Regarding the article cited by Berg, I want to say it follows a trite mode of argument: using a few examples of to make a universal supposition that ignores the real complexity of an issue. The surrounding reality of any issue that involves ethics, morality, or taste is suffused by ordinary human frailty. After all, we are immersed in the human world -- the coarse, confused, conflicted, contentious, corrupt (see how many words there are with each letter of the alphabet to describe our social reality). It is just plain stupid to assume that artists and their patrons should be beyond the sphere of reality and be fairy-tale free from ordinary material interests when it comes to making and trading artworks. Outside of some cult practices where artworks perform a magical function, people always and everywhere have linked artworks and money just as they have everything else.
Artists make artworks; that is, they propose what they make as art, and the society -- either one patron or many or a institutional practice -- decide if it's really art, and their decisions are always conditional. I'm not sure why artists are always held to standards similar to the standards for sainthood (including at least three miracles of art?) where other creative people are praised for their similarly miraculous successes. I've never heard of anyone complaining about, say, Jonas Salk, or Thomas Edison, making personal fortunes from their 'art'. Even in the other arts, one usually only finds praise for architects, authors, and playwrights who attain fame AND fortune. Artists, the creators, must live in this world and survive by its rules, but they aim for the lofty, something beyond the reach of vulgarity. The real issue is not money and art but to note the dividing line, if it exists, between the lofty condition that Western art has defined for itself over the centuries and the vulgar condition, so presumed, of mass commercial imagery in a runaway capitalist culture. Nowadays is almost impossible to define the condition of the 'lofty' for even the word is unsued anymore and seems to pertain only to values that were once enshrined by religious faith, meaning of course, otherworldly and therefore beyond quantitative measure. The fact that some artworks are being traded for huge sums of money, seemingly glorifying their kitschy, commercial vulgarity, may really signify a immense longing for the lofty, as if to demonstrate that ideal pricelessness is yet attainable, not by faith alone but for all the money in the world. The fallacy in that reasoning is, of course, obvious if one presumes the lofty to be priceless because it is a state of mind, a belief, or a feeling -- the aesthetic itself -- and not merely something that costs more than anything else or all the money in the world. You cannot buy the lofty but you can have it freely as you do your own self-hood. You can have the worldly, the vulgar, at some price from small to all the money there is. There are some artworks, claimed to be lofty, to be had for a penny; others that cost millions or hundreds of millions (When will a billion be reached?). I'm off to my studio now. I'll perform a miracle there. A little painting. You can buy it for the price of a mere luxury object. But it is priceless and the money you pay is simply a guarantee that I will eat and survive -- together with the art suppliers, dealers, landlords, etc., --- in the swamp of vulgarity we call culture. So, feed the saints and believe that the lofty can be affirmed. Or, pay a penny and there will still be the lofty but no-one will be able to reach for it. It's ludicrous and ironic for the Wall Street Journal to publish an article lamenting the excess money in the artworld while being dedicated to bulging profits in all other sectors no matter what ecess of Artworks are things or pseudo-things. All things and pseudo-things are monetized. Thus artworks are monetized. ________________________________ From: joseph berg <[email protected]> To: aesthetics-l <[email protected]> Sent: Sat, December 22, 2012 2:42:11 AM Subject: "Even what they grandly call bthe aestheticb will recognise the sovereignty of markets." http://www.afr.com/p/national/arts_saleroom/contemporary_art_how_the_tables_V ubp2juRPC5sqTRmsYqJ7M
