Art as commodity: Hirst & the value of "art"

Posted on | 2/6/11 | No Comments

 I was asked to do a review of Damien Hirst and while I originally planned to do so referring to concept art, my complex feelings towards his work have convinced me to approach him from an easier angle. Today I want to write again about “art as a commodity” and how value is placed on a piece.  I’ve said before that I do not believe “talent” to be essential to become an “artist” and I think this statement is embodied in Hirst. It is well known that much of “his” work is created by assistants, with him doing the conceptualizing. I read on his Wikipedia page that an assistant once asked him for one of his dot paintings and he told her to paint one herself since she had done others. I can’t remember his exact response but it was in the vein of “the only difference between my work and yours is the money” which I think illustrates exactly my point. I personally have a complex view when it comes to assistants although it may simply be because I will probably never have any, though heavens knows that I could be doing much larger and more complex work with a few. My point being that I do believe conceptualization is a major component of creating a piece. On the other hand I also believe that if an “artist” signs off claiming a piece, that piece had damn well better have had some work beyond "I thought it up!" (conceptualization) done by that artist.

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Should art outlast the artist?

Posted on | 1/22/11 | No Comments

Picasso in The Metropolitan Museum of Art (Metropolitan Museum of Art Publications)

I love the ephemeral nature of art, and I'm not just saying that. I believe that the value of art comes from its transient nature. Graffiti artists, concept artists and installation artists seem to understand this nature instinctively. I understand that this point of view is not common to the art world. In fact this industry seems to be geared mostly towards making as much money as possible from as few artists as possible, saving some pieces for hundreds of years. Take Picasso for example. What is his value now? What do his pieces mean? Of course his art sells for millions of dollars, something I find vaguely obscene considering that most artists die impoverished. Then again art is now considered an investor's market because of the very transient nature of art and artists. The fact that artists die effectively limits the supply of their art, which automatically jacks up the price, whether the piece is worthwhile or even good.

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What is the nature of art?

Posted on | 1/19/11 | No Comments

The Philosophy of Art (Foundations of the Philosophy of the Arts) Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art: The Analytic Tradition: An Anthology (Blackwell Philosophy Anthologies)What is the nature of art?
It seems that there are two different views from which to approach contemporary art. You have one side where all people expect is essentially a pretty image that they can use to decorate space or a wall. On the other hand there is a sort of expectation, in what you could call the more "real art" world, of "deep" meaning being embedded into a piece of art, when in reality that "meaning" is imposed by an external source (by the viewer, reviewer, gallery, etc). I think that this is a throwback to one of the original uses of art (or what we now call art) as a means to show God, for example the prototypical Venus: a wide hipped mother Goddess with pendulous breasts. She was not "art" to the people who made her, but a visual reminder or representation of their gods. Now however, this human tendency to add meaning where there is none is taken advantage of by hustlers and salespeople who market art for the masses. Despite this easily manipulated trait, the art world remains active and possibly because of these hustlers, it remains fresh and ever changing.

A friend once told me that conceptual art is what is made by writers with no talent. I think this is an interesting concept. "Bullshit" is well known facet of the art world. You can find it everywhere from the titles of pieces to excessively long and detailed descriptions of the art and even in how people speak about it. Strangely enough, talent is not a prerequisite for becoming an artist. It is more important for the creator to speak or write well and have the skill to communicate ideas. Essentially the making of art is the practice of making ideas tangible and in some cases physical.

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