard is closer to 10–15%, and tone matters more than the number. What reads as confident in New York can come across as aggressive in Paris or London. Read the room.

How You Ask Matters More Than What You Ask

This is the part nobody writes about.

Artists often find discount requests genuinely painful — not out of greed, but because every work represents months of labour, doubt, and something deeply personal. A request to lower the price can feel like a devaluation of all of that. From the collector’s perspective, it is simply a search for a comfortable number. But the artist does not know that unless you tell them.

Which is why we would encourage you to ask yourself before you negotiate: why do I actually want a discount? Is it habit — the instinct to win a deal? Or is it a genuine question of finding a price that feels right? Because you are not buying a commodity. You are acquiring something with real psychological, emotional, and aesthetic weight — something you will live with every day. How you enter that process matters as much as the fact of owning the work.

Many artists care deeply not just about selling, but about who the work goes to, why the person wants it, and where it will live. When you explain why this particular piece matters to you, that is not a weak negotiating position. It is a form of respect for the artist’s work. And it is often precisely what opens up flexibility that a cold request for a discount never would.

This is where a price negotiation in art can become something more: the start of a relationship, and often the real beginning of collecting well.

Happy collecting.

Yours,

The Paragone

Six Blues by Donald Sultan, 2006.

The Crisis of Chronic Tiredness

We are a constantly tired generation. We get tired of work, the news, others' expectations, and our own standards. We even get tired of describing why we are so tired.

Yes, this seems to be what adult life is, and it requires a state of near-constant cognitive tension.

This is especially true for professionals whose identity is tied to continuous problem-solving, rapid decision-making, and measurable outcomes. The mind learns to stay alert because almost everything around it requires an immediate, effective response.

When the human nervous system remains in this state of hyper-alertness without adequate decompression, its natural adaptive resources inevitably deplete. A person may still appear productive, competent, and in control, while internally feeling increasingly fragile, irritable, detached, or unable to recover properly.

Even after the laptop is closed, our minds remain switched on, unable to relax. This is one of the quiet crises of modern professional life: the body leaves work, but the nervous system does not.

The Limits of Standard Wellness Modalities

When facing chronic exhaustion, the instinctive response is often to treat the brain like an isolated machine requiring maintenance. High-achieving professionals frequently construct rigorous self-care routines: meditation applications, therapy, exercise, supplements, sleep tracking, and pharmaceutical support.

These tools can be valuable and, for many, necessary. However, they often focus on the mind as if it exists separately from the physical surroundings to which it returns every evening. This is where something vital is missed: the visual environment.

The visual environment matters because the psyche does not recover in isolated abstraction.

Even if we have had a very effective meditation or therapy session, it is always time to return to the physical world.

And since the eyes are one of the most critical centres for gathering information and shaping our psyche, the visual surroundings play a vital role — what the eye repeatedly perceives becomes part of the emotional climate of daily life. For instance, a cluttered, sterile, or visually aggressive environment can keep the nervous system in a state of low-grade tension, while a coherent, emotionally resonant environment can signal safety, continuity, and rest.

If the home environment lacks sensory depth, the eye finds no place to rest. The brain remains trapped in the same rigid visual vocabulary that drives its fatigue during the working day: screens, notifications, documents, dashboards, artificial light, and flat digital surfaces.

The Human Need for a Safe Harbour

In environmental psychology, a restorative place refers to a physical environment that helps the body shift from vigilance to recovery. [1]

When the workday is defined by invisible metrics, abstract pressure, and digital overload, the human brain suffers from a form of sensory deprivation. It does not need more stimulation; it needs a different kind — slower, richer, quieter, and more embodied.

A home cannot merely serve as a functional holding space between working hours. At its best, it becomes a psychological environment that helps the nervous system return to itself. This is where the presence of authentic, physical art shifts into a meaningful tool for emotional restoration. Not as a replacement for therapy or a medical cure, but as part of a daily environment that helps the mind soften, reorient, and recover.

Can looking at art lower stress levels?

Why is original art better for mental health than digital prints?

The Neurobiology of Visual Restoration

Integrating art into a living space introduces several psychologically restorative qualities:

1. The Phenomenon of Soft Fascination

Environmental psychologists use the term “soft fascination” to describe a state in which attention is gently held by something that does not demand problem-solving. This is entirely different from professional attention, which is sharp, instrumental, and goal-oriented, constantly asking what must be fixed, answered, or completed. [2]

A painting asks for another kind of attention. When observing it, the eye moves across the physical surface: the thickness of brushstrokes, the subtle layers of pigment, the movement of colour, and the interaction of light and shadow. The mind is engaged but not forced; it is invited to stay without being required to perform. This looking can be deeply restorative because it allows the brain to remain awake without being under pressure. The mind does not always need to be emptied; sometimes it needs to be held by something that asks for nothing in return.

2. Neuroaesthetics and Emotional Reward

The field of neuroaesthetics studies how the brain responds to beauty, form, colour, and aesthetic experience. When a person looks at art that genuinely resonates with them, the response is emotional, bodily, and deeply regulating, creating pleasure, recognition, calm, curiosity, or a sense of being returned to oneself. [3]

This internal chemistry serves as a distinct biological reward system, yet not all rewards are the same. Rewards triggered by digital notifications or professional validation are sharp, short-lived, and tied to external performance, often carrying anxiety.

In contrast, the reward of living with art is slower and becomes part of the emotional rhythm of a home. A cherished artwork functions as a reliable, screen-free source of visual and emotional nourishment — there in the morning, after a difficult call, or when the day has been too much. Over time, the work becomes not just something one owns, but something one returns to, acting like an emotional anchor for the psyche.

3. Tactile Grounding and Sensory Reconnection

When professional output exists mostly in the form of strategy, code, presentations, messages, or digital documentation, the psyche can become disconnected from the physical world. Artwork acts as a focal point of tangible reality. It is a dense artefact of human presence: hours of attention, gesture, physical labour, and emotional intensity held in canvas, paper, pigment, wood, or fabric.

The mind registers this differently from a screen image. An artwork carries imperfection, texture, weight, and trace, reminding the viewer that not everything meaningful is frictionless, editable, or instantly replaceable. A recent study by researchers from King’s College London and the Courtauld Institute of Art found that viewing original artworks was associated with a 22% reduction in cortisol, the body’s key stress hormone, compared with 8% for participants viewing reproductions. [4]

For a nervous system trained to live in digital abstraction, this physicality is grounding. It creates a visual and emotional boundary between the world of work and the world of recovery, quietly asserting: the digital workspace has ended. A different reality begins here.

Thus, if you are regularly exposed to stress and constant cognitive tension, start with one artwork your eye wants to return to.

Not necessarily the fashionable one. Not necessarily the expensive one. Just the one that visually gives you what you need right now: peace, energy, tenderness, courage, silence, or a sense of inner order.

Choose the work that changes the state you come home to.

In the following articles, we will explore in detail how to choose art for the home for different psychological needs — and how to live with art under one roof happily ever after.

Take care.

Liste Art Fair Basel 2025, Image: Silke Briel, Courtesy Liste Art Fair Basel

Every June, the art world arrives in Basel. For one week, the city becomes a temporary capital of contemporary art: collectors, advisors, galleries, curators, and museum professionals—everyone gathers here.

If you follow art media, it is easy to assume that the Art Basel fair is exclusively a world of top-tier galleries like Gagosian, closing six-figure deals with elite collectors who then fly home on private jets. But that is only part of the story. Running concurrently is an equally vital event for the art market: Liste Art Fair Basel—an independent fair founded in 1996 and dedicated strictly to younger galleries and emerging artists. For a collector with a budget under €10,000, it is honestly the more interesting place to be.

Put simply, Art Basel is where you buy the artist everyone already knows. Liste is where you find the artist everyone will know in five years.

This year’s edition runs from June 15 to 21 at Messe Basel, Hall 1.1, featuring 106 galleries from 36 countries—the largest edition in Liste’s history.

Here is why Liste is specifically right for a collector with a budget under €10,000

• First — Down-to-earth pricing. Emerging galleries working with emerging artists price their works for collectors who are actually buying to live with art, not for hedge funds. Works in the €2,000–€8,000 range are accessible and genuinely excellent.

• Second — Direct access. At Art Basel, the best works are often pre-sold to institutional collectors before the doors even open. At Liste, you can walk in, talk directly to the gallerist, and acquire something extraordinary the same day.

• Third — The atmosphere. The vibe at Liste is inherently democratic. Even without a six-figure budget, you are a genuinely welcome guest in every booth. You often get the chance to meet the artists themselves while they are still accessible and grounded. It is an incredible experience of diving deep into the art world.

• Fourth — The right timing. Positioned just before and overlapping with Art Basel, Liste serves as the go-to destination for collectors, curators, and critics hunting for new talent and future stars. The people who shape the market are at Liste looking for what comes next. You can be there too.

A practical note:
If you are visiting Basel this week, we highly recommend going to Liste first—with a clear head, free from fatigue, and more importantly, without the imposter syndrome that whispers you need a million-dollar budget to own great art. Visit Art Basel afterwards for context and inspiration.

The art world will tell you that serious collecting happens only at the main fair. We disagree. Serious collecting happens where the artworks feel alive—not where they are treated merely as financial assets.

That is Liste.

Happy collecting.

There is a distinct, high-end anxiety that comes with the desire to buy art. In any other luxury market, having a few thousand euros makes you a celebrated client. In the art world, it often makes you feel like an uninvited guest at a very exclusive party.

If you have ever stared at a blank wall in your living room, opened Artsy, and immediately closed it out of sheer intimidation, you are not alone. The system is designed to feel opaque. But buying your first artwork, or starting a collection, is not an exam you need to pass. It is actually a very personal, intimate, and deeply rewarding ritual. You are buying art you will live with and see every day.

We structured the process of starting your art collection so that it feels both pragmatic and less intimidating.

Fisher Suite (Observer) by Leonhard Hurzlmeier, 2022

1. Define Why You Want to Buy Art

Before you look at a single canvas, you need to be honest with yourself about your motives. Are you buying because your new apartment has echoing, empty white walls? Are you looking for an emotional anchor — something that changes the energy of the room every time you walk in? Or are you quietly hoping this piece will fund your retirement in fifteen years as a financial asset?

There are no wrong answers here. As we explored in our previous guide, What Kind of Art Collector Are You?, understanding your dominant motivation is the only way to avoid buyer’s remorse. If you are an emotional collector, do not let an art advisor talk you into a cold, minimalist investment piece. Define your “why” first, and let it act as your financial shield.

2. Train Your Eye: Look at Too Much Art

Training your eye is necessary because it helps you understand what genuinely attracts you and holds your attention. It is not about “forming your taste” according to what you should like. Visual discovery — of both good and bad art — helps you understand your preferences more clearly and recognize what truly makes your heart beat faster.

You will begin to notice what you are drawn to. Do you respond more strongly to a particular material? Are you more attracted to form or color? Minimalism or expression? By looking at different kinds of art, you also begin to know yourself better.

It is wonderful if you have the opportunity to visit museums and galleries, but online discovery works well too. We will explain where and how to search for art below.

3. Shift Your Mindset From “Art Lover” to “Collector”

An art lover looks at a painting and thinks, “That’s beautiful.”

A collector looks at a painting and asks, “What do I feel — and why?”

Shifting into a collector’s mindset means looking more deeply and more consciously. Who is the artist, and what is their story? How does this specific work speak to your personality and your life? How will this piece become part of your everyday life at home?

Remember: you are no longer simply buying an individual object to fill a gap above the sofa. You are curating a personal visual library. You are building a collection you will interact with every day, and it should become a resource for the reason you started collecting in the first place.

4. Set Your Financial Framework

The biggest mistake beginners make is not setting a clear financial boundary. Without a framework, you will either buy nothing out of fear and exhaustion or overspend on overhyped nonsense.

Defining your comfortable spending range, most importantly, helps you focus your search. In the contemporary art market, price brackets usually work roughly like this: under $5,000, under $10,000, under $50,000, and above.

Let us reassure you right away: price is usually not a direct indicator of the quality of the work. We will discuss art pricing in the next essay, but for now, it is enough to know that for under $5,000 you can find a work no less powerful than one priced at $100,000.

Once you understand your approximate budget, you can search more deeply within that range. This will significantly increase your chances of finding what you need without compromising. So decide on your number, and stick to it.

5. Ignore the Trends

The contemporary art market thrives on artificial hype.

Galleries love to create waiting lists and synthetic scarcity around “trending” young artists to encourage panic-buying among new collectors.

Artists shoot reels to generate attention through likes.

Platforms like Artsy and Saatchi release their “curated lists.”

Sometimes all these promotional efforts are justified, but often they do not reflect the actual quality of the work. And even if the art is genuinely good, it may simply not be for you.

Ignore the noise. Trends are short-lived, and the artists heavily marketed today are often resold on the secondary market tomorrow. If a piece does not challenge you, comfort you, or spark a conversation, it does not matter how much hype surrounds it.

Trust your eye and your gut feeling, and buy for longevity.

6. Start the Hunt

Now that you are equipped with the essential recommendations of a beginner collector, it is time to start the hunt.

Your hunting strategy depends first of all on the price range you have chosen. In short, the higher the price — especially from around $10,000 and above — the more useful it becomes to involve an intermediary, such as a gallery, art dealer, or auction house, because legal and transactional details can become more complex. If your budget is around $5,000, buying independently is often completely reasonable.

Look for graduating MFA student exhibitions. Use social media to follow independent curators. Scout digital platforms not necessarily to buy immediately, but to track which independent artists are building consistent, authentic bodies of work. When you find an artist whose vision aligns with yours, buy directly or work with small, transparent galleries that actually respect your budget.

Building a collection is a slow game. Take your time, trust your taste, and remember: the art you live with should make you more.

Next week, we will look more closely at how to hunt well, the legal details of buying art, and how to negotiate a discount.

Happy collecting.

Untitled: 8, 2024 by Na Kim

It is usually assumed that finding and forming our sense of self is a deeply internal process. That we must first know ourselves well to feel confident, show up fully, and be in healthy contact with others.

Artist Na Kim looks at this process differently. And there is something important we can learn from her.

Kim was born in Seoul in 1986 and lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Before gaining wider attention as a painter, she built a serious career in design, serving as Art Director of The Paris Review and Creative Director at Farrar, Straus and Giroux. In recent years, however, her painting practice has moved into sharper art-world focus.

Her debut solo presentation took place at White Columns, New York, in 2023. In 2024, she was included in The Selves at Nicola Vassell Gallery, and in 2025, Nicola Vassell presented Memory Palace, her first solo exhibition with the gallery. She has also shown at Art Basel Miami Beach and the Independent Art Fair.

This places Kim in an interesting position: still emerging as a painter, but already moving with serious institutional and gallery recognition.

Kim explores many themes, but today we want to focus on her Selves series, which is simply extraordinary. It consists of portraits of women rendered in bold, luminous colour where form is defined by contrast rather than line.

What makes her work compelling is not only her command of such complex colour relationships, though that alone is remarkable. It is her entire approach to portraiture.

Untitled: 6, 2024 by Na Kim

At first glance, it seems that Kim is painting herself, and there is genuinely some resemblance. But in her own words, this series is about “imagined personalities.” Through painting different states of a woman, she asks: how does personality actually form? How does a self come into being? Is it through actions, emotions, feelings? Through colour and form? What allows us to see ourselves more clearly — and to become visible to others?

And she seems to answer her own question: the self is not formed in isolation. It forms through contact.

Untitled: 14, 2024 by Na Kim

Kim’s figures always face the viewer. They shift in form, feeling, and mood, but they are always in contact with whoever is looking. Always in wordless dialogue. And we are actively drawn into it.

Not by drama, narrative, pity, or anger — none of the reliable triggers. And yet we stay.

Why?

Because we feel needed here. We become part of this woman’s inner process. She, even in a painting, requires our presence for something that is happening inside her. She does not ask, does not demand, does not manipulate. She simply exists and invites us to exist alongside her.

Untitled: 28, 2024 by Na Kim

This is Kim’s central idea: we come to know ourselves not only through our own inner experience but through the presence of another. Love, tenderness, fear, stubbornness, attentiveness, sadness — we feel these most fully as a resonance with someone who is looking at us. The feelings and reactions of the Other fill us and reveal what our own are capable of. More than we thought.

And that makes both of us more.

And perhaps this is the most important lesson of Kim’s work: the search for the self is not limited to the self alone. To be seen by ourselves and by others does not require action or performance.

Sometimes it requires only the ability to stay in contact.

Untitled: 8, 2026 by Na Kim

Man in a Bowler Hat, 1964 by René Magritte

This is particularly maddening for a new generation of collectors who have no time and make decisions impulsively — if I like it, I want to buy it right now.

But no. You have to submit an inquiry, wait for a response, and then, when someone finally calls you back, open with: “We would be delighted to know you better!”.

Seriously?

This feels especially absurd in 2025, when even luxury brands have learned to publish six-figure prices without a second thought. But when price mystification is practised around emerging or mid-career artists, where prices are far more accessible, it generates nothing but irritation.

So why does the art world still do it?

Firstly, pricing is sometimes not fixed and depends on a collector’s profile, artist momentum, geography, and demand. Think of it as a light version of a credit score. For galleries, it’s a way to understand how much you’re willing and able to pay.

Secondly, it’s manipulation. In the 21st century, there is still a belief that opacity creates exclusivity. The art world operates on the assumption that hidden prices make art feel like access to a private world — and you must pass an “interview” before the gallery decides at what “individually exclusive price” to sell you the work, as if purchasing a ticket into an elite club. My personal favourite is when they lean in with a mysterious, hypnotic voice: “Several other collectors are also interested in this piece.” So I’m supposed to fight for it? Really?

Just to remind you: we are living in the 21st century, and I want to spend €5,000 on an emerging artist, not €50 million on a Renaissance work of global cultural significance.

So, how to hack the system and avoid overpaying?

1. Ask for the price directly — and ask again.

Say it plainly: you don’t have time, or you simply don’t want to share personal information.

2. Contact the artist directly.

If the gallery contract isn’t exclusive, the artist may be able to sell to you directly. The specific work might not be available — but sometimes you’ll discover something you love even more. And buying directly from an artist is a remarkable experience. That is what real belonging to the art world actually feels like.

3. Don’t confuse Instagram hype with market validation.

Visibility is not the same thing as value. There are at least two ways to inflate a social media following artificially — and in the art world, those followers are often not the audience that matters. If you’re buying for love rather than investment, trust your own eye above all else.

4. Use public price databases before you buy.

Before committing to a gallery price, spend some time researching what the artist’s work has actually sold for at auction (Artnet platform, but with paid access) or check platforms like Artsy to look at the artist’s actual pricing. If a gallery is asking €8,000 for an artist whose average price is €5,000 — that’s a reason to question the gallery’s pricing.

5. Be cautious with hyped artists right now. We’ve usually been discovering an artist through social media algorithms — and often that means the moment has already passed and prices are at their peak. Either wait a few months for the hype to settle, or consider other artists entirely. Trust me: there are hundreds of genuinely talented painters who are worth exploring — ones untouched by the hysteria of likes and shares.

What’s most striking is that despite the art world’s constant rhetoric about needing new collectors, price transparency remains one of the biggest barriers to buying art.

Because of this old-school commitment to hidden pricing, it’s often the artists themselves who suffer most — waiting months for a sale simply because getting a price feels like applying to the CIA.

Challenging this dynamic is in the interest of both collectors and artists equally.

Happy collecting.

Zalfa Imani, Unsplash, 2025.

People often say they buy art because they “love art.” But love, it turns out, takes very different forms.

Some buy art the same way others buy stocks: studying market dynamics, investment potential, institutional support, and long-term liquidity. Others fill their apartments with blurred figurative paintings that perfectly match their designer lamps. Some collect art because it symbolises belonging to the seductive and mysterious art world.

The problem is that many people begin buying art before understanding what role they actually want art to play in their lives.

As a result, they often end up collecting someone else’s advice and desires: market trends instead of emotional resonance, status instead of meaning, expensive decoration instead of financial assets.

Understanding your motivation can fundamentally change your entire approach to buying art. It helps navigate the art market more intelligently, build a collecting strategy effectively, and avoid wasting time and money on overhyped nonsense.

And despite how mysterious the art world likes to appear, most collectors are usually driven by a small number of emotional, financial, and psychological motivations.

Jacob Hoferlin, Unsplash, 2025.

The Investor

For this type of collector, art is primarily an asset.

The emotional relationship with the work is secondary to questions of long-term value, market positioning, scarcity, and institutional support. These collectors pay close attention to auction history, museum recognition, blue-chip artists, and major galleries representing them.

There is often something surprisingly rational about this approach. While the art world romanticises collecting as something purely emotional, the reality is that art has long functioned as a financial ecosystem connected to wealth preservation, status, and speculation.

And in many ways, investors understand the mechanics of the market better than anyone else.

The Decorator

Some people buy art not because they want to “collect,” but because they want to live differently.

For them, art shapes atmosphere. It changes the emotional architecture of a home. A painting can soften a space, create tension, calm the mind, or completely alter how a room feels psychologically.

These collectors are often drawn toward colour, composition, texture, harmony, and scale. They care less about institutional prestige and more about how the work lives beside them every day.

This relationship with art is far more serious than the art world sometimes admits, because the spaces we inhabit inevitably shape our inner life.

The Status Collector

Art has always functioned as social language.

Long before Instagram, collectors used paintings, objects, and collections to communicate education, power, refinement, cultural access, and belonging. Contemporary art still performs this role extremely well.

These collectors are usually drawn toward recognisable names, fashionable galleries, highly visible artists, and works that already carry social validation. In many elite circles today, owning the “right” artist functions almost like wearing the right watch or entering the right private club.

The interesting thing is that this motivation is often hidden beneath the language of “taste.”

The Emotional Collector

This is perhaps the most instinctive type of collector.

These people buy art because something inside them reacts before logic has time to intervene.

They return to the same work multiple times. They think about paintings long after leaving the gallery. Certain artworks begin following them psychologically. Sometimes they buy pieces that make absolutely no financial sense — but they simply cannot imagine letting them go.

For emotional collectors, art is deeply personal, and this approach is becoming more relevant than ever. People are no longer searching just for beautiful objects—they are searching for meaning

The Legacy Builder

The rarest collectors are usually thinking beyond themselves entirely.

For them, collecting is not simply acquisition. It becomes legacy.

These collectors often support emerging artists (artists in the earlier stages of their careers), build long-term relationships with galleries and studios, and think carefully about coherence across decades rather than individual purchases.

They are not simply buying works they personally enjoy. They are building a memory of who they were. Often, every work inside such a collection reflects something about the collector’s own journey, character, obsessions, and values. The collection slowly becomes a psychological portrait of its owner — art as a reflection of identity.

Many of the world’s most important collections were built exactly like this.

Most people are never just one type of collector.

An investor can unexpectedly fall in love with a painting. A decorator can slowly become emotionally attached to certain artists. A status collector may eventually begin searching for something more personal and meaningful.

People also move between motivations throughout their lives.

Understanding your dominant motivation can change your entire approach to collecting. Different types of collectors require different strategies, different sources, and often completely different relationships with the market itself.

The more expensive the artwork, the more pragmatic the motivation behind the purchase — and the more intermediaries enter the process: advisors, galleries, consultants, auction specialists, private dealers. Not simply as sellers, but as mechanisms of validation, risk reduction, and investment credibility.

So, reflect on your relationship with art, because the real difference between good collectors and bad ones is not knowledge, money, or access — but self-awareness.

Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s The Tower of Babel (1563)

Let’s not rub salt into the wound — you are probably already well aware that the modern world now resembles the Tower of Babel more than ever. We are building our castles higher and higher, already reaching into space, but along the way, we are losing the skill of human contact, not only with others but with ourselves.

What does art have to do with this, you may ask?

During the COVID pandemic, attendance at physical museums plummeted due to lockdowns, while virtual tours, online collections, and art lectures experienced explosive growth. During other periods of crisis, for instance, after 9/11 in the US, many museums also noted increased attendance. In moments of individual or collective stress and adversity, art becomes a place to process these experiences and find at least temporary relief.

Why does this happen?

Why, when we look at art, do we stop breathing, or our eyes fill with tears, or, on the contrary, we feel a surge of energy and trembling excitement…?

Art critics or art historians are unlikely to be able to answer these questions for you. Such reactions are too visceral, too personal, to be framed by historical facts or explained through context, technique, or genre. It feels more like a psychological response than an appreciation of mastery.

When our external and internal worlds descend into chaos, and the future seems uncertain, our intuitive pull toward art follows deep psychological patterns. What are we unconsciously looking for?

1. Restoration of Balance and Stability in Chaos

In times of uncertainty, the psyche seeks order where it can still be found.

The museum itself, with its familiar route, silence, and schedule, becomes a model of an ordered world.

And a painting with a clear, resolved composition provides the brain with the very visual and semantic anchor it desperately needs.

This is an act of mental self-soothing through structure.

2. Relief and Containment of Unbearable Emotions

Our own emotions in a crisis can feel intolerable because they are formless and all-consuming.

Art gives them form and boundaries. It transforms personal anxiety, grief, or anger into an object that can be observed from the outside.

This is my pain; this is what it looks like. I still feel it, but it’s no longer just inside me. I can look at it from the outside, and it already hurts a little less.

This is the psychological mechanism of containment, where the artwork acts as a safe vessel for feelings.

3. Searching for an Exit and a Different Perspective

When we feel trapped, we look for a window into another reality. Art is precisely that window.

It doesn’t make empty promises that tomorrow will be easier. It shows that “otherwise” is possible in principle.

The tender domesticity in a Vermeer interior, the expansive, untroubled skies in a Constable landscape, or the serene weightlessness of figures in a Raphael fresco — these are alternative worlds that exist here and now.

They remind us: your inner landscape can also be organised according to these — more peaceful, spacious, or sublime — laws.

4. Restoring Dulled Sensitivity

Routine and chronic stress act as anaesthesia.

We stop noticing shades of colour, the complexity of textures, the subtle movements of the soul. Art becomes a training ground for sensation.

It teaches us again to see and feel, engaging neural pathways abandoned in survival mode. We leave a museum not just with new thoughts, but with renewed organs of perception, capable of finding beauty and meaning even in the small.

5. Spiritual Growth and Connection to Eternity

Time flows differently in a museum. Next to a portrait painted five centuries ago, our momentary anxieties lose their absolute significance. We feel ourselves part of the long human story — a story of suffering, the search for beauty, inquiry, and overcoming. This doesn’t diminish our personal pain but places it in a different, universal perspective. We are not alone; we are a link in the chain. And this knowledge provides not naive hope, but existential resilience — the deepest and most unshakable foundation possible.

Thus, our encounter with art is a complex, often unconscious act of psychological self-regulation.

When we are in a state of psychological instability, we can use art as a precise tool: for structuring inner chaos, giving form to vague feelings, searching for alternative models of being, rehabilitating our own perception, and gaining spiritual scale.

We truly hope that life will be kind enough to spare you from needing art as a remedy for pain.

But if the moment comes, consider walking into the nearest museum or gallery. Or simply open the Instagram page of an artist who makes your heart tremble.

Frederic Leighton’s Flaming June (1895).

Take care.

Nocturnal animals, oil on canvas, 2025

Based in Riga, Frolova works primarily with oil painting.

What we see in Katya Frolova’s work is colour fighting against form, as if an enormous amount of energy has been trapped inside the body. An energy of vitality, sexuality, and emotional intensity, but at the same time of fear, uncertainty, and vulnerability. Everything that makes us feel alive.

But it seems as though this energy is afraid of itself. It has already outgrown its own bodily boundaries, yet still cannot break outside to experience itself beyond inner confinement.

That is why, in her paintings, everything seems to vibrate and radiate from a place of internal pressure and emotional claustrophobia. It simply does not have enough space within.

This inner tension is exhausting. The energy begins consuming itself, burning through the form that makes physical presence and action impossible.

And that is what makes Frolova’s work feel so powerful, it becomes a visual reminder: strong inner energy must find liberation — or it turns against itself. Creation or destruction.

What do you choose?

Mermaid, oil on canvas, 2025

Untitled, oil on canvas, 2025

Forget-me-not, oil on canvas, 2025

Marie, oil on canvas, 2025

Every two years, the art world gathers in Venice for its most prestigious ritual: the Venice Biennale.

Officially, the exhibition runs for over six months. In reality, the industry arrives for the exclusive three-day Preview Week (the Vernissage) where collectors, curators, dealers, advisors, and everyone lucky enough to secure an invitation gather together. These days are dedicated to making the hottest deals, building connections, and simply gossiping.

Artists are there, too, of course. The established ones pitch new “ambitious” projects over cocktails. The emerging ones stand quietly with champagne glasses in hand, desperately hoping the galleries’ marketing investments in them will pay off and their contracts will be renewed.

The Biennale, and contemporary art in general, likes to position itself as a reflection of the modern world. This year, it succeeded almost too well.

The entire event became a perfect Black Mirror of the current global geopolitical and moral disaster. Russia, being cancelled and sanctioned almost everywhere else, still has its own pavilion, generating even more publicity through controversy alone. Ukraine and its supporters, with little success, respond with outrage and protest performances. America, historically convinced of its role as the global architect of justice and humanitarian values, dominates the moral atmosphere of the event, aggressively exporting its ideological framework by threatening cancellation for almost anything if you are not considered “moral enough” — even when it concerns one of its own artists (our sincere condolences to Alma Allen).

The spaces of the Biennale no longer revolve around artistic depth. They revolve around statements, optics, trends, ideology, and institutional signalling. It sounds almost ridiculous, but art increasingly feels secondary here to the performance surrounding it.

And that raises an inevitable question: Where exactly is the art in all of this?

Perhaps you did not miss it because the art simply was not there, just like you were not.

Art in Venice has been drowned by a total fear of standing by truth and personal values, without which real art cannot exist. Speaking honestly without fearing exclusion from the current, quite literally empty dialogue. Reminding people of what actually matters.

The industry constantly demands change in its endless fight for attention and relevance, yet remains strangely silent about the global crisis slowly eroding its own strategic foundation:

Art itself.

But the contemporary art industry no longer seems interested in that responsibility.

Because meaning is risky. Beauty is suspicious. Integrity is boring. And depth performs poorly online.

The tragic figures in this story are the artists themselves.

Many still carry the old romantic belief that genuine talent will eventually be recognised. Even after years inside the system, they continue working in small studios, stretching impossible budgets, doubting themselves, producing work under relentless economic pressure while hoping the next exhibition, the next curator, or the next collector might finally change their lives.

And during events like the Biennale, many stand silently with champagne in hand while their “serving” industry decides whether their inner world is commercially, politically, or socially acceptable enough to deserve visibility.

Yet fortunately, real art has never depended entirely on Venice.

Good art still survives far away from institutional spotlights. It lives in independent studios across the world — in apartments, co-livings, and forgotten workshops. In exhausted painters working after midnight. In artists who continue making things not because the market asked for them, but because they are still trying to understand something essential about being alive.

That is the Art worth looking for.