For The Love of GodFascinating look into the art market tonight on channel 4 with the art critic Robert Hughs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Hughes_(critic) you can read the jist of his arguments if you missed it here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2008/09/18/nosplit/bvtvhughes18.xml I loved the bit when he asked a dealer who's name I have already forgot "Did you know Warhol?" An artist on whom he heaped puticular scorn, "no" replyed the dealer. "I did" says Hughes "I found him to be a stupid man"
Are Warhol, Koons, Prince, Hirst second rate artists who through PR, gallery owners and the like hyped and promoted purely for cash gain? Of course. Could this facilitate the death of art? No I don't think so. It may and probably is already making people even more suspicious of the art world but I think that most right minded folk have already written that off as the pile of shit that it is.
No, art will still get made. Ownership of art objects may become not valued as serious, important art, nothing more than craft or curiosities, as more important art is made say using digital technologies or as street art (obviously not Wanksey) and of course lens based media. This is where photography can come in. Photography doesn't have any monetary value as an object. Oh yes some galleries and photographers will partake in all that 1/100 shit but why? For no other reason than to inflate the price. Why is there only 100? There's no reason why there couldn't be 10 000 once the shutters clicked. That's the beauty of photography it's democratic like that.
Perhaps The Mona Lisa curse is just the death of art as object. perhaps that's just that. Perhaps painting's dead and sculpture and dead animals in glass cases, but ideas can't die photography is ideal for catching them and reproducing them over and over again, No good to Mr dealer, Diamond crusted skulls may be priceless one offs but short on intellectual rigour, photies are cheap as fuck and I love them for it....
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