Money’s Triumph Over Art - Truthdig
"If you can believe all the hand-wringing and soul-searching these days among artists, art critics, and sundry other arts professionals, you’d imagine that nobody is really happy about the $142.4 million paid for a Francis Bacon triptych at Christie’s the other day—or the $58.4 million for a Jeff Koons at the same auction or the $104.5 million for a Warhol at Sotheby’s the following night. Those prices are as repellent as Leonardo DiCaprio’s baronial frat house shenanigans in the coming attractions for Martin Scorsese’s new tale of Gilded Age excess, The Wolf of Wall Street. Among the most revolting sports favored by the super-rich is the devaluation of any reasonable sense of value. At Christie’s and Sotheby’s some of the wealthiest members of society, the people who can’t believe in anything until it’s been monetized, are trashing one of our last hopes for transcendence. They don’t know the difference between avidity and avarice. Why drink an excellent $30 or $50 bottle of wine when you can pour a $500 or $1000 bottle down your throat? Why buy a magnificent $20,000 or $1 million painting when you can spend $50 or $100 million and really impress friends and enemies alike?"
Jed Perl
Money’s Triumph Over Art
http://www.truthdig.com/arts_culture/item/moneys_triumph_over_art_20131206/
Posted on Dec 6, 2013
Like the natural environment, the long decay of the established art world is picking up pace as the super rich shamelessly spend $60 million, $100 million, $140 million on works declared desirable by critics operating more as pimps for the wealthy than loving and enthusiastic guides, critic Jed Perl writesWednesday at The New Republic.
“Among the most revolting sports favored by the super-rich is the devaluation of any reasonable sense of value,” laments Perl, whose recurring theme in recent years has been the steadfast and suicidal refusal of critics, academics and students to explore what is good and bad and why in works created in the present and recent past; suicidal because aesthetics, as a standard of value, has been replaced by money. “At Christie’s and Sotheby’s some of the wealthiest members of society, the people who can’t believe in anything until it’s been monetized, are trashing one of our last hopes for transcendence.”
This abandonment of a discussion of artistic value apart from money has given art’s fate to the rich, Perl writes. And the abdication mirrors society’s other losses. “The art world has become a fantasy object for the professional classes—and that’s a troubling turn of events, because art must be experienced concretely, immediately. Since the democratization of culture began in the nineteenth century, a rising middle class has seen in the arts a dazzling enrichment and complication of its own ideas and ideals—of its belief in fairness, seriousness, standards, transcendence. And now, with the middle class in disarray, art is no longer embraced as anything close to an ideal. Art is just another hope to be abandoned, along with the hope that your children might do better than you’ve done. In place of art as an ideal we have art as an idol. (Or art as an educational tool, by way of the numbingly utilitarian logic that if you learn to play Bach you will improve your math skills.) No wonder everybody is following not the art but the sky-high prices at the auction houses—and the parties at Art Basel Miami Beach, where the same dealers and collectors are gathering this week to play more or less the same games.”
The critic-as-pimp claim is illustrated in the consulting job John Elderfield, the Museum of Modern Art’s chief curator emeritus of painting and sculpture, took with Manhattan’s Gagosian Gallery. “Whatever happened to the firewall that separated the long-term cultural thinking of the museums from the short-term commercial gains of the galleries?” Perl asks. In his new role as adviser to the rich, Elderfield has perplexingly contradicted the opinion held by “many of the finest minds of his own generation” in his assessment of works by the late Willem de Kooning. “The same thoughtful people would be deeply troubled by Elderfield’s willingness to turn MoMA’s prestige into Larry Gagosian’s financial advantage,” Perl writes.
The message is clear, Perl concludes. “The cash registers are ringing and that’s the only music anybody any longer really hears in the art world. … One thing is certain. … In the art world as it is now, it’s difficult to convince most people that anything matters more than that.”
—Posted by Alexander Reed Kelly.
“Among the most revolting sports favored by the super-rich is the devaluation of any reasonable sense of value,” laments Perl, whose recurring theme in recent years has been the steadfast and suicidal refusal of critics, academics and students to explore what is good and bad and why in works created in the present and recent past; suicidal because aesthetics, as a standard of value, has been replaced by money. “At Christie’s and Sotheby’s some of the wealthiest members of society, the people who can’t believe in anything until it’s been monetized, are trashing one of our last hopes for transcendence.”
This abandonment of a discussion of artistic value apart from money has given art’s fate to the rich, Perl writes. And the abdication mirrors society’s other losses. “The art world has become a fantasy object for the professional classes—and that’s a troubling turn of events, because art must be experienced concretely, immediately. Since the democratization of culture began in the nineteenth century, a rising middle class has seen in the arts a dazzling enrichment and complication of its own ideas and ideals—of its belief in fairness, seriousness, standards, transcendence. And now, with the middle class in disarray, art is no longer embraced as anything close to an ideal. Art is just another hope to be abandoned, along with the hope that your children might do better than you’ve done. In place of art as an ideal we have art as an idol. (Or art as an educational tool, by way of the numbingly utilitarian logic that if you learn to play Bach you will improve your math skills.) No wonder everybody is following not the art but the sky-high prices at the auction houses—and the parties at Art Basel Miami Beach, where the same dealers and collectors are gathering this week to play more or less the same games.”
The critic-as-pimp claim is illustrated in the consulting job John Elderfield, the Museum of Modern Art’s chief curator emeritus of painting and sculpture, took with Manhattan’s Gagosian Gallery. “Whatever happened to the firewall that separated the long-term cultural thinking of the museums from the short-term commercial gains of the galleries?” Perl asks. In his new role as adviser to the rich, Elderfield has perplexingly contradicted the opinion held by “many of the finest minds of his own generation” in his assessment of works by the late Willem de Kooning. “The same thoughtful people would be deeply troubled by Elderfield’s willingness to turn MoMA’s prestige into Larry Gagosian’s financial advantage,” Perl writes.
The message is clear, Perl concludes. “The cash registers are ringing and that’s the only music anybody any longer really hears in the art world. … One thing is certain. … In the art world as it is now, it’s difficult to convince most people that anything matters more than that.”
—Posted by Alexander Reed Kelly.
Money seems to have taken over many aspects of our society, not only the arts. It is a shame that we put such an emphasis on the financial gain of one's artistic ability, rather than their passion and dedication to their creation. I begin to question one's motive when their artwork is so expensive, have they created this work of art simply to earn money or are the arts truly their passion?
ReplyDeleteI believe it is very rare for an artist to be the one to make these millions of dollars. For instance, the orange balloon dog sold by Jeff Koons for 58.4 million was not owned by the artist at the time it was sold. So although Koons may be fairly wealthy he is not the one making millions of dollars, although I am sure he is fairly pleased with his works' popularity.
ReplyDelete