Tuesday, March 5, 2013

Frederic Bouin

Frederic Bouin

From Prestige-international,
http://www.easy-catalogue.com/publications/prestige/juin2012/

Although he has declined to be interviewed in the past, Frederic Bouin recently allowed us to visit him in his Trump Tower apartment on Fifth Avenue overlooking Central Park in New York. His story is an illustration of the what many refer to an the “American
dream”.

Frederic arrived in the United States at the age of 19 1/2 with $100 in his pocket, and knowing little English.  He survived by quickly learning enough English to do all kinds of odd jobs, like selling umbrellas on the streets of New York City, where he first landed and stayed for two months.  Then after a few years in Los Angeles trying to break into the movie business as a writer and director, he moved back to NYC in 1986, where he got a job at the Circle Gallery, a public company with 35 galleries all over the United States employing a large number of art consultants, all paid on commission.  Frederic became Circle Gallery’s number one art consultant within his first two weeks, and during his first year there, he proceeded to more than doubled the business of the prior top art consultant in the company’s entire 25 year history. This got the attention of the competition, who tried to lure him away with very attractive offers, which included being offered the job of
president of another public company in the same field..  He even got offers from clients to run their businesses, but he remained loyal to Circle Gallery, where continued to establish new records before leaving at the age of 30 as a new millionaire to start his own art consulting business.

Frederic confines the scope of his business to the impressionist, modern, and contemporary period artists, mainly from the United States and Europe. This eliminates the issue of authentification, which is more difficult with old masters and antiques.  Business grew as he quickly became known as someone with the uncanny skill of being able to time the market in the art world, picking the right artist at the right time. For example he recommended to acquire Basquiat’s paintings for his clients, when other dealers were telling these same people they were crazy and overpaying. A year later the price for those paintings doubled, and continued to increase in value 10 times the original cost after 5 years.

When I asked, “do you think people are overpaying for art?” he answered, “better to overpay for a good painting than to buy a mediocre painting cheap, even from a well known artist.”  He went on to say “it’s an art in itself to be able to navigate the art world if your intention is to make a good investment.”  He realized early on that even if a client isn’t buying art for investment, it is always better to encourage them to choose among potential good investment pieces, rather than from artists who would be a long shot. This is especially true after the financial meltdown, because there is a lack of confidence in banks and the stock markets.  In this environment art is getting much more attention, and he believes that what happens in the art market over the next 20 years will be something we have never seen before. Demand is increasing, while supply is becoming more scarce.

The advent of the financial crisis has resulted in new record highs at art auctions around the world, consequently there is less good art available, making it more important than ever to know how to identify “good art”.  Because of his excellent tract record, Frederic’s clients trust him, and he has never had a law suit. Many years of doing business on a hand shake (so far he has never signed any contract except a consignment agreement), yet always living up to his word, he has built a reputation of reliability that is one of the key to his success; adding with the fact that his clients have never lost money on a painting. However, he is careful to inform his clients that art isn’t liquid, and to only invest money they don’t need to live on.  He tells them they must have holding power, “if you are not able to sell art at the price you are asking now, you will sell later for more.”  He explained that some large scale art merchants will tell people that art “is” liquid if they don’t care what they get for it at auction, and in that respect it is true, there are enough auctions around the world to get cash for art within 3 to 6 months.

Frederic has worked hard over many years learning enough about art to effectively guide his clients into the right or “safe” pieces.  He is not an art historian, nor does he know all the new artists which are constantly appearing and disappearing on the art scene.  He is also not credentialed to authenticate paintings. His talent or what his former company called “magic”, or having the “touch” or “nose” for finding the next big thing, analysing and understanding the undervalued artists. Frederic works from his Trump Tower apartment and his home in Florida. He is married with a son.  His marriage could easily be made into a movie, but he didn’t want to talk about it.

When we asked why he doesn’t choose to live and work in France, we got a sad response from the former Parisian, who has grave concerns about the state of things in France today.  He feels that the only hope for France to become a thriving and powerful country again is to attract investment, and create incentives and hope for people to become successful. He feels this could be done by making France a sort of  ”tax haven”, rather than raising taxes yet again and driving away entrepreneurs that could hire people.  He ponders the effect that would result if France were to copy a tax system like Hong Kong, not taxing income below a certain level, and to consider a flat tax of 15% on people who would pay taxes, coupled with a guarantee that taxes will not go up for next 100 years.  He thinks reforms such as this would resolve the unemployment problem, and bring down debt and deficits, because “France is still the most visited country in the world, and loved by many”.  All this together with the French government managing the spending better; he feels, it would create a wave of French people coming back to France, and attract foreigners to come and live and invest in France as well.  If this were to happen, he thinks France could be amazing.