Results tagged “Damien Hirst” from Real Clear Arts

Has Conceptual Art Jumped the Shark Tank?

That was the headline on an op-ed in The New York Times the other day by Dennis Dutton, the author of The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure and Human Evolution and co-founder and co-editor of Arts & Letters Daily. The piece was pegged to the auction of a medicine cabinet by Damien Hirst. A key passage:

Since the endearingly witty Marcel Duchamp invented conceptual art 90 years ago by offering his "ready-mades" -- a urinal or a snow shovel, for instance -- for gallery shows, the genre has degenerated. Duchamp, an authentic artistic genius, was in 1917 making sport of the art establishment and its stuffy values. By the time we get to 2009, Mr. Hirst and Mr. Koons are the establishment.

But Dutton was really writing about the importance of art to humans, and the future of art. He takes a dim view of conceptual art, and opines on its future -- implying, to me at least, that he wishes the time of the current generation of conceptual artists would pass. "We ought, then, to stop kidding ourselves that painstakingly developed artistic technique is passé, a value left over from our grandparents' culture," he writes.

He concludes this way:

I can't help regarding medicine cabinets, vacuum cleaners and dead sharks as reckless investments. Somewhere out there in collectorland is the unlucky guy who will be the last one holding the vacuum cleaner, and wondering why.

But that doesn't mean we need to worry about the future of art. There are plenty of prodigious artists at work in every medium, ready to wow us with surprising skills. And yes, now and again I walk past a jewelry shop window and stop, transfixed by a sparkling, teardrop-shaped precious stone. Our distant ancestors loved that shape, and found beauty in the skill needed to make it -- even before they could put their love into words.

I'm with Dutton on sharks and vacuum cleaners. My main question is why he couched his argument in terms of art's investment value -- but then again, I haven't read his book, which may have made his argument head-on. Here's a link to the NYT piece.

Leanne Goebel, writing on Adobe Airstream, asks (and answers) the right question about the Damien Hirst pencil theft incident:

Scotland Yard says the theft was a stunt for publicity. But any more so than Hirst's diamond encrusted skull was a stunt for publicity and to inflate the value of his art before his "Beautiful Inside My Head Forever" direct-to-auction sale at Sotheby's?

Perhaps the real issue is that Hirst, the most famous, well-known and richest living conceptual artist is being out-concepted by a teenager?

Ah, but you want to read the whole post, really.

Remember that "confidence report" from London-based ArtTactic that I wrote about here several days ago? Most of the study, which involves interviews with key participants in the art market, was behind a pay wall, and I was able to give you only a few bullet points.

Now ArtTactic has posted a podcast, with video charts, showing much more of its hand. It reveals more evidence for ArtTactic's verdict that there is "less negativity" in the contemporary market. But that's all relative. As is explained, the index ranges from zero to 100, so any index below 50 means that the firm received more pessimistic than optimistic views of the market. That index shot from 11 in December to 28 in June. But that's still gloomy, just less gloomy.

ArtTactic also breaks down the market by price categories; perhaps not surprisingly, the only category in truly positive territory was the segment for art priced at less than $50,000. There is also some, but less, confidence in the $50,000 to $100,000 and for works selling for more than $1 million. The middle market is the most dicey. Anecdotal evidence over the last six months has suggested the same thing.

In December, a significant number of people thought that recovery would take more than five years. With prices skidding since then, more than 60% of respondents now believe that recovery will take just 1 to 2 years. And the pace of price declines has definitely slowed down. As a result, people feel that the market is much less risky than it was in December. Because there is less liquidity in the financial world, there is perceived to be less speculation.

ArtTactic also ranks artists, and the top three rated for "long-term" value are Gerard Richter, Jeff Koons and Cindy Sherman -- the same as those at the top in December. Damien Hirst is not in the top five, but he has apparently moved up smartly since December.  

The entire podcast, with charts, can be heard and viewed here.

Oh, yeah, and regarding the just-concluded June sales on London (versus the May sales in New York,

This week being the start of the spring bellwether auctions in New York, there's a lot in the art press about the art market. In one entry from WSJ, The Wall Street Journal's quarterly magazine, which arrived with my paper on Saturday, David Zwirner had several interesting things to say. Calling him "the art world's go-to gallerist right now" -- a title others would no doubt contest -- the magazine promised his "unvarnished opinion on a market in free fall." Kelly Crow did the interview. A few choice excerpts:

Damien Hirst and Takashi Murakami are going to get tested, and the jury is out. Andy Warhol's market collapsed completely in the early 1990s. He withstood his test. Hirst and Murakami--I'll be curious to see where their careers are in five years.

And:

I'd like a 25-year moratorium on selling living artists' work at auction. It would give artists time to develop their work without worrying about auction prices. Auction houses got greedy and wanted in on selling new work--right up to the infamous Hirst sale when they stepped in and played art gallery. I don't like it, and my artists don't like it. When a piece they've sold is flipped for $1.5 million at auction, they don't get anything out of it--and they're left standing in front of blank canvases worrying about money when that should be the last thing on their minds.