Art as Currency
Don't forget to check out the online art show!
This newsletter issue is not the conclusion to my MFA project but is the last section of my thesis, so it might read as though this is the end. Nope; it’s not. I also said I was going to talk about money laundering this time, but I am pushing it back so I can do a little financial art crime series in the fall when I have finished my degree. (The newsletter will live on after graduation, albeit in a slightly different form.) In April, I will write about collecting, and in May, there will be a case study on the sale of the Salvator Mundi. Don’t forget we have a great online art show up, What We Carry! (If you are a new reader, please start here.)
ART AS CURRENCY: At the beginning of this project, I posed this question:
“Art already contains multiple layers of meaning: there is what happens between the art and the artist, the art and the viewer, art as a symbol of status, a representative of culture, and a vehicle for entertainment. Does adding one more layer - financial asset - have any effect on these others?”
I’m not done writing about the financialization of art, but I do have to stop writing my MFA thesis at some point, and I think I can make a stab at answering this now. I’ll be honest, I wasn’t sure where this would end up. Art objects and experiences have lives of their own. What the world sees and how it interacts with a work is independent of what the artist was thinking when they made it. They can try to imbue things with specific meanings, but there is no guarantee how it will be perceived. Art is big enough to contain the creator’s intent, the viewer’s interpretation, third-party critical evaluations, and a ton of other things. It already supports so many layers, it seemed possible it could hold one more without collapsing. In the end, I am not going to argue that the financialization of art prevents any of those other things from happening, but I think it makes it harder. I believe it takes a powerful, generative force and binds it to such a narrow purpose that meanings no longer matter. Things in this market are not worth money because they are good or interesting, but are good or interesting because they are worth money. Damien Hirst did not make 10,000 spot paintings to turn into NFTs (and then burn a bunch of them) because that number was conceptually relevant; he did so because he could make bank from doing it.
One of the things I learned in business school was how to make sure incentives align with goals. If your software company is offering bonuses for creating products quickly, but what you really want is everything to work right, you may be accidentally rewarding behavior that drops functionality in favor of finishing early. The financialization of art similarly creates a set of incentives that value wealth generation over any cultural or personal benefits. What we see in museums and popular media is directly influenced by what is selling for megabucks at auction. People who have vested monetary interests in art donate to museums, serve on their boards, own media companies, and make sure that the art they like is what gets the most hype. Museum curators fight for underseen work, and sometimes those shows happen, but it’s a battle. Why exhibit some local weirdo art collective when you can make way more money from a Kusama Infinity Room? When art is viewed mainly in financial terms, its purpose is to generate revenue, not convey ideas. Institutions become incentivized to make money, not educate - or at least not beyond very narrow parameters. And while financialization is concentrated at the very top of the market, it trickles down into the attitudes we all have about art and what it is for.
I also think a lot about how much art is not being seen. Not just in missed exhibition opportunities, but the millions of works being stored in freeports by investors and museums. If, in order to fully realize its financial value, a piece must be hidden away in an offshore tax haven and never seen, it no longer functions as art because it cannot transmit its idea. Art isn’t a static image or sound. It is a whisper from mouth to ear, or maybe even a punch to the face. I think it’s in the transmission that the art happens, and if a piece cannot relay its message, it really is no different than that suitcase full of cash I keep talking about. And the problem does not lie just with investors. Maybe the response to museums having so much stuff in storage is not to accept that maybe those pieces will appear in a show someday, but to take those things out of the warehouse. Sell them. Loan them. Give them away. What use are cultural treasures that are not treasured? Hoarding art in a dragon’s lair only benefits the dragon.
I have heard artists I respect, who are otherwise doing good work critiquing the power structures of art institutions, talk about how there is too much art. Too much art for what? For people to make a living? The art ecosphere is crawling with money, and yet it constantly operates out of scarcity instead of abundance in order to prop up the reputation and monetary values of a select few. I am currently watching The Exhibit, a newish reality series on MTV and the Smithsonian Channel. (Other than being owned by the same parent company, not sure this is a natural pairing, but what do I know about synergy? Nothing, that’s what.) Seven artists, Jennifer Warren, Jillian Mayer, Clare Kambhu, Misha Kahn, Baseera Khan, Frank Buffalo Hyde, and Jamaal Barber, are competing to see who will get a “career-defining” show at the Smithsonian's Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden and $100,000. I hate it. I pay to watch it, and I hate it. It just highlights the lack of opportunities for artists who aren’t at the top end of the market. A show at the Hirshhorn? That’s a pretty big deal. $100,000? That’s a lot of money. Most of the artists have some name recognition, and yet they choose to compete for prizes and exposure via janky-ass sub-par reality tv. (It’s not very good.) Is the person who wins just going to be the one who most closely hews to the judges’ ideas of what is suitable to show at the Hirshhorn? Art should not be a competitive sport where people compromise their ideas to vie for limited opportunities to make it big.
But in order for art to exist as a financial asset, the opportunities have to be limited. There needs to be an agreement on whose work investors are going to shovel money into. Museums, auction houses, dealers, and collectors all work together - intentionally or not - to define what’s worthy of their attention. (Interestingly, there is a parallel world of artists working in academic settings who also face fierce competition for resources, but rather than providing institutions monetary value, they generate cultural cachet through their contributions to The Discourse.) Even opportunities to make money are limited to just a few people. Most art funds like Masterworks and Particle market themselves to the common investor. Anyone can make money off art! It’s not just for the rich! That’s a bunch of bunk! Art funds are set up for companies to make money for themselves. Investment companies in general are businesses whose goal is to make a profit. Making money for their clients, while not incidental, is secondary, and you have to give them A LOT of money for them to put your needs ahead of theirs. Talk about mismatched incentives. Maybe some tech bro who buys 1/100 of a painting will make a ton of money, but I’ll believe it when I see it.
So here is the deal. If the function of art is to make money, then yes there is too much art. The current ecosystem cannot support all the people who want to make a living doing what they love because most of the money is reserved for those who can generate the most dough for the super-rich. But the answer to this problem isn’t having fewer people make art. It’s decreasing wealth inequality so people at the lower end can have the resources to make art and not have to worry about crippling student loans. There also needs to be incentives for investment in the art ecosphere as a whole rather than just the parts that create wealth. I don’t have any great ideas on how to make those things happen, nor do I really believe that it will be possible to implement change any time soon. I am not an optimist, and this would be a battle against people who spend a lot of time and money making sure their financial empires remain intact through all eventualities. If they don’t like one tax structure, they just move somewhere with more favorable laws.
But there are things we can do to make our smaller, local art worlds function much better than what’s happening at the upper end. Resist the urge to value only “important” art. Go to the monthly gallery walks in your town or city. You are going to see a lot of crap, but a lot of famous stuff is crap so that’s always going to be a thing. Buy stuff if you can afford it. If you can’t, go to talks or other events. Babysit for your artist sister who could use a little time to focus on her work. Help people find good day jobs that support lifestyles conducive to making art. Work to get more affordable housing in your city so creative types won’t get driven out by increasing rents. Don’t just buy posters with characters from your favorite fandoms, reward people who are making something with a distinct point of view. Read some fun books about art. Pay an artist 100 bucks to come talk to your friends about their work. Ask your museum to show something weird; let them know you are willing to pay an entry fee to wander off the beaten path. There’s no shame in wanting to go see the Van Gogh laser light show, but mix it up by checking out some local stuff as well.
If you are an artist, just keep making stuff. If you are able to work outside the market, do it! Work collaboratively, send out mail art, host an online art show on your website, create weird free performances, whatever! Art can be a never-ending rejection machine, so create your own opportunities. Lots of people want to sell their stuff though, and I have no problem with artists getting paid. If you can swing it, swing it. But if you cannot, there is no shame in it. Try to enjoy (that might be too strong of a word) your day job AND KEEP MAKING WORK. Have ideas and try to make them real. Push back against your asshole friend who says you can’t call yourself an artist unless you make money at it. Don’t let the crud spilling over from the financialization of the contemporary art market infect your own practice. Make some stuff. Show it around. Make more stuff.
Okay. That’s all I've got. I wish I had a better answer on how to make the contemporary art world a healthier place, but I don’t. I just have a skeptical heart and a love of research, and maybe if I share some of the information I find, you’ll become skeptical too. The financialization of the contemporary art market has real effects on the people who aren’t in it, but maybe we don’t have to eat what they are feeding us. Maybe we can focus on our own contemporary art world and make room for more players while having a ton of fun. (Also, we should try harder to get rich people to pay their dang taxes.)