Luminous Landscape Forum
The Art of Photography => But is it Art? => Topic started by: Rob C on May 28, 2013, 05:39:19 am
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http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20130417-why-is-art-so-expensive
Rob C
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Why suffer?
Peter
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Why suffer?
Peter
Too poor to buy, not famous enough to sell!
;-)
Rob C
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Too poor to buy, not famous enough to sell!...
Not to mention you are still alive. Death of an artist could do wonders for its market value ;)
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I had a discussion with some people on the weekend about this very topic. The middle of the art market died, at least here in Canada, with the 2008 crash. People stopped spending on 'luxury' items and art is considered a luxury item. The market hasn't come back. The high end of the market is fine; as the article points out. The low end of the market, the mass-produced schlock that people buy at Wallyworld and such is fine because it's cheap and disposable. But the middle part of the market is still suffering greatly.
What seems to be happening - and I can only speak for my geographic area - is that the middle and lower ends of the market are being pushed together. People who used to buy in the middle are pulling back. Perhaps because they've acquired all they need or their incomes haven't recovered sufficiently from '08. I have people tell me pretty regularly that 'my walls are full'. These tend to be middle-aged and older generations. These are also the people whose incomes would have been most affected by the '08 downturn. People who used to buy in the schlock market - generally younger - may be starting to look at the middle market as their careers begin to advance but still want the disposability of the stuff they bought in Wallyworld and aren't prepared to pay mid-market prices. Even the lower end of mid-market prices. Some artists are lowering prices to make sales but sales don't necessarily equate to income once costs are considered. I see photographers selling 16x20 framed, good quality pigment inkjet prints for $30 or $40. They make lots of sales but they don't make any money.
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I had a discussion with some people on the weekend about this very topic. The middle of the art market died, at least here in Canada, with the 2008 crash. People stopped spending on 'luxury' items and art is considered a luxury item. The market hasn't come back. The high end of the market is fine; as the article points out. The low end of the market, the mass-produced schlock that people buy at Wallyworld and such is fine because it's cheap and disposable. But the middle part of the market is still suffering greatly.
What seems to be happening - and I can only speak for my geographic area - is that the middle and lower ends of the market are being pushed together. People who used to buy in the middle are pulling back. Perhaps because they've acquired all they need or their incomes haven't recovered sufficiently from '08. I have people tell me pretty regularly that 'my walls are full'. These tend to be middle-aged and older generations. These are also the people whose incomes would have been most affected by the '08 downturn. People who used to buy in the schlock market - generally younger - may be starting to look at the middle market as their careers begin to advance but still want the disposability of the stuff they bought in Wallyworld and aren't prepared to pay mid-market prices. Even the lower end of mid-market prices. Some artists are lowering prices to make sales but sales don't necessarily equate to income once costs are considered. I see photographers selling 16x20 framed, good quality pigment inkjet prints for $30 or $40. They make lots of sales but they don't make any money.
Which is exactly the same problem as hit the stock industry, and it was a great industry for a few decades, with big, really good players, amongst the best of which I'd have put Image Bank and my own nest, Tony Stone Worldwide, which became Getty's big acquisition and the start of the present scenario.
As ever, it's the bottom of the pile that's where the rot begins, where little light ever shines and there's really nothing to lose... so you get penny sales and folks think that's made them famous.
I wouldn't do it again, not for a living. What's left to want?
Rob C
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Not to mention you are still alive. Death of an artist could do wonders for its market value ;)
In one of the "Keller" novels by Lawrence Block, Keller (a professional hit man for hire) and a gallery owner have a 2-3 page discussion on the optimum time to have an artist "whacked". If you like dark humour and dark stories generally, I recommend the book. I can't remember the specific title in which this conversation takes place.
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In one of the "Keller" novels by Lawrence Block, Keller (a professional hit man for hire) and a gallery owner have a 2-3 page discussion on the optimum time to have an artist "whacked". If you like dark humour and dark stories generally, I recommend the book. I can't remember the specific title in which this conversation takes place.
Well figure it out, man. ;D
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It's all marketing, as is made abundently clear by the photographs of Andreas Gursky and Cindy Sherman and by the drippings of Jackson Pollock.
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"The new job of art is to sit on the wall and get more expensive." – Robert Hughes
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"The new job of art is to sit on the wall and get more expensive." – Robert Hughes
That's brilliant! I must save it up for some future occasion!
Rob C
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A man who thinks in harmony with myself is musician, Brian Eno, who said in his journal:
"Stop thinking about art works as objects, and start thinking about them as triggers for experiences. (Roy Ascott’s phrase.) That solves a lot of problems: we don’t have to argue whether photographs are art, or whether performances are art, or whether Carl Andre’s bricks or Andrew Serranos’s piss or Little Richard’s ‘Long Tall Sally’ are art, because we say, ‘Art is something that happens, a process, not a quality, and all sorts of things can make it happen.’ … [W]hat makes a work of art ‘good’ for you is not something that is already ‘inside’ it, but something that happens inside you — so the value of the work lies in the degree to which it can help you have the kind of experience that you call art."
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Not a lot of the buying public think that way, though.
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Not a lot of the buying public think that way, though.
I have never been one to tune my aspirations to the lowest common denominator — I leave it to my commercial clients to do that for me.
In my personal work I demand the freedom to produce and create without the restrictions imposed by considerations of marketability — I leave that to the sciolist dilettantes,
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Not to mention you are still alive. Death of an artist could do wonders for its market value ;)
"Your music is not yet classical because you are not yet dead. To become classical you have to stop composing and start decomposing"
Michael Flanders, of Flanders and Swann
Jeremy
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I have never been one to tune my aspirations to the lowest common denominator — I leave it to my commercial clients to do that for me.
In my personal work I demand the freedom to produce and create without the restrictions imposed by considerations of marketability — I leave that to the sciolist dilettantes,
Which is why most artists end up dead and broke. ;D Read my sig line, I feel similarly, although without the obvious level of scorn. But I'm sure your commercial clients would be pleased to hear of disdain for them. Your attitude toward buyers of your art could equally be termed disdainful. Or perhaps arrogant. A true artiste?
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Which is why most artists end up dead ...
Only most? Not all? ;)
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Only most? Not all? ;)
That's right; some are immortal.
I saw on tv this morning that Australia boasts a new Jesus and Mary Mag. They live in the sticks somewhere, and already have a new following. Now there's a cat would make a great agent!
Rob C
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Only most? Not all? ;)
No, there are some, for example, Peter Lik who seem to do well while they're still alive. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt that he won't piss it all away before he shuffles off his mortal coil.
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It's all marketing, as is made abundently clear by the photographs of Andreas Gursky and Cindy Sherman and by the drippings of Jackson Pollock.
Not necessarily. Marcel Duchamp famously said, "Art is either plagiarism or revolution." If the work is truly revolutionary, the art world and its dealers will beat the path to the door. If one just wants to produce for retina, sorry but the art world of the 19th-Century had gone into art history. So it's your pick. By the way, in Cindy Sherman's case, neither Sherman herself nor her dealer Larry Gagosian has ever labeled her as "photographer." In fact, Cindy Sherman started something totally new back in 1970s, which is later called photo-based art.
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Marcel seems to be more noted today for his 'witty' take on the meaning of art than for anything he really produced; as for Cindy, if she isn't/wasn't for years a photographer on the most narcissistic of ego-trips, then she must indeed be so bloody brilliant that she's fooled us all: she's been an 'artist' all along and not at all one of the world's most publicly self-absorbed snappers! Congratulations of your new status, baby, and apologies for being so dumb as to not appreciate your magic.
;-)
Rob C
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Marcel seems to be more noted today for his 'witty' take on the meaning of art than for anything he really produced; as for Cindy, if she isn't/wasn't for years a photographer on the most narcissistic of ego-trips, then she must indeed be so bloody brilliant that she's fooled us all: she's been an 'artist' all along and not at all one of the world's most publicly self-absorbed snappers! Congratulations of your new status, baby, and apologies for being so dumb as to not appreciate your magic.
;-)
Rob C
You seem misunderstand both Duchamp and Sherman profoundly. May I suggest you google their personal lives and their process?
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You seem misunderstand both Duchamp and Sherman profoundly. May I suggest you google their personal lives and their process?
Gulag, what are you suggesting? Don't be so rude!
;-)
Rob C
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Gulag, what are you suggesting? Don't be so rude!
;-)
Rob C
I apologize if my suggestion for further readings deeply hurt your ego since I failed to remember some just want to hear what they like to hear, and want to believe what they like to believe. At any rate, both Duchamp and Sherman already have their firm positions in the art history of the 20th-Century.
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Where did this idea that anything could be a work of art come from? It's generally believed to have come from Marcel Duchamp. In 1917, a urinal was sent to an art exhibition in New York, supposedly by Duchamp. But recent research has shown that the urinal was actually submitted by Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven. Her gesture was an early feminist attack on a male society. She didn't claim the urinal was a work of art. She was taking the piss.
Duchamp stole her idea much later when he began to promote himself as the founding father of modern art. The whole idea of the found object – the basis of conceptual art – was a con from the start.
Julian Spalding: Damien Hirsts are the sub-prime of the art world (http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/julian-spalding-damien-hirsts-are-the-subprime-of-the-art-world-7586386.html)
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Julian Spalding: Damien Hirsts are the sub-prime of the art world (http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/julian-spalding-damien-hirsts-are-the-subprime-of-the-art-world-7586386.html)
Quite. Same as squeaky-door "classical" music. Emperor's new clothes.
Jeremy
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The trick is being Mr Hirst.
All else is opinion. I atually believe that those buying the super-art products are not doing them as investment, but as a means of getting their kicks. When you have more money than you know what to do with sensibly, you do what those folks are able to do: use it for fun. Should your fun-buy then get kicked into another person's pleasure garden, the 'product' may actually gather more moss and be worth that much more. And if it only gets punctured and deflates, so what? You buy another classic car instead.
I really don't think anyone of us who isn't of the super-rich has any idea of what drives such people. I sort of think that is we did, we'd be up there with them too. I've know some such over long periods, and though there were times when I thought I had them figured, in retrospect, I don't think I ever really did.
The trouble with great wealth is that, on the face of it, for those who have it and with whom you are personally familiar, it always seems to have been a simple, natural progression from step 1 to step 2 etc, and the surprise is that one isn't capable of seeing the stepping stones for oneself. In other words, there but for myself go I!
So what's with a few crew-made artifacts?
Rob C