Has Contemporary Art Sold Out To The Market?
A lively and good humoured debate, with a shock result
Tag: art market
Daniel’s Value and Ideas #81: Top Doig
Artnet has published its list of the top ten most expensive living British artists at auction for 2015. The list betrays a gentle change in the current of British art,
Daniel’s Value and Ideas #79: Baselitz, the Loan Ranger
Georg Baselitz has demanded the removal of all his loaned works from German museums in protest against regulations regarding the export of artworks.
Daniel’s Value and Ideas #66: Experience Matters
Tabish Khan wrote an insightful piece this week on how the prices of artworks are calculated. He identified two contributing factors: one, the artist’s price point at a given time, which is presumably a function of the strength of the artist’s brand; and two, the size of the artwork.
Daniel’s Value and Ideas #60: Caught Up in the Century’s Anxiety
In 2014, the global art market grossed €51billion, which is a 7% increase on 2013 and the highest total ever recorded. These are the findings of Dr Clare McAndrew, who every year compiles the TEFAF Art Market report before jetting off to the one of the artworld’s most prestigious art fairs in Maastricht.
Daniel’s Value and Ideas #56: The Usual Suspects
Auction week heralded the usual suspects: Richter, Hirst, Warhol, Fontanna, Boetti, Klein, Murillo, Twombly, Baselitz, Dubuffet, Basquaiat. Different works, but the same artists endlessly circulating the market.
Daniel’s Value and Ideas #55: We Need to Talk about Damien
Damien Hirst sold a lot of very expensive art between 2007 and 2008. So much that he became the world’s most expensive living artist, which gave him the acumen to do whatever he liked. Next week, the seminal Pill Cabinet Lullaby, Winter is going under the hammer at Christie’s, but it has a curious history as an unfulfilled promise that had momentous effects.
Daniel’s Value and Ideas #51: The Balloon Monkey is Not What It Seems
A spectre is haunting the artworld. In the foyer of Christie’s New York, at over twelve feet tall and made of painted steel, Jeff Koons’ Balloon Monkey (Orange) (2006-2013) presides over daily business.
Daniel’s Value and Ideas #50: Explaining Artworld Jargon
In order to combat this, contemporary art has developed jargon that purports to explain every nuance of the artworld, but it often only deepens the mystery.
Daniel’s Value and Ideas #47: Franco, My Dear, I Don’t Give a Damn
James Franco is everywhere, doing everything, all the time. He is an actor, writer, musician, English Literature student, teacher, director and world war agitator. Now, like everyone else in Hollywood, he is an artist, but one who exposes the heartbreaking sycophancy and emptiness of the artworld.
Daniel’s Value and Ideas #34: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Frieze
As autumn descends on London, the artworld is gearing up for the great tragic-comic circus of consumption and gossip that is Frieze Art Fair.
Daniel’s Value and Ideas #27: The Real Value of an Idea in the Mind of Someone Living
Damien Hirst has commanded the destruction of an early Spot Painting……
Daniel’s Value and Ideas #24: We’re Paying with the Love Tonight
The saleroom was electric. Not like it’s got a family full of eccentrics, but like important things were about to happen.
Daniel’s Value and Ideas #21: Everything You Steal Will Turn to Ash
This immanent and inevitable catastrophe is a lesson in how the unchecked might of the market renders impotent the museums whose mandate is to preserve our rich cultural history.
Daniel’s Value and Ideas #20: From Street to Canvas
The phenomenon of Basquiat’s prices and the more general taste for street art of which it is symptomatic is a product of the art market’s ability to disseminate otherwise obscure art and to launch it into the establishment.
Daniel’s Value and Ideas #19: Beautiful Inside Everyone’s Head Forever
On the evening of 15th September 2008 three completely unrelated events occurred, which determined this precise moment in time. This is the story of how art survived recession in spectacular fashion and how a philosopher, an artist and a bank unwittingly crossed paths.
Daniel’s Value and Ideas #18: The Virtually Inclusive Art Market
The art bubble continues to inflate, enjoying an absence of natural predators and external regulation.
Daniel’s Value and Ideas #13: What You See is What I Sell
The recent announcement of the UK’s top ten most expensive living artists offers a sobering opportunity to think about the extent to which contemporary art has been infected by its entanglement with money.
Daniel’s Value and Ideas #12: Hammer Horrors
The price of art is a much discussed and much maligned phenomenon. But whilst there may sometimes be good grounds for suspicion, a lot of what we hear about the price of art is a wilful fantasy of the media, fuelled by a perennially disingenuous market.
Daniel’s Value and Ideas #10: Rising Stars: Part II – Peake Performance
The newest star to twinkle in the infernal blackness that traverses the space between economics and culture is Eddie Peake.
Daniel’s Value and Ideas #9: Rising Stars: Part I – The Simulacrum of Success
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
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
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
They are cultural farmers markets, celebrity hotspots, arenas of business, a capricious day out or a site of curious innovation.