After several years working in the corporate and business development fields, Viet Ha Tran became director of admissions at one of the most recognized business schools of Spain.

Simultaneously, she started photography and now she’s represented by galleries all over the world: Galerie Sophie Lanöe in Paris, Durán Arte y Subastas in Madrid or Saatchi Art in Los Angeles are some of them.

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Viet Ha Tran is a very inspiring woman, as she wears several hats: businesswoman, entrepreneur, artist, philanthropist. In this first interview, by following Viet Ha Tran’s path, we will explore the relation which can exist between art and business.

Sarah Tantin: I understand that you have a quite strong experience in business and that you first began photography as a hobby, by passion. So, what was the triggering element (if any) that led you to the art world?  How do your studies and skills in management and corporate, help you in your artwork? Do you combine those two worlds (business & art) through your experiences?

Viet Ha Tran: I have always been a businesswoman before discovering art. Before coming to Spain to study and later to work, I worked in Tokyo, Singapore and Hanoi in different areas of business: marketing, market intelligence, finance, business development and government relations. My current position is as Director of Finance Admissions at IE Business School in Madrid, Spain where I am in charge of bringing the top finance talents worldwide to study a Master at IE.

As you can imagine, the business world can be extremely stressful, and I've found out that art is the best therapy. My first university degree (which I only finished halfway to switch to business) was Anglo-Saxon Literature and Language at Vietnam National University which was the root for my keen interest in the arts later. Art helps balancing my soul and cultivates my creativity. I discovered photography in 2013 and since then it has become the way I use to express my inner dreams and vision and get away from reality.

Most people would ask me, how do you manage to be a businesswoman at daytime, and artist during night time? How do you handle it? I think that art and finance are complementary, because if you are interested in both, your brain will work well on both left and right sides, hence, your creativity and efficiency will be enhanced. I personally know many bankers and financiers who are also artists such as pianists and painters. Having a secret world that is not your full-time job is where you find the balance for the mind, enriches your spirit and it helps you look at business issues from another broader and more profound perspective.

On the other hand, my business network and skills also help me to do business more efficiently in the art world. People in this art world appreciate my decision-making and business skills very much and how smoothly I deal with art galleries, art merchants...Also, many of art collectors are successful business people and I have been lucky enough to know many of them. Also, art helps me to become more creative and multi-angled in my business world, I’ve created a multitude of out-of-the-box thinking projects for my company.

S.T: Speaking of finance, 37% of wealth managers surveyed by Knight Frank said that their clients already had luxury investments, such as art, wine, and classic cars. They also highlighted that these luxuries had become more popular in recent years. Personal enjoyment ranked as the most significant client motivation, the potential for increased capital gains came then.

It is not a hidden secret that the financial aspects of luxury investments are gaining in importance. So, how would you distinguish “classic” business and art business? Does it seem to you that art business is now just another kind of economic activity, according to the ones who criticize the increasing prices of art?

V.H.T: Many people asked me about this - my artist friends, and friends from the corporate and finance world. I totally support the idea that you should only create art for the sake of beauty and not for the sake of commercial reasons. However, artists need to be able to maintain a reasonable life. Some recent statistics showed that the average salary of a Spanish artist is about €300/month, which is ridiculously low, and most of them must adopt another job - anything to be able to maintain their passion for art. Even gallerists struggle to be able to pay the gallery rent and many galleries closed in recently years. So, there is nothing wrong, on the contrary, it is absolutely necessary, to look at art from an economic perspective.

I do not support the idea that art should be admired and not for sales. No, if your artworks are admired sufficiently, someone should be willing to pay to own it to justify their admiration. Would we know how successful Picasso, or Dali were, if they had not sold anything?

S.T: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 10 December 1948, established the right for everyone to the protection of its moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author. 

Several international conventions deal with intellectual property: the Paris Convention, the Berne Convention and the TRIPS Agreement are some examples. With the internationalization of economy and the dematerialization of data exchange, IP law is constantly evolving and becomes more and more important, as the number of immaterial goods grows.

Nowadays, author rights are a global question because the legal framework must adapt to this international and electronic environment and to new forms of exploitation, confronting also new disputes in particular with the GAFA. But the art market is not uniform, and every country has its own history, culture and way of doing business. You traveled and lived in several countries, are there differences between art business cultures depending on the country?

V.H.T: In my daily job nowadays, I deal with people from dozens of countries every day and indeed there is a difference in terms of cultures and preferences, and this applies also to the art world. For example, most of my collectors are Americans and British people because these countries are more open to this new type of art. Spain is catching up in the photography market, but still, auction houses are still a bit hesitant to take photographs into auctions.

On the other hand, China and India are catching up faster with the buying power of art and collectors tend to buy more impulsively.

Artnet the other day reported that the art market follows the money as the number of China's mega-rich increased by 25 percent to overtake US for the first time. “Billionaire Insights”, a report by PricewaterhouseCoopers, published on October 26, 2017 which analyzed data on 1,550 billionaires globally, found that, for the first time, there are more billionaires in Asia than in the US, though the overall wealth of US billionaires is still greater. The number of Chinese billionaires rose by nearly 25 percent, to 637, compared with 537 US billionaires and 342 billionaires in Europe.

China is expected by art experts to be a major international art market with a rising buying power and appreciation for art, I am also a new artist recruited by a leading online platform from China - HIHEY. I think that such a proactive online art platform like HIHEY will be able to benefit greatly from the growing power of the Chinese rich by bridging the gap and help connect western artists like myself to the Chinese art market.

S.T: Indeed, in 2018, the world’s top 10 auction houses for Contemporary art includes six Chinese auction houses with China Guardian as the leading Chinese auction operator in this segment of the market. Also, China’s supremacy vis-à-vis the USA was illustrated by the percentage of Chinese artists in the top 500, which was above 30% in 2017, whereas the USA were only accounted for 15%.

In the other hand, Artprice’s report highlights the privileged location of Hong Kong to offer the auction houses access to new or distinct markets.  Indeed, it is close to China but also to India and the other countries of South-East Asia, linking the West and the East, with an advantageous legislative framework.

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Interviewed by Sarah Tantin

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Notes :

1 - Deloitte Art & Finance Report 2017 

https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/at/Documents/finance/art-and-finance-report-2017.pdf

 

2 - Article 27 of the Declaration

http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/

 

3 - According to Artprice Contemporary Art Market Report 2018

https://www.artprice.com/artprice-reports/the-contemporary-art-market-report-2018/general-synopsis-contemporary-arts-market-performance