A journalist goes undercover to reveal the absurdity of the art scene(msn.com)
msn.com
A journalist goes undercover to reveal the absurdity of the art scene
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/a-journalist-goes-undercover-to-reveal-the-absurdity-of-the-art-scene/ar-BB1htWBT
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I think a lot of the financial side of the art scene tends to make a lot more sense when you look at it through the lens of money laundering.
It actually has a very similar set of dynamics that people might be more familiar with via NFTs.
But is an ideal vehicle to start moving large sums of money around where nobody can objectively agree on a price and you need a receipt to ensure the money is legitimate.
It actually has a very similar set of dynamics that people might be more familiar with via NFTs.
But is an ideal vehicle to start moving large sums of money around where nobody can objectively agree on a price and you need a receipt to ensure the money is legitimate.
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The reason the wealthy have such influence over the economics of making and selling art is that the non-wealthy are more or less categorically opposed to paying appropriate prices for art.
The non-wealthy regularly pay for books, music, movies, video games, etc. Hollywood is a $40B/year industry. All these industries follow a model of "make a work of art, then sell infinite copies"; this makes it possible to sell the copies at reasonable prices. These prices are appropriate, and the non-wealthy pay them.
The "high art" world, on the other hand, fetishizes the original physical work of art. If an expert painter spends weeks on a painting, then they must sell it for enough money to cover "weeks of an expert's income"; so of course only wealthy people will be able to afford it. How is this price more "appropriate" than the prices that non-wealthy people pay?
The "high art" world, on the other hand, fetishizes the original physical work of art. If an expert painter spends weeks on a painting, then they must sell it for enough money to cover "weeks of an expert's income"; so of course only wealthy people will be able to afford it. How is this price more "appropriate" than the prices that non-wealthy people pay?
Non wealthy people are largely not willing to pay for books, movies, videogames (I will admit to not knowing about music) what it actually costs to make them. The industries are able to sidestep this by underpaying (all but the highest profile) artists and massively scaling up marketing budgets, but people routinely underestimate the time and effort involved in producing art, even the "infinite copies" version.
> Non wealthy people are largely not willing to pay ... what it actually costs to make them
The general public pays enough money to pay the artists' salaries, plus the marketing budget and all the other costs. Otherwise Hollywood would go out of business.
The general public pays enough money to pay the artists' salaries, plus the marketing budget and all the other costs. Otherwise Hollywood would go out of business.
Yes, but the artists salaries are typically insufficient to actually support their lives. Hollywood exists because enough people are excited enough by the idea of working for Hollywood that they're willing to accept fairly subpar working conditions and pay to get a chance to do what they love. Art is almost universally subject to a "passion tax".
Perhaps some of those people aren't quite as talented as they would like to think they are?
I'm not sure how that creates an obligation in the, uhh, 'non-wealthy', that they just don't appreciate art and should be paying those people more by paying more for media.
There's plenty of room in Hollywood budgets to make a movie that doesn't require the leads to make $30M each while underpaying extras. I think you're railing at the wrong "enemy".
I'm not sure how that creates an obligation in the, uhh, 'non-wealthy', that they just don't appreciate art and should be paying those people more by paying more for media.
There's plenty of room in Hollywood budgets to make a movie that doesn't require the leads to make $30M each while underpaying extras. I think you're railing at the wrong "enemy".
I'm not railing at anyone. I'm saying that if people want more of a say in what kind of art is made, they need to be willing to spend more money on art, and spend it more thoughtfully. If they're only willing to spend very small amounts of money, and only on art that has been thoroughly vetted by the wealthy taste-makers, then they're only going to get what they wealthy taste-makers think is good.
Sorry, the GP has it right. I've worked in that industry, and (like lots of other industries) there's plenty of money (even selling the output at "normal people" prices) sloshing around to pay everyone involved a decent wage. Instead, most of the proceeds are extracted by the people who have the most power. That this will (in the long-term) cripple the entire enterprise (I think we're already seeing it) is not a concern for those making the money now.
There are many forms of art. In many cases people can get for themselves cheap reproductions and could plaster their bedrooms with it if they ever wanted. Or if that is not good enough for them and they can't get original works of some famous expensive artist then they can find some starving ones and get their works.
I recommend a book called Boom: Mad Money, Mega Dealers, and the Rise of Contemporary Art for a more neutral take on the art world and why art prices are so high. It’s easy to just call it “money laundering” but I think that is a lazy answer.
Of the many reasons why the art world is the way it is, I think a few are particularly interesting.
One has to do with commodification: in the last few hundred years, nearly every type of thing has become commodified: photographs (via digital cameras and social media), furniture (IKEA, etc.), and now with AI, words and digital images. And yet – the art object really hasn’t become commodified. There is only one art object treated as the authentic Mona Lisa/Rothko No. 6/ etc. And so from a certain point of view, the art market is a recognition of this fact that certain classes of objects will become more valuable because they cannot be commodified. This makes them entirely worthwhile investments on their own terms and you don’t need a vast conspiracy to underpin that market.
Another interesting reason is how artists have somewhat merged with celebrities, which the Boom book covers. This started happening with Warhol but took off in the 80s. Artists are a kind of celebrity that instead of selling millions of books/concert tickets/music albums/etc., package all of their “fame value” into a smaller number of objects.
Of the many reasons why the art world is the way it is, I think a few are particularly interesting.
One has to do with commodification: in the last few hundred years, nearly every type of thing has become commodified: photographs (via digital cameras and social media), furniture (IKEA, etc.), and now with AI, words and digital images. And yet – the art object really hasn’t become commodified. There is only one art object treated as the authentic Mona Lisa/Rothko No. 6/ etc. And so from a certain point of view, the art market is a recognition of this fact that certain classes of objects will become more valuable because they cannot be commodified. This makes them entirely worthwhile investments on their own terms and you don’t need a vast conspiracy to underpin that market.
Another interesting reason is how artists have somewhat merged with celebrities, which the Boom book covers. This started happening with Warhol but took off in the 80s. Artists are a kind of celebrity that instead of selling millions of books/concert tickets/music albums/etc., package all of their “fame value” into a smaller number of objects.
It started way before Warhol. Picasso and Dali were notorious self promoters.
Sure, self promotion goes back a long long time, to Dürer at least. I meant more in the modern sense of “celebrity.”
Art doesn't yield dividends or interest, the only way to make money with art is by selling it, this is not investment but speculation.
The point about commodification is interesting. There is some need for unique and expensive physical objects, but not as an investment, rather as a way of showing off and feeling wealth.
The point about commodification is interesting. There is some need for unique and expensive physical objects, but not as an investment, rather as a way of showing off and feeling wealth.
Valuable artworks are often used as collateral for loans and other financial instruments, so they can be used to make money.
There was a time when art, while hopefully pleasurable to own, was a non-performing asset financially. No longer. As the worlds of art and finance increasingly converge, leveraging art collections to unlock liquidity has become a healthily growing sector, according to its participants. There are two main groups of players: specialist lenders, who loan against art and other assets, and banks, who as part of their service will give loans to their clients, their art and other assets being the collateral.
https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2023/03/08/art-loans-spike-a...
There was a time when art, while hopefully pleasurable to own, was a non-performing asset financially. No longer. As the worlds of art and finance increasingly converge, leveraging art collections to unlock liquidity has become a healthily growing sector, according to its participants. There are two main groups of players: specialist lenders, who loan against art and other assets, and banks, who as part of their service will give loans to their clients, their art and other assets being the collateral.
https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2023/03/08/art-loans-spike-a...
Yes, you can't just sell it, you can also mortage it, to get money, which you can then invest in stock that pays dividends or bonds that yield interest.
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Mirror of "International Art English" since the original website was broken for me: https://gwern.net/doc/culture/2012-rule.pdf
If you find the linked website as reader hostile as I did, here's a more readable archived version:
https://archive.is/vFZet
"...where the cultural elite can no longer exclude people based on race, gender or sexual identity, so they come up with clever new ways to build moats around their little castles."
Oh, wow. Best thought I've heard for a while. As an immigrant living in Northern Europe, this basically explains 90% of my daily life.
Oh, wow. Best thought I've heard for a while. As an immigrant living in Northern Europe, this basically explains 90% of my daily life.
Well yeah, there is obviously a lot of bullshit in the art scene.
My "favorite" are quite pedestrian looking artworks that only (supposedly) become interesting through some nebulous explanation text full of five-dollar words. If it tells me that the material is glass from the Trinity tests or sewer sludge, OK I'll take it, that's interesting. I like clever names, too. If the artist otherwise wanted to say something that the artwork doesn't say, that's a failure of the work IMO.
My "favorite" are quite pedestrian looking artworks that only (supposedly) become interesting through some nebulous explanation text full of five-dollar words. If it tells me that the material is glass from the Trinity tests or sewer sludge, OK I'll take it, that's interesting. I like clever names, too. If the artist otherwise wanted to say something that the artwork doesn't say, that's a failure of the work IMO.
That's a phenomena common across mediums. There's a certain point - it doesn't matter if it's visual, sculpture, dance, theatre, literary, or sound - where the work itself seems to become immaterial (and arguably aesthetically horrid) and the focus shifts to the process that preceeds it.
Without an 'in' or background in the often niche cultural (to borrow a word from my art wank school education) milieu it's grown from, that aspect is often opaque. Much like the article states: it's nothing more than a filter and social signalling mechanism.
The same holds true in software and technology. There's an endless continuum libraries, languages, tools and machines out there which have trivial impact on the world but are absolute objects of beauty when you know what's inside.
Without an 'in' or background in the often niche cultural (to borrow a word from my art wank school education) milieu it's grown from, that aspect is often opaque. Much like the article states: it's nothing more than a filter and social signalling mechanism.
The same holds true in software and technology. There's an endless continuum libraries, languages, tools and machines out there which have trivial impact on the world but are absolute objects of beauty when you know what's inside.
The reason people complain about "high art" is because we're told that everyone should aspire to appreciate high art, and that people who appreciate high art are somehow better than the general public, even though it's deliberately niche and opaque.
> There's an endless continuum libraries, languages, tools and machines out there which have trivial impact on the world but are absolute objects of beauty when you know what's inside.
Imagine if the SF MOMA were replaced with a museum full of those niche libraries and languages, showing these absolute objects of beauty to the general public, and (implicitly) saying "you ought to appreciate the beauty; if you can't appreciate e.g. the beauty of the Haskell programming language is, you're ignorant".
> There's an endless continuum libraries, languages, tools and machines out there which have trivial impact on the world but are absolute objects of beauty when you know what's inside.
Imagine if the SF MOMA were replaced with a museum full of those niche libraries and languages, showing these absolute objects of beauty to the general public, and (implicitly) saying "you ought to appreciate the beauty; if you can't appreciate e.g. the beauty of the Haskell programming language is, you're ignorant".
I believe that's called HN.
This! Many, many times I have talked to artists or read their statements, and seen that they are totally out of touch with how to actually communicate with their art. If you tell me your intentions for a piece, what you are trying to communicate, and coming at the piece without that information I see nothing to do with your intentions, you have failed. And the saddest part is when they have expectations that the audience will understand (or care) that all of the "meaning" they are trying to convey falls flat without the words.
I tend to go around the galleries without reading titles or statements. I get more out of it making my own meaning from your work, while being able to pay closer attention to formal qualities.
I tend to go around the galleries without reading titles or statements. I get more out of it making my own meaning from your work, while being able to pay closer attention to formal qualities.
> they are totally out of touch with how to actually communicate with their art
It sounds like you have a preference for a particular kind of art, and you’re expecting all artists to conform to that preference.
> If you tell me your intentions for a piece, what you are trying to communicate, and coming at the piece without that information I see nothing to do with your intentions, you have failed
This again seems to come from an expectation that all artists produce a particular kind of work. It’s possible that they’ve failed if measured against that particular preference, but that failure is relative to the preference.
To me, a piece that requires context and explanation is just another genre of work, and it’s a genre I appreciate. It can reveal that the creation journey often looks nothing like the finished product, and for many artists, the value of the work comes primarily from the process of expression.
This doesn’t have to be your cup of tea. But neither does it make the work a failure.
It sounds like you have a preference for a particular kind of art, and you’re expecting all artists to conform to that preference.
> If you tell me your intentions for a piece, what you are trying to communicate, and coming at the piece without that information I see nothing to do with your intentions, you have failed
This again seems to come from an expectation that all artists produce a particular kind of work. It’s possible that they’ve failed if measured against that particular preference, but that failure is relative to the preference.
To me, a piece that requires context and explanation is just another genre of work, and it’s a genre I appreciate. It can reveal that the creation journey often looks nothing like the finished product, and for many artists, the value of the work comes primarily from the process of expression.
This doesn’t have to be your cup of tea. But neither does it make the work a failure.
Yes, you are correct, it doesn't make the work a failure. However, with my practice and my intentions, I personally do think I have failed if I need a statement to explain the piece. In addition to contemporary audiences, I like to think of how future archaeologists might interpret an artifact, without any explicit context.
> To me, a piece that requires context and explanation is just another genre of work, and it’s a genre I appreciate. It can reveal that the creation journey often looks nothing like the finished product, and for many artists, the value of the work comes primarily from the process of expression.
I can get behind this. The issue for me is that artists who rely too heavily on their statements to impart meaning might be limiting themselves in their visual vocabulary and the conversation. Having known people who get upset when they are trying to convey very specific concepts outlined in their statement, but audience members choose to interpret it differently, the failure, to me, is within them, not the piece.
Part of my problem might be that when I was starting out, the only places in a gallery available for words was the name of the show and the title.
> To me, a piece that requires context and explanation is just another genre of work, and it’s a genre I appreciate. It can reveal that the creation journey often looks nothing like the finished product, and for many artists, the value of the work comes primarily from the process of expression.
I can get behind this. The issue for me is that artists who rely too heavily on their statements to impart meaning might be limiting themselves in their visual vocabulary and the conversation. Having known people who get upset when they are trying to convey very specific concepts outlined in their statement, but audience members choose to interpret it differently, the failure, to me, is within them, not the piece.
Part of my problem might be that when I was starting out, the only places in a gallery available for words was the name of the show and the title.
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The context is often the most interesting part of the art though (while I admit pretentious wording also often rubs me the wrong way). Like the shroud of turin is just a dirty cloth if you don't appreciate the historicity of it.
Yeah honestly, I would have a much higher opinion of such texts without the pretentious wording.
deepnet(1)
It sounds like the author had fun reading the book, started writing a fun review, but then it dawned on him that the book questioned a bit more of the art world then he was comfortable with, so he found a scapegoat in collectors.