Monet1-maker
摇钱画

（译者按：Monet-maker可能谐形谐义自money-maker，后者指“会赚大笔大笔钱的人”或“赚钱的东西”又或“赚钱的生意”，而本文所分析的艺术品投资也正是指的是当前人们将印象派创始人Monet等名家的作品作为投资对象，以获取高额利润。）

EVER since the 1870s, when a group of French landscape painters produced work d__________① unacceptable for the Paris Salon but went on to sell rather well, malnourished artists have comforted themselves with the thought that the market would one day put a proper value on their work. For many (mostly long-dead) artists, this finally appears to be happening. （1）Investors in financial assets may have had a jumpy few weeks, but salesrooms have notched up[1] record prices in May.

19世纪70年代，一群法国风景画家的作品被认为登不了巴黎画展的大雅之堂，可销路却一直很好。从那以后，“营养不良”的画家们就总是想“市场早晚会给他们的作品一个合适的估价”，聊以自慰。对于许多画家而言，最后好像确实梦想成真了（大多数是在去世多年以后）。过去几周，金融资产投资者们的日子也许过得心惊肉跳，可拍卖行却拍出了5月份的最高成交价。（译者按：这句话就是说这几周艺术投资行情看涨，金融投资如履薄冰。Jumpy的意思是“nervous and anxious, espically of fear and guilt”。）

Emerging markets are doing particularly well: Sotheby's2 recently held a sale of Latin American art that f________② a record $22m, including $5.6m for Raices (Roots) by Frida Kahlo3 (pictured above). Even living artists are selling for unprecedented sums. Collectors bought $432m of contemporary art at Christie's2, Phillips de Pury2 and Sotheby's, almost as much as they spent a week earlier on Impressionists and Modern art.

新兴市场运行尤为顺畅：苏富比拍卖行最近拍卖了一系列拉美艺术作品，总成交价又创新高，达2200万美元，其中包括芙烈达•卡罗的《根》，成交价为560万美元。就连健存画家的作品也创下了前所未有的高价。收藏家从佳士得、菲利浦·德·普瑞、苏富比等拍卖行竞买的当代画家作品总价值达4.32亿美元，几乎等于他们一周之前竞买印象派和现代派画作所给出的总价。

All this has helped art outperform equities in recent years, at least on some price-performance measures. According to an index compiled by Jianping Mei and Michael Moses of New York University, fine art has outperformed the S&P 500 in each of the past five years. This is historically o________③. Other measures show that prices of art did far worse than equities over the past 25 years and slightly worse during the past half-century.____________________________________________________?（那么最近何以使得画布比纸张更受人青睐呢？）

总的来看，这种情形促使艺术品比股票获得更多收益，至少从性价比上衡量是如此。（译者按：这个句子中，“outperform”在经济学上交“超出大盘”或“跑赢大盘”，股市术语。“price-performance (ratio)”是指“价格与表现（之比）”，也就是我们常说的“性价比”。）根据纽约大学梅建平和迈克尔·摩西创建的艺术品指数，美术作品的收益超出了过去五年任一年的标准普尔指数500。这一现象历史上极为罕见。其它一些衡量标准显示，从过去的25年看，艺术品投资回报率远低于股票，而就近半个世纪来看，艺术品投资回报率与股票相差无几。（译者按：这句翻译让我很挠头，欢迎给出最佳翻译。它应该涉及一种投资回报率的问题，短期投资来看，艺术品投资不如股票；而长期（50年）来看，则相差无几。也就是说艺术品适宜于用作长期投资。）那么，最近何以使得画布比纸张更受人青睐呢？

Three things, according to James Goodwin, author of a forthcoming book on art markets. First, rich people have got much richer. At last count, 8.3m people across the world had more than $1m in financial wealth, according to a report by Capgemini and Merrill Lynch, up 7.3% on the p_________④ year. These ever-wealthier folk bid up the prices of positional goods4—those in short supply that become highly sought after. This may explain why, for example, Willem de Kooning5's painting “Untitled XVI” recently sold for $15.7m—double its estimate—at Sotheby's in New York. “If you're bidding against a Bill Gates or a Steve Jobs,” says David Barrie of the Art Fund, a British charity, to illustrate the point, “you're going to lose.”

即将出版的一本关于艺术品市场的书的作者詹姆斯·古德温认为，原因有三。首先，富人更富了。根据凯捷咨询公司和美林公司一项报告，迄今全世界有8300万人财产超过100万美元，比上年增长了7.3％。这些富翁哄抬地位性商品（即求购者众的紧缺商品）的价格。比如说，威廉·德·库宁的画作《无题十六》最近在纽约苏富比拍卖行以1570万美元的价格卖出，比预期翻了一番。英国慈善家、艺术基金会的戴维·巴里对此进行了形象地比喻，他说：“假如你跟一个比尔·盖茨或者是一个史蒂夫·乔布斯（注：美国苹果电脑公司创办人、苹果电脑公司现任董事长兼临时CEO）去竞拍，你指定会输。”

Second, buyers are spread across the world, which makes for a global market. Also, （2）they often buy patriotically, which is one reason why Russian art has done well of late, and why dealers are excited about the p________⑤ for price rises in the artworks of emerging markets, such as India and China.

其次，购买者遍布全世界，促进了艺术品市场全球化。此外，他们常常出于爱国情结去购买艺术品。这也是俄罗斯艺术品近来为什么走俏的原因之一，同时也是新兴市场如印度、中国的艺术品的升值潜力让商人们蠢蠢欲动的缘故之一。

Third, art is a lagging indicator. It is hard to value, and buying and selling incurs high transaction costs. Thus liquidity[2] in the market is low: buyers have held on to work for 30 years on average over the past 125 years. （3）But art is less removed from the fates of other assets than it might look. It seems to do well during periods of above-trend growth and inflation. In a steady economy, it rises and falls slowly. Every so often, it suffers a spectacular crash. （4）Not that the painters lying in Paris's cemeteries mind very much now.

第三，艺术品属于一种滞后指标（译者注：经济学术语，变动时间则往往落后于一般经济情况的变动）。其价值难以估量，买与卖都可能付出高额交易代价。这样一来，艺术品市场的资产折现力就低：过去125年里，买方平均要用30年才把手中的艺术品卖出。不过，相比其它资产，艺术品的命运并不像表面上看上去那样能好多少，（译者按：这里最好不要把removed一词理解为remove的过去分词，而是应看做是一个形容词，即表示“远离的，大相径庭的”，这样整个句子就好懂了。）似乎只有在增长超过趋势和通货膨胀时期才有出色表现。在一个稳定的经济环境中，艺术品价格波动就小，而有时候，艺术品也会带来巨大的损失。反正现如今，巴黎公墓内长眠的画家们也不太在意这些啦。（译者按：牛津在线词典对“not that”给出的两个解释是：1）used to say you are not suggesting something，如：She wouldn’t tell me how much it cost.----Not that I was really interested. 2）used to say you don’t think something is important, 如：Not that I mind, but why didn’t you phone yesterday？此句中，我倾向于选择第一种解释，至于汉语如何表达，倒值得思量。）

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