Ramtin Naimi

These were basically old Marlboro ads that Richard Prince had basically ripped out of magazines and then turned them into photography and sold them, but they became iconic because he owned the concept of appropriation as an artist.

Early 2000s, late 90s, Richard Prince came out with those nurses where he was printing out those old nurse book covers and then painting over them.

And then that became more the iconic thing about appropriation.

And then you had Tracey Emin.

She was a lot more graphic than most female artists were in the 90s about the female body as a subject.

When you're trying to identify those things in real time, it's very, very difficult because there's a lot of art exhibitions at any time in the city of New York.

New York is the king of exhibitions.

There's ones that are positively acclaimed, but two, three years that artist fizzles out.

When you're collecting artists who are practicing and active, it's very challenging because there's a thousand artists in any generation and only 10 of them end up mattering 20 or 30 years later.

I collect active and then I try to go back and look at some historical things.

For whatever reason in the art world, it tends to work like this cycle continuously where things that were iconic 20 years ago tend to be undervalued 20 years later, then get very highly valued 30 to 40 years later.

I tend to find things that were the undisputable iconic bodies of work from the 90s and 2000s that today might be out of favor.

And a lot of the people who were very iconic in the 90s and the 2000s happen to be white male artists who are currently out of favor in the art world.

And there's not a lot of demand for their work, but it's a really good buying opportunity for those artists, at least in my opinion.

And then the next thing you look for is depth in that artist's collector base.

There are certain artists who have huge followings.

They put out 50 paintings through their multiple galleries per year and they're all sold.

They have 50 paintings that show up at auction and they all sell and they clear large price tags because their art appeals to a large demographic of collectors.

And George Kondo and Rashi Johnson are probably the two artists that fit the most squarely in that bucket today.

And then there are artists who are a little bit more niche, who have collectors and their markets are very, very strong, but their markets can't sustain 50 paintings, 100 paintings transacting every year.