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.
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.
> 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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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?
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.
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.
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.
