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COVERSTORYCOVER STORY art&deal July 2011 015 Art Values or Money Values ? Donald Kuspit How the middle aged and old collectors respond to keep an eye on. It might not yet be ‘a public battle of styles’, there is a possibility that such collectors will reconcile their boredom by collecting a lot of early moderns and returning to the ‘autonomus form’. We don’t haVE ART MOVEMENTS ANY MORE. Money’s organs on view! I will suggest that the irrational exuberance of the contemporary art market is about the breeding of money, not the fertility of art, and that commercially precious works of art have become the organ grinder’s monkeys of money. They exist to increase the generative value and staying power of money -- the power of money to breed money, to fertilize itself -- not the value and staying power of art. Many years ago Meyer Schapiro argued that there was a radical difference between art’s spiritual value and its commercial value. The commercial value of art has usurped its spiritual value and indeed, seems to deter- mine it. Art’s esthetic, cognitive, emotional and moral value -- its value for the dialectical varieties of critical consciousness -- has been subsumed by the value of money. Art has never been independent of money, but now it has become a dependency of money. Consciousness of money is all-pervasive. Money has always invested in art, as though admiring, even worshipping, what it respected as its superior -- the true treasure of civilization -- but today money’s hyper-investment in art, implicitly an attempt to overwhelm it, to force it to surrender its supposedly higher values, strongly suggests that money regards itself as superior to art. Even more interestingly, money’s respectability has made once disrespectful avant-garde art -- art once scornfully irreverent towards capitalist society, art that claimed to be a spiritual revolution against its material values -- respectable. Today it is no longer a matter of art legitimating and celebrating the power that is money, but of money Inevitably, one must recall Andy Warhol’s prescient idea of business art, that is, his recognition that art has becomelegitimating a business and appropriating and making artmoney by making in business it a capitalist is an art, fiefdom. implying that the making of money and the making of art involve the same motivation. A new hierarchy of value has in fact been established: money has come to have a higher value than art. Money no longer serves and supports art, art serves and supports money. When money showers its blessings on art, the way Jupiter showered money on Danae, art spreads its legs in gratitude. Since Rothko that the capitalization of art is complete. Money has completely conquered art, indeed, art has become a species ofwrote, money. we have witnessed the slow but steady encroachment of money on art. Escalating auction prices confirm Art was spirit in material form, the material of art a means to a spiritual end. Art was always inwardly fine, consciouslywhatever profane as well form as unconsciously. it took. Only art Is thethat convergence makes money of findsart and its moneyway into -- the equatingtextbooks, of which art with sometimes money --seems healthy like or rationalization unhealthy for of the auction artist, results.however Official much artit may history be a tendssign of to healthy follow thecapitalism? lead of the art markets, I will return to the question of the general spiritual effect of the capitalist appropriation of art by money, but now I want to get down to the brass tacks of art prices in 2006 and their effect on the perception and evaluation of art. I will offer an understanding of the value and meaning accorded to works of art -- and, by (Image on the left) extension, the artists who made them -- by the amount of money paid for them. William De Kooning I Door to the River Paying a certain amount of money for a work of art can be compared to placing a bet on a number in roulette. It Work by JACKSON POLLOCK is in fact less of a gamble, for the more money market is a free market. The libertarian one places on the art number the more one value and social value, where social value character of the art market accords with the guarantees that it will win the art game. Big tendsThe to listbe reducedimplies the to national conflation value, of critical unregulated character of contemporary art money guarantees big art historical returns implicitly understood as a bottom line value. production. -- good art historical fortune as well as a very Price signals a partisan national choice, and Today art is what price you can get away good economic future. It only stops on the with that supposedly national art values. with. Fontantels -Cisneros attended this year’s most money. Again the canon created by American art New York art fairs. Clearly art offers an Gamblers such as art dealer Jeffrey Deitch administrators has been changed -- an exceptionally good return on investment. Let and collectors Donald and Mera Rubells, American derivative of French art has lost me emphasize that while these art money recently installed on a College Art Association pride of place, coming in second to a German comparisons raise art value comparisons, the panel with Jerry Saltz and Peter Plagens, two competitor. I suggest this is one of the reasons market offers no conceptual follow-through or that the art of Germany and Austria, a country rationale for its prices. Money’s reason for being is enough to make the being of any art newart critics, meaning confirm in old that art bigand money old meaning has taken in new prices than French and American art. There is rational and give it critical import. artover -- art.that It has is nouveau perverse riche insights money -- not that the finds in its sphere of influence, are achieving higher In other words, money is the only raison self-styled critical establishment. sociopolitical realities, for art values have Is Geffen manipulating art values or is he no way that art prices can avoid reflecting say that money values have nothing to do with just making as much money as he can? The also saying that for all the supposed transna- artd’etre values. and meaningBut art prices art finally not only needs. impinge You may on players have become more important than the tionalismalways reflected of art, nationalthem, if notstyles exclusively. continue Ito am them, but imply there is no need for independ- artists whose works they play with because exist, and national values are at stake in art ent evaluation of art. Today art’s importance is they have the money and the artists don’t. I am prices. It conveys the breakdown of difference that it creates money. It is not clear that money suggesting that the price paid for a work of art creates art, however much it may “patronize” it. becomes its absolute and authoritative value, which in fact occurred almost simultaneously Art’s value is guaranteed by money, which even if the value the price implies is not particu- inbetween the work popular of all threecommercial artists. and The fine develop art, - doesn’t mean that without money it has no larly clear. Also, a low price suggests a short- ment of art prices follows the development of value, but that money value overrides art value term investment, while a high price suggests a nations more than it follows the development while appearing to confer it. Both art and long-term investment, and ultimately the of art values, if they develop. I suggest that as criticism have been defeated by money, even “pricelessness” that confers immortality on art the political credibility and economic power of though money gives art critical cachet, thus -- its value beyond money even though its the United States declines and the political validating it as art. Even more insidiously, immortality resides in the vast amount of credibility and economic power of China money has become more existentially meaning- money it can be exchanged for. The high prices grows -- as Shanghai overtakes New York and ful than art. even London and Frankfurt as a commercial I suggest that money has entered the they are long-distance art-historical runners center -- the art produced in the United States sacred river of art and muddied it, even as it ratherpaid for than de Kooning sprinters and who Pollock fall by confirm the historical that will lose economic and artistic value while the attempts to undo its sacrilege by paying artists wayside. art produced in China will gain economic and off. But it looks like the relationship between There are several noteworthy things about artistic value, with a few art administratively art and money has become incestuous, this list, each indicative, in a different way, of enforced exceptions. It seems clear, then, that suggesting that the marriage between money the power of money value to create or at least and art will produce defective artists. & impose art value. The question is what kind of his or her art. The freer the market, the higher (An abridged version of the original article by critical value? the artist’s nationality influences the price of the writer first published in www.artslant.com). the price of the art, confirming that the art .

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