An Art dealer and an economist walked into the bar, no, into the gallery. The economist gasped at a young artist’s doodle costing several thousand dollars, while the art dealer nodded and commented that this is the art trend of the future. The unknown artist stood behind the gallery door, wondering if he could sell his paintings. If yes, how much can he get from the price? If not, how can he get famous to sell his art?
1. How art was capitalised
Art was born to serve ritualistic purposes 10,000-15,000 years ago. The animal figures on the cave walls, the wooden god statues, the reliefs played a role in a certain ritual or practice. For a long time, art has always been associated with a ritualistic value when works were kept only in temples, palaces of kings and families of nobles.
At the end of the eighteenth century, when the tools of mass copying, the camera and at the same time the emergence of socialism, new works of art were liberated from their sacrificial value. Mass reproduction takes away the uniqueness of works of art, taking them out of a fixed, private space (a temple) and placing them in a public space (museum) allowing the work to be exhibited. production for a wide audience. In 1789 the French Revolution succeeded, the Louvre palace was requisitioned as the Louvre museum, the first public museum to display works of art to the public (in 1793).
When art was presented to the public, there was a need for ownership among the urban capitalists and merchants. Traders of antiques and art supplies gradually became intermediaries between customers and artists. Thanks to that, galleries appear more and more. Since then, art has been capitalized.
2. How is the art market manipulated?
Since capital has been involved in art, people rarely talk about a famous work and forget to include its price. Information about art is in the headlines of numbers, the larger the number, the more proudly the artistic background of that work (as was the case in Vietnam recently when Mai Trung Thu’s paintings were purchased for 3.1) million dollars at Sotheby’s Hong Kong auction). Can the work still be admired as art or a profitable commodity?
Who controls the art market? Galleries, museums, collectors, art investors? To answer this circle clearly requires several new articles. But to summarize, please take a look at the chart below.
The reason galleries have to value art so high is because they have to invest a lot in an emerging artist: come to the studio to visit, encourage encouragement, connect artists with customers and colleagues, organize Exhibition, brand promotion. After becoming famous, artists often move to another more famous gallery. Or, the creative power of new artists is also unstable. Therefore, the gallery sets a high selling price to ensure that those investments and risks do not bring the gallery down.
In addition, the world’s wealthy collectors also play a key role in the game of manipulating the art market. For example, Charles Saatchi, the tycoon, art collector and owner of the Saatchi gallery . No financial constraints, Saatchi likes to buy all of their work. Then open the exhibition at a shocking price, several dozen times higher than the original price. Specifically, he bought Damien Hirst’s work – a glass case containing dead shark carcasses embalmed with formaldehyde – for $84,000 and sold it for $13 million.
It is said that Saatchi is not an art collector, but a speculator.
And he said, according to Forbes:
“Some people like art, some people like being shocked by it. Either way, the whole village is happy.”
3. Resistance efforts
The principle of Marxism-Leninism states that: “Where there is oppression, there is struggle”. The art market is no exception. Some artists have risen up against the art trade system in many ways.
Artists develop hard-to-package art forms such as: installation art, performance art, or the graffiti art that Banksy represents. American artists Christo and Jeanne-claude have created works of the moment and cannot be bought . They travel around and perform environmental and landscape installations such as the Serial Fence (Running Fence, 1972 – 1976).
There are artists who are completely outside the art market, like Gustav Metzger, the German-British artist and political activist. Not only did he create acid spray paintings that would self-destruct, but he also called for an art strike and artistic refusal in 1977 and 1980. It was Metzger who developed the concept of Autonomous Art and Art Strike. He was never shown in a commercial gallery and his works never appeared at auction.
There are artists who started from the gallery system but then stepped out to advocate for themselves, the most famous case is Damien Hirst , who was dubbed “the richest artist alive”. As mentioned above, Damien Hirst was sponsored by Saatchi and made a name for himself as a young artist. After a blast with the exhibition The Impossibility of Death in the Minds of the Living Few, which displayed animal carcasses in glass cases, he pushed art dealers aside. Hirst directly held an auction called Beautiful Inside My Head Forever in Sotheby’s London, bringing in $198 million (if the numbers shock you, welcome to art). Since then, Hirst is not only an artist, but also a talented businessman.
The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, Damien Hirst, 1991
Image via Flickr
4. Art (not) selling art
No artist wants to be in a crazy inflationary market. But few are as secure as Gustav Metzger and as talented as Damien Hirst?
If you don’t sell art, why pay rent? What does a dry-footed artist use to prove his usefulness other than the price?
Nowadays, people demand from artists many other things, besides creative talent. A successful artist is a business acumen. If not like Damien Hirst, it could also be Ann Rea, a master degree painter who struggled to find her art career.
In an interview with Art Business News in 2016, Rea said she used to work at a desk, then returned to drawing and depended on the gallery system. After a while realizing that she was “squeezed” by the system, she decided to build a relationship with a patron (patron), real money, no discount, and continued to expand transactions via transmission. mouth. A year later, she made $100,000, far more than the average $52,200 salary of artists in the US (according to US Bureau of Labor and Statistics, 2018) . As a next step, Rea set up the Artists Who Thrive website, opening an online course called ” Making Art Making Money ” to help other young artists avoid being dominated by the art system.
With the development of technology, artists can take advantage of social networks to promote their talents and names: open their own websites to sell works, promote through social media channels and receive patrons from communities. beloved companion. That means actively promoting yourself, don’t wait for someone to discover your hidden talent.
In short, do we still have to sell art?
To avoid feeling discouraged and frustrated with the phrase “selling art”, Rea advised young artists that, don’t sell art, create unique value on your own art and sell that value . Find the uniqueness in your own personal experience, tell it with art, people will resonate and buy the work to continue reliving that experience every time you look at your art.
References:
- Thanks for curator Nguyen Nhu Huy’s suggestion in the art display value section
- Art display values: The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (pp. 1-26), Benjamin, W. (1935)
- How the gallery works: High-end art is one of the most manipulated markets in the world , Quartz, 2013
- About America Christo and Jeanne-claude: An Introduction to Art Theory, Cynthia, 2001
- About Gustav Metzger: When artists take on the art market , Apollo-magazine, 2017
- About Saatchi and Damien Hirts: The Art of Being Charles Saatchi , Forbes, 2009
- Interview by Ann Rea: Selling Art Sucks , Art Business News, 2016
- With the full contribution of Google.
