Daniel’s Value and Ideas #10: Rising Stars: Part II – Peake Performance
28 March 2014 • daniel barnes
The newest star to twinkle in the infernal blackness that traverses the space between economics and culture is Eddie Peake.
Author: daniel barnes
I am a writer teacher and curator with an interest in contemporary British art and popular culture. In the past, I have written for Aesthetica, Winq and this is tomorrow, as well as having given lectures at universities and galleries nationwide, not to mention my stint as philosopher in residence on the Butcher's Apron Radio Show. These days, I divide my time between teaching English in an FE college and writing a book about Damien Hirst, as well as writing for FAD. My first book, The Value Industry, which explores the relationship between art and money, is available now from amazon.
Daniel’s Value and Ideas #9: Rising Stars: Part I – The Simulacrum of Success
21 March 2014 • daniel barnes
There is a new generation of artists who are realising staggeringly high prices. This group of rising stars is an all boys club of young, middle-class men. It is a perfect demonstration of the perennial confusion between price and quality, where buyers’ voracious habits steer the consensus towards judgments of artistic worth. But the market, in its inexorable whim, is not always right.
Daniel’s Value and Ideas #8: For the Love of Art and Money
14 March 2014 • daniel barnes
The relationship between art and money is complex because it is necessary to the very existence of art in capitalist society, at the same time as being a threat to the integrity of art.
Daniel’s Value and Ideas #7: Show and Sell
7 March 2014 • daniel barnes
It is worth remembering that whether it is selling exhibition tickets or paintings or even making lucrative sponsorship deals, man cannot live by art alone and that capital rules art just as it does everything else.
Daniel’s Value and Ideas #6: All the Fun of the Fair
28 February 2014 • daniel barnes
They are cultural farmers markets, celebrity hotspots, arenas of business, a capricious day out or a site of curious innovation.
Daniel’s Value and Ideas #5: Artworld Selling Styles
21 February 2014 • daniel barnes
The commercial gallery is a stage on which an elaborate and mysterious performance takes place.
Daniel’s Value and Ideas #4: Bringing Home the Bacon
14 February 2014 • daniel barnes
There is a point at which the prices of artworks cease to be shocking, like when a tragedy reaches such biblical proportions that emotional responses make way for pragmatism.
Daniel’s Value and Ideas #3: Total Eclipse of the Art
7 February 2014 • daniel barnes
Twenty years ago, a businessman named Martin Lang invested in Chagall’s Nude 1909-10
Daniel’s Value and Ideas #2: All Guns Blazing
31 January 2014 • daniel barnes
Celebrity culture inspires a morbid fascination with what somebody is going to do next, as if the whole human drama is monopolised by a notorious few. What, we ask with giddy exhilaration, is Justin Bieber going to do next? The artworld is no exception
Daniel’s Value and Ideas #1: Spot the Difference
21 January 2014 • daniel barnes
Damien Hirst has made close to 1400 Spot Paintings, the latest of which is Mickey Mouse (2012). The first 1365 are chronicled in a hotly anticipated, much-delayed catalogue raisonné, The Complete Spot Paintings 1986-2011.