Historic foundations

The first art fund to have been recorded goes back in 1904 when La Peau de l’Ours was created, initiated by the French art lover André Level. The fund was to last for ten years.
It included twelve members who each invested 250 Francs every year.
What makes this first fund interesting is that they specialised their investment in the then-contemporary art which meant that the collection accounted for works by Pablo Picasso, Matisse, André Derain, Vincent Van Gogh or Gauguin to mention the most well-known artists.
At the time, modern art did not attract positive comments from the public and the critics, and one may recall that these artists had to exhibit their works at the Salon des Indépendants.
On the 2 March 1914, right before the outbreak of the World War I, the collection was auctioned at Drouot in Paris and made 116,545 Francs, while the initial value of the fund was 27,750 Francs. The sale was a real success and demonstrated to the art market the strong potential of the modern artists.
It is worth mentioning that the members agreed to donate 20% of the total sale to the artists who had been in the collection and one may see this action as the shadow of Droit de Suite which was to be adopted by the French law six years later.

From this first approach to art and investment, one may be tempted to observe, 100 years later, today’s art market. By that, this paper intends to focus on the past ten years.

Object

The object of my dissertation is to analyse the current attitude toward contemporary art while considering it as an investment. Who we relate to in term of attitude account for two main groups: first, the auction houses, dealers and other bodies involved in the retail of art and inevitably recommend at some point the buyers/investors; the latter constitute our second interest as they exemplify the purchase of the product and are motivated by various matters which we intend to indentify. We hope to