cultural fire sale -- cashing in the masters

The current controversy in the art news is about art museums beginning to ‘deaccession’ parts of their collection, to sell off surplus masterworks moldering in the stacks when they might be converted into much-needed cash. This has suddenly become an issue for major institutions now that money laundering restrictions are being applied to fine art and tax-code revisions are on the way. There’s lots of posturing about respect for a sacred trust but with the flexibility to adapt to changing conditions, and it’s funny because it’s all bullshit. They can say they’re selling off old white guys to diversify, to properly maintain the collection, or to pay the help a living wage so noble, but they’re really just trying to beat the rush. They refuse to acknowledge that a glut of serially replicated masterworks seeking their own true level in an open market will lead to an entire system of value being wiped out, herds of ultra-expensive Rothkos and Pollocks going extinct.

Does this mean art will die, or just come down in price? If a painting by someone internationally famous suddenly drops from fifty million down to whatever it might bring against the artists from the community, side by side, it still might come out on top, but if it’s too big for the average house no one may want it anyway. Against a formerly fifty million dollar painting some of that local stuff may not be so bad, a little less stylish but with perhaps more to say, and given the direct support of their community area artists would get better and say more. Somehow I don’t feel sad for the establishment, rank upon rank of authorities and administrators floating away, locked in an airy castle erected by strip-mining the culture. Great while it lasted.

When it’s revealed that the painting bought at auction for an astronomical price and donated to the art museum is joining five others almost just like it already in storage and only two of them genuine, the glamor drains away. Fifty million dollars for a modern painting is stock-market speculation on a crypto-commodity, and this money-mill hijacking of art devalues and derides sincere attempts to find a singular voice at a level where average people live. More than that, this aesthetically-innocent, accountant-driven barter in trophy art appropriates and exploits society’s appetite for self-expression, but as we speak their pirate dynasty implodes. Major donors have been accused of humanitarian crimes, forgeries are being found out in the lab, and the minions are in full rebellion, wanting more money and telling dirty secrets, but worst of all the public is changing its mind. Instead of supporting modern art's grand charade they’re about to go looking for sense-affirming and world-verifying, locally-sourced and personally-relevant art in their price range and buy some.