Banking on the Appeal of ‘Bad Art’

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Last year, Grayson Perry, Britain’s most famous transvestite artist, made a limited-edition print entitled “The Island of Bad Art.” The etching, conceived as a faux-16th-century map of an island that looks suspiciously like Venice, uses satirical place names to list the characteristics that define, according to Mr. Perry, bad art: “mainstream,” “corny retro,” “vaguely decorative” and “kitsch,” among others.

Yet for all the disdain that Mr. Perry and the Prada-clad denizens of Art Basel and Frieze might have for such decorative mainstream art, there are plenty of other people who like it, and who want to own it.

“They’re buying because they love the art, and it’s at a price they can put on a credit card. We don’t go in for the madly edgy,” said Helen Roden, the director of Castle Fine Art, a gallery that opened in the affluent Mayfair district of London in April last year.

Castle is one of the many dealerships specializing in original artworks that are, in the words of Annabelle Ruston, the editor of Art Business Today magazine in London, “recognizable and uplifting,” but which others regard as risibly bad. The genre mainly consists of landscapes and figure studies painted in a pseudo-Impressionist style by little-known artists and the occasional celebrity. More recently, approachable and affordable renditions of fashionable abstract painting, by artists such as John Bauer, have joined the ranks. Trading is dominated by private gallery sales, making the overall scale or strength of the market difficult to evaluate. But the presence of plush galleries in almost every major city offering works by names like Fabian Perez (sultry flamenco dancers), Douglas Hofmann (pretty ballerinas) and Lorenzo Quinn (sub-Rodin figure sculptures) is a testimony to enduring demand.

Ms. Roden was speaking during the final week of “Fake,” an exhibition of paintings in the styles of various famous artists by John Myatt, a now-repentant British forger who in 1999 was sentenced to a year in prison for conspiracy to defraud. His “Monet” of an avenue of flowers at Giverny, priced at 39,000 pounds, or $65,000, and a “van Gogh” of haystacks, marked at £29,950, were among more than 30 “genuine fakes” from the 46-work show that found buyers before its close on Aug. 10.

Castle’s Bruton Street gallery, in the heart of London’s hedge-fund country, is part of the Halcyon Fine Art Group. The company has Halcyon-branded spaces in London (on Bond Street and in Harrods) and Shanghai, as well as 37 Castle Gallery outlets throughout Britain. Halcyon sells high-value works by Andy Warhol and celebrity artists like Bob Dylan, but most of its stock-in-trade is decorative contemporary paintings and prints priced under £30,000 by names that won’t be found in Sotheby’s and Christie’s auction catalogues, or in museums.

Other companies operate similar models. The DeMontfort Fine Art in Britain runs the Whitewall group of galleries and Clarendon Fine Art outlets in London and on three Cunard cruise liners. Opera Gallery has a worldwide network of nine spaces, where it mixes decorative contemporary paintings with works by popular such big-name artists as Pablo Picasso, Marc Chagall, Bernard Buffet and even Banksy. Martin Lawrence Galleries offers an equivalent mix of American art at 11 branches around the United States.

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