Decadence or evolution?
Sunday, September 14th, 2008Reading about the upcoming Damien Hirst auction provoked so many reactions in me that I don’t know where to start. I was amused that anyone could be so shocked at the idea of an artist, especially one as famous as Hirst, selling art all by themselves. Is that even legal? Don’t you need some kind of art dealer’s license, like when you want to sell booze? And how will those poor art dealers pay for their Upper East Side townhouses if they can’t take their cut of big artist’s sales? Sarcasm aside, it’s amazing to see the level of hypocrisy this event has brought out.. Apparently it’s OK for everyone else in the art world to try to make a buck, but if an artist does it they’re a cynical, greedy sell-out.
But what’s more interesting about all this is that art markets are doing well even as real estate and physical consumer goods are showing signs of saturation. The affluent classes in the western world already have far more “stuff” than they need. In recent decades they (especially in America) have spent their extra wealth on more stuff - bigger and more houses, more cars, more clothes. Now the trend seems to be reversing.. Wealthy people are more likely to brag about their latest art purchases than vacation homes, and Art Basel Miami was filled with a lot of mid-priced art aimed at the same demographics that were bailing on their Miami condo deposits en masse. And even further down the income scale, the video games industry is growing at over 30% annually while apparel and home goods retailers are flat or shrinking.
Is this part of a final shift in emphasis from the tangible to the intangible? Have we maxed out on “stuff” and shifted our focus to “content”? Or will the pendulum swing back the other way next decade and we’ll all go back to craving 10,000 square foot houses with 5-car garages?
