We need to talk about ‘Burnt’ Paintings.

It is 2023 and the number of people who seem to have ‘very important’ artworks to sell — but through unconventional channels — is worth exploring. Investigation shows that more often than not it is people who are looking to buy or sell a masterpiece on behalf of “a very important collector” or who have been given a mandate to spend ludicrous amounts of money on art.

If this were not worrying enough, what is even more alarming is how many of these individuals are not art world professionals at all, but people who moonlight as such as a sideline to their day jobs. They can vary from estate agents, to fashion designers, private chefs, and techies of various sorts, as well as people from the entertainment industry, among others.

This is not to say that people coming from other career paths outside the art world cannot have an interest in, or indeed access to, collectors and valuable artworks. But as a rule, genuine collectors with real buying power do not work through market outsiders. These ‘true’ collectors are basically who the art market bends over backwards to get a chance to cater to.

So why are there so many people from seemingly unrelated industries now ‘offering’ works of art — sometimes masterpieces — right, left and centre?

There are various ways of answering this question, depending on who your audience is. One could argue that it’s because art holds a universal appeal that draws people in, but in this case that explanation just won’t wash. Ninety-nine percent of the time it is not the artwork that draws these individuals in, but rather the commission they hope to pocket if they’re part of the transaction.

Let’s call this the Tertiary Market. The terms primary and secondary have traditionally referred to the broad distinction between the ‘trade’ community (the primary market in works of art never previously transacted), and the auction houses (the secondary market in works of art sold on one or more previous occasions). The tertiary market term has occasionally been used to refer to artworks transacted three times or more. I argue that the term ‘secondary market' adequately covers those objects, so it’s now time to redefine the term ‘tertiary market’ to account for the new culture of egregious outsider opportunism referred to above.

A few years ago I started using ‘tertiary art market’ to refer to these ‘outsider participants’ and to my great surprise it seems to have resonated and caught on as I’ve heard the term used in this context on a number of occasions since.

Any serious, seasoned art advisor knows their clients. They have to. They know their clients’ aesthetic tastes, what their clients are looking to buy, and what they can afford. Those art advisors who have clients with whom they work regularly — in a relationship built on trust, understanding and mutual respect — also know which work of art is worth showing to their client as a potential purchase, and which is not. That is an earned privilege. They also know that if and when collectors come to them wanting to sell one or more of their artworks, they will exercise that privilege by showing equal amounts of respect to the client as to the artwork itself. On such occasions they will only approach specific market contacts whom they already know to be looking for something that fulfils the criteria of what is being offered. What they will not do, is circulate information about that artwork indiscriminately to a wider community. Serious art advisors are horrified by this kind of practice, but for a lot of people in the current art market it is as simple as clicking the ‘Forward’ button on an email.

Many things can trigger red flags. For me, it is whenever someone tells me that they are looking to source, or trying to sell, a ‘Blue Period’ Picasso (or a ‘Jacqueline'), a Gauguin ‘Tahitian', a Modigliani ‘Nude’, a ‘Red’ Richter, an Yves Klein ‘Blue’, a ‘Black’ Soulages, a Bacon ‘Triptych’; the list goes on and on. In the past decade alone, literally not a week has gone by when I’ve not come across someone either claiming to ‘have a buyer for’ or ‘being in direct contact with the seller’ of one of these works. The curious thing is that often none of those works is actually for sale. Moreover, ninety percent of the people trying to make these transactions happen, have never seen the works in question in the flesh.

As a general rule, unless you are working with a trusted industry associate, never try to sell anything you’ve never seen yourself. Without exception, every transaction I have witnessed involved either works of art that the buyer (or their advisor) was able to view, or where at least one side was a credible art market participant.

Make no mistake, the tertiary market I’m describing does more damage than good to the secondary market. Leaving the recent spate of immolatory NFT projects aside, it used to be the case that when an artwork was considered ‘burnt’ it was because it had failed to sell at public auction. This definition has now widely broadened. Players in this new tertiary market now seem to be refusing artworks that they themselves have tried to transact in the past and failed, primarily because of their lack of proper access. These works may not always be masterpieces of art history, but often Impressionist and Modern works for which there is always a market.

“I have seen this Monet before; it’s no good,” says a tertiary market player while turning a blind eye to the problem they have themselves created by generating fake supply and demand, year in, year out. “This Chagall has been around. It’s burnt. Shame.” Shame indeed, because the Chagall might have remained perfectly desirable if the first person it was offered to (who didn’t have a buyer) had turned it away rather than forwarding it to another dozen people in an effort to generate interest.

Obviously with every forward click, there’s the added commission that each person in the chain expects to pocket for the role they’ve played in ‘making it happen.’ By the time it actually lands on the desk of someone who might have genuine interest, the price has become so inflated it is no longer appealing. So they pass — over and over — until the work is effectively ‘burnt’. Again, this could be a work that might not have been for sale to begin with. The collector might never know of the secret adventures of their painting’s ‘fact sheet’ until they try to auction it and it flops.

Do these activities inadvertently make tertiary market players into taste-makers? If their interference ends up tainting the reputation of an artwork and rendering it ‘undesirable’, isn’t that cause for alarm? After all, many, if not the majority, of collectors today, buy for investment purposes. How do we go about calculating this risk in the return on their investment. It’s impossible. On the other hand, buying a work of art ‘burnt’ by the tertiary market, one might argue could be a good investment strategy. You could leverage the work’s unfortunate exposure for a better price and then hold on to it for a good few yers, until its fallen of the forwarding chain mail. After all, a good painting is alway a good painting, and the tertiary market's failed attempts to force it to change hands has no impact on its aesthetic value and quality. But it is very risky.

The Tertiary Art Market is a tangled web woven from greed, misinformation and tangential opportunism at the expense of unsuspecting collectors, or careless ones.

So, if you find yourself getting sucked in, please remember:

• A Letter of Intent (LOI) is often meaningless and no reason to disclose specifics about artworks or documentation to anyone.

• Anyone asking for “Proof of Life” should probably be in hostage negotiation, not the art market. This is a typical tertiary market practice. My advice if you ever get asked for one, is to just block that person altogether. Drastic I know, but just do it. You’ll sleep better at night knowing you never embarrassed yourself by asking a client to hold today’s newspaper up in front of their Picasso and take a picture of it with the date clearly legible.

• People don’t go around showing Proof of Funds (POFs) just because you asked them to. If someone said they had a bike to sell you, but in order for them to show you the bike, they first want to see how much money you have in your bank account, you’d think they were nuts. If you are going to spend millions on fine art, your lawyer and financial advisors will have to run expensive security checks first.

• If you ask someone for provenance or condition information and they take over two weeks to come back to you with the common excuse ‘the owners were on holiday’, they likely don’t have access to the owners. They’re relying on other people in the chain. Surely if you are so eager to sell a $100 million Picasso, you’ll make sure your team have all the necessary information at hand before you vanish and sabotage any potential deals.

• If you see any laboratory reports that pass a verdict on the work's attribution and authenticity, head for the shredder. Respectable labs and forensic scientists analyse pigments and materials, and use different forms of scanning techniques to analyse how the work was made and whether the findings are consistent with the particular artist or period. Proving that a particular red pigment was available to Renoir, doesn’t prove that the work you are dealing with was actually painted by the artist. Authentication is a three party job — the tripod stool —  requiring scientific analysis, provenance research and connoisseurship. All three need to align. No single person can do all three. Nobody is an expert on all artists.

• If you are not a dealer, a scholar, an auction house specialist, or curator, why would someone ask YOU to help them sell a Rembrandt? Or authenticate a Picasso?

• If someone has discovered a lost masterpiece, most sensible individuals would start their inquiries at the very top — with specialist dealers, auction houses, museums, and reputable scholars — rather than through LinkedIn or Twitter.

Caveat Inquisitor!

Researcher Beware!