In the market, the price of art represents what ‘someone else is willing to pay for it’ -- a dealer explains it this way, and it’s not much of a test. There’s lots of folks with more disposable loot than you, ready to spend you under the table any direction, just a given. When making a major purchase of any kind we usually need more information, like does it work, will it last, does it improve my life enough to justify the sacrifice I’m making to own it? Can’t do that with art, the only specs you’ll receive are in the resume, a history of prior sales.
With the point of view engendered when ‘working on commission’ beneath it all, art has wandered into regions so self-referential and inverted, attained counter points of idiocy so refined it’s beginning to give excessive wealth a bad name. That’s not all. Practical folks who in some degree rub up against cold reality every day don’t have time for the snotty obtuseness, the industrial ugliness, with the most hideous mockeries rising to the top -- google ‘Koons, Hirst’. Art’s a mess when greed drives the bus.
An individual work of art should have presence on its own, and the artist decides how to get there, there are no rules. You, yes you, get to judge the degree to which they’ve been successful, not by glancing sideways to gage the reactions of persons standing next to you, but by internally feeling something -- a sudden loosening of knots, an instantaneous awareness of surroundings, something wholly personal, you’ll know. Not surprisingly, this experience is totally unrelated to what someone would be willing to pay for it. We don’t have to be like them, the trophy gathering ninnies, to look at art, to admire and understand art, to own and live with art in our homes.
With the point of view engendered when ‘working on commission’ beneath it all, art has wandered into regions so self-referential and inverted, attained counter points of idiocy so refined it’s beginning to give excessive wealth a bad name. That’s not all. Practical folks who in some degree rub up against cold reality every day don’t have time for the snotty obtuseness, the industrial ugliness, with the most hideous mockeries rising to the top -- google ‘Koons, Hirst’. Art’s a mess when greed drives the bus.
An individual work of art should have presence on its own, and the artist decides how to get there, there are no rules. You, yes you, get to judge the degree to which they’ve been successful, not by glancing sideways to gage the reactions of persons standing next to you, but by internally feeling something -- a sudden loosening of knots, an instantaneous awareness of surroundings, something wholly personal, you’ll know. Not surprisingly, this experience is totally unrelated to what someone would be willing to pay for it. We don’t have to be like them, the trophy gathering ninnies, to look at art, to admire and understand art, to own and live with art in our homes.
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