Buy, Sell, Hang on Your Wall
Alex Hubbard’s Basic Perversions, shown at L.A.’s Maccarone gallery. Hubbard’s work has fluctuated in value over the years, according to ArtRank.
Photographer: Fredrik Nilsen/Courtesy Alex Hubbard/Maccarone
In 2014, Carlos Rivera, a young gallerist in Los Angeles with some hedge fund experience, started a website called sellyoulater.com. It offered something offensive to most serious artists and gallerists: a simple guide for how to make the most money possible buying and selling art.
It took off immediately. The site displayed an unadorned spreadsheet, with artists’ names ranked under headings indicating their investment potential. Dan Colen, Walead Beshty, and David Ostrowski, whose mixed media works sell for five or six figures, found themselves categorized as “peaking.” Banksy, anonymous yet overexposed, topped the “liquidate” column. Soon after Rivera started the site, he changed its name to ArtRank—a less provocative and, he thought, more professional choice.