The $12 Million Stuffed Shark

I have been reading about another art machine - the market! The $12 Million Stuffed Shark: The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art and Auction Houses is a fascinated read, written by Don Thompson and published by Aurum Press Ltd in 2008, it maps the ludicrous system of the art market in relation to all other economic forces.

Who really rules the (art) world when money is no object and time is the scarcest resource left?

The art market is its own disconnected ecosystem; removed from (and even in some cases opposed to) many of the defining structures of the broader marketplace. The book analyses this art market from within the auction house. Therefore video, performance, film and photography have been disregarded - categorisation itself becomes a slippery subject. Where are the boundaries?

‘In 2003 a twenty-five-year-old student named Clinton Boisvert at The School of Visual Arts in New York was asked to produce a sculpture project showing how the emotion elicited by art could impact on life. Boisvert created three dozen black boxes each stencilled with the word ‘Fear’. He had just finished hiding the last of these in New York City subway stations when he was arrested. A dozen stations were shut down for several hours while police squads retrieved the sculptures. Boisvert was convicted of reckless endangerment, but received an ‘A’ for the project.’

The book then goes on to argue that when there is nothing left to trust within art, when taste and instinct are no longer applicable terms, the only thing that those investing in the works have is BRANDING - there is no time to invest in knowledge. ‘Branding is the end result of the experiences a company creates with its customers and the media over a long period of time.’ Christie’s and Sotherby’s are the biggest value adding components. Branding has substituted aesthetic judgement. However there are other branding systems too - not just the auction house itself but the time of the auction (evening auctions are superior), then there is the gallery, the dealer, the establishment of the artist, each which come with their unique stamp of approval (or not depending). But this is not all… the city of sale is also a factor - New York and London for example are brands in themselves. It is a terrifying system out there, and one with increasingly little to do with any work content it seems to me. I shall read on and update more later.