OK, it’s not yesterday’s SMH editorial, or today’s for that matter, indeed it’s a week old. But it’s worth a ponder. Exactly what is going on here?
The full editorial: Great art gets lost in a flood of dollars
Precis: The vast bulk of tourists who go to Paris to see the Mona Lisa don’t understand it and get nothing more from it than a tick on their “must see” list. And the Mona Lisa is so hyped that most people ignore other art works and queue instead to see the what could be a painting worth an “absurd” $700million or so. In contrast an Aussie painting by Nolan fetches a mere $5.4million, a local record. Now paintings, especially expensive ones by masters old and new, because they are hand-made by now-famous dead artists are difficult or impossible to reproduce in all of their intrinsic craftmanship. Thus is the price forced up. The point is also made that the price-hyping is circular, feeding itself in a loop. Adding to the out-of-kilter value “problem” is that other, arguably equally valuable artworks, like books or music, are readily reproducible and thus cheapened.
Whilst there is much that is valid here, I couldn’t help but wonder about the issues raised. Where I quote it’s from the SMH editorial found at the link above.
“It seems a ridiculous process. What does their (ie the tourist’s) experience mean? For many, probably very little. Another notch on the international tourist’s belt, like seeing the changing of the guard, or visiting Niagara Falls. Nor does it signify much about the painting they are seeing. It is beautiful, but a mystery. Its significance for many will probably be its value.”
Quite so, but what is the point here? We have built an international industry on “going and seeing”. Amped-up tourist destinations, holiday air travel and supporting infrastructure. Should we abandon that, or simply restrict tourists to natural monuments in order to bring “meaning” to art and reduce the pressure on art prices?
“It is an absurd figure. How could one painting possibly be worth so much? Or what comparison could there be between an oblong of canvas and so many mere dollars? Beside those sums, the news this week that a Sidney Nolan painting, First-Class Marksman, from his Ned Kelly series sold for an $5.4 million may seem very small beer. But it is an enormous price nonetheless for a single work of art – an Australian record.”
Well yes, sure. It’s absurd to value a single painting at these sorts of prices. But that’s the market. Are CEOs overpaid? Are sports “stars” and celebrities of various types paid too much? Arguably, yes. A newsreader can easily out-earn the President of the United States. Whilst you can make a case for that, too – a country’s leader shouldn’t just be in it for the money – the sums paid to broadcasters for their voices and faces is, surely, ludicrous. And it’s real money, not an estimate – and ultimately our money, too. We pay for the outlandish paypackets of celebrities, sports stars and broadcasters via our singular, silly willingness to buy those products that advertise through their respective marketing channels. Absurd, I know. You got a better plan?
“Painting and money have a special relationship. Music is performed over and over again; novels are printed by the thousand. But there is only one of any painting for the dollars to chase. That is why the art market reaches its astronomical heights. In fact a painting is worth only what it is made up of: a canvas, some wood and some paint, plus the work undertaken by the artist who will often have sold it originally for a fraction of its present value.”
Why does painting have a special relationship with money? Yes, it has special physical properties that make it difficult to copy, properties that the written word or string of musical notes only have in rare circumstances – but this is by luck and circumstance, coupled with our desire to make it “special”. Many, many artists have reached – or at least approached – the same technical prowess and could in fact reproduce the styles (and paintings) of the old masters at similar skill levels. But we have chosen to freeze time and lock in our heroes. First one to do it – the inventor, shall we say – wins. Or rather the owner of the painting ultimately wins. Again, ludicrous. But we have built an unnatural artifice of artwork “religion” around the masters (our “gods”) and created this absurdity by our worship. With music and the written word with have made far less effort to glorify and sustain the original work. Rather we have allowed and even encouraged borrowings and repetition. Consider that we allow the conductor and soloist almost as much respect and admiration as the composer. And we have introduced increasingly cheaper and more pervasive methods of reproduction – despite record company whinging and litigation. We have rarely put equal effort into reproducing our painted and sculpted art, or allowed such efforts. Absurd? Our choice.
All the rest is a cultural overlay we as a community place upon it. Without any other way to measure its artistic or cultural value for certain, we use the only readily comprehensible measure we know – money. It becomes a circular process: someone has paid $5 million for a painting because it is good; the painting is good, because someone has paid more than $5 million for it. The market, moreover, feeds on itself in familiar ways. A herd instinct takes over, pushing artistic fashions at the expense of others. Contemporary trends can price craftsmanship at a discount. Painting gets lost in all this.
It may well be so, but we have chosen to create the art market we have – long ago – and to retain it “as-is” ad infinitum. If we seriously wanted parity between the arts we could do it. It just takes motivation, organisation, agreement and action. (Easy!) But there is no such desire to change the market, especially within the art community. Until such time as technology affords us cheap, perfectly-formed reproductions indistinguishable from the original – not as impossible as it sounds – we are stuck with the art – and artifice – of our own making.
OK, it’s not yesterday’s SMH editorial, or today’s for that matter, indeed it’s a week old. But it’s worth a ponder. Exactly what is going on here?
The full editorial: Great art gets lost in a flood of dollars
Precis: The vast bulk of tourists who go to Paris to see the Mona Lisa don’t understand it and get nothing more from it than a tick on their “must see” list. And the Mona Lisa is so hyped that most people ignore other art works and queue instead to see the what could be a painting worth an “absurd” $700million or so. In contrast an Aussie painting by Nolan fetches a mere $5.4million, a local record. Now paintings, especially expensive ones by masters old and new, because they are hand-made by now-famous dead artists are difficult or impossible to reproduce in all of their intrinsic craftmanship. Thus is the price forced up. The point is also made that the price-hyping is circular, feeding itself in a loop. Adding to the out-of-kilter value “problem” is that other, arguably equally valuable artworks, like books or music, are readily reproducible and thus cheapened.
Whilst there is much that is valid here, I couldn’t help but wonder about the issues raised. Where I quote it’s from the SMH editorial found at the link above.
“It seems a ridiculous process. What does their (ie the tourist’s) experience mean? For many, probably very little. Another notch on the international tourist’s belt, like seeing the changing of the guard, or visiting Niagara Falls. Nor does it signify much about the painting they are seeing. It is beautiful, but a mystery. Its significance for many will probably be its value.”
Quite so, but what is the point here? We have built an international industry on “going and seeing”. Amped-up tourist destinations, holiday air travel and supporting infrastructure. Should we abandon that, or simply restrict tourists to natural monuments in order to bring “meaning” to art and reduce the pressure on art prices?
“It is an absurd figure. How could one painting possibly be worth so much? Or what comparison could there be between an oblong of canvas and so many mere dollars? Beside those sums, the news this week that a Sidney Nolan painting, First-Class Marksman, from his Ned Kelly series sold for an $5.4 million may seem very small beer. But it is an enormous price nonetheless for a single work of art – an Australian record.”
Well yes, sure. It’s absurd to value a single painting at these sorts of prices. But that’s the market. Are CEOs overpaid? Are sports “stars” and celebrities of various types paid too much? Arguably, yes. A newsreader can easily out-earn the President of the United States. Whilst you can make a case for that, too – a country’s leader shouldn’t just be in it for the money – the sums paid to broadcasters for their voices and faces is, surely, ludicrous. And it’s real money, not an estimate – and ultimately our money, too. We pay for the outlandish paypackets of celebrities, sports stars and broadcasters via our singular, silly willingness to buy those products that advertise through their respective marketing channels. Absurd, I know. You got a better plan?
“Painting and money have a special relationship. Music is performed over and over again; novels are printed by the thousand. But there is only one of any painting for the dollars to chase. That is why the art market reaches its astronomical heights. In fact a painting is worth only what it is made up of: a canvas, some wood and some paint, plus the work undertaken by the artist who will often have sold it originally for a fraction of its present value.”
Why does painting have a special relationship with money? Yes, it has special physical properties that make it difficult to copy, properties that the written word or string of musical notes only have in rare circumstances – but this is by luck and circumstance, coupled with our desire to make it “special”. Many, many artists have reached – or at least approached – the same technical prowess and could in fact reproduce the styles (and paintings) of the old masters at similar skill levels. But we have chosen to freeze time and lock in our heroes. First one to do it – the inventor, shall we say – wins. Or rather the owner of the painting ultimately wins. Again, ludicrous. But we have built an unnatural artifice of artwork “religion” around the masters (our “gods”) and created this absurdity by our worship. With music and the written word with have made far less effort to glorify and sustain the original work. Rather we have allowed and even encouraged borrowings and repetition. Consider that we allow the conductor and soloist almost as much respect and admiration as the composer. And we have introduced increasingly cheaper and more pervasive methods of reproduction – despite record company whinging and litigation. We have rarely put equal effort into reproducing our painted and sculpted art, or allowed such efforts. Absurd? Our choice.
All the rest is a cultural overlay we as a community place upon it. Without any other way to measure its artistic or cultural value for certain, we use the only readily comprehensible measure we know – money. It becomes a circular process: someone has paid $5 million for a painting because it is good; the painting is good, because someone has paid more than $5 million for it. The market, moreover, feeds on itself in familiar ways. A herd instinct takes over, pushing artistic fashions at the expense of others. Contemporary trends can price craftsmanship at a discount. Painting gets lost in all this.
It may well be so, but we have chosen to create the art market we have – long ago – and to retain it “as-is” ad infinitum. If we seriously wanted parity between the arts we could do it. It just takes motivation, organisation, agreement and action. (Easy!) But there is no such desire to change the market, especially within the art community. Until such time as technology affords us cheap, perfectly-formed reproductions indistinguishable from the original – not as impossible as it sounds – we are stuck with the art – and artifice – of our own making.
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