- The prestige factor
- Dollars are easier to measure than beauty
- The thrill of the hunt
- New money skews the market
December 1-4 Miami Beach hosts Art Basel, the US's largest contemporary art fair, where the art sells in the $1,000,000 range and the elite meet to hang out and "out-status" one another. At the nation's fine art street fairs we often debate prices with one another and I laughed out loud when I read this (heard often at the shows): “If I can’t sell something, I just double the price.” That’s what Ernst Beyeler, the great Swiss dealer who helped found Art Basel, reportedly said. Some people actually prefer to pay more than makes sense.
Learn more about this high flying festival, a review of the event by Blake Gopnik in the Daily Beast: http://www.thedailybeast.com//content/newsweek/2011/12/04/why-is-art-so-damned-expensive.html
Wow! There was even a squatter show that brought out the police to shut it down: http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/12/02/2529410/south-beach-art-fair-shut-down.html
Interested in more gossip-y commentary on this "Art Bacchannal", "Guests dipped giant communion wafers into fountains of white and dark chocolate that streamed from the penises of two gleaming silver putti in Angel Otero’s sculpture “Pissing Contest.”
I'd love to hear your comments on this theme.
Comments
Initially, I was infuriated by this subject, but with further contemplation, I found a fallacy in my position: because my own definition of "art" is the crafted manifestation of an idea, and since expensive art collection is (in fact) a form of premeditated self-expression, then it must follow that the acquisition of art as a statement of wealth is, in fact, an artistic act! And so, enlightened by this realization, I set out to explore how the roles of patron and artist can be blended, blurred and transposed. The Art of Commodifying the Commodification of Art is the materialization of what I discover:
http://www.vardelos.com/art/commodification/
http://www.vogue.co.uk/blogs/the-culture-edit
This was a report in British Vogue (online) on Miami Art Basel a couple of days ago - lots of rich and famous by the looks of it.. .
I believe it depends on were you are too. Just like Geri said were she lived before they bragged about how cheap they paid. It works the same for ART if live in an area were they don't want to pay a lot for stuff then don't expect to sell your Art at a high price, or at all. I live in such a place, people don't want to spend a lot and they think Art is expensive so they don't even look! I have some stuff in a local Art Boutique and its really hard to get anyone to walk thur the door.
I'd believe it Rod..
My dad worked for Parker Pen. They made a gold plated pen once which sold for $30. Sales were tepid. One time a box was mislabeled and instead of $30 they were $300. The pens were sold within a month.
Well no one ever said the rich were smart, just that they had more money.
One of the things I noticed when we moved here ten years ago was that the people I met seemed to brag about how much they paid for something while my midwest friends would brag about how little they paid for something.
I have never been to Art Basel and will never go.