The Commodification of Art, and Capitalism’s Infiltration of the Art World
“Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art; the art of words…the name of our beautiful reward is not profit, it is freedom.”
— Ursula Le Guin
Commercial art refers simply to art that is created for commercial purposes; art that is paid for. Primarily for advertising. The commercialisation of art has existed for centuries, and a primary example can be traced back to the renaissance movement, where the Catholic Church was in possession of substantial power and wealth. Art like the Sistine Chapel and the Last Supper is admired now purely for its beauty, but at the time it was commissioned by the Church to inspire awe and wonder in Christian worshipers and non-worshipers alike; essentially selling Catholicism.
While commercial art has existed for centuries, the question of whether this is good or bad for art and artists still ponders. However, over the last decade contemporary art has manifested itself into a new beginning: commodification.
Living in a capitalist society, we are forced to pit ourselves against each other in a system we have no choice but to participate in. We are coerced into adapting ourselves and our skills into fitting the role of benefitting capitalist society. And unfortunately, the art world is no exception. While the businessperson and the manufacturer are rewarded, the writer and the artist are supressed. Unless of course, that art is commodified.
Artists of the late 20th century, such as Warhol and Haring, voiced their concerns over the capitalistic surge of mass production and commodification, pioneering an artistic revolution that unveils pure expressions of repression, ideology, and the illusion of capitalism through uses of pop art and visual language. Ironically, the death of these artists led to their own art being commodified, with gallery owners and agents selling prints of their works in a tone-deaf manner in exhibition gift shops. Leaving Warhol and Haring rolling in their graves over the thought of their work, that rejects consumerism and mass production, being exploited for those exact things.
While art in its essence is pure in expression; a momentary release and escape from modern day society, some contemporary artists have instead chosen to embrace this emergence of consumerism, drawing the line between fine art and commodified art. Takashi Murakami established his “Superflat” aesthetic and theory as the merge of art with commercial forms of Japanese culture. Superflat functions as both the theorisation and practice of the production-consumption of art within the ever-growing contemporary globalisation process. By overlapping the ideas of “art” and “commercial”, Murakami’s works and Superflat express the relations between art, commodities, and cultural identity in the contemporary context of consumerism. By reinforcing the emergence of art and commercial culture through the production of commodities, Murakami presents his art as a business strategy and challenges how art is conventionally exhibited.
Commentator, Jerry Saltz, wrote about Superflat, “Surface is everything to Murakami — it’s all there is…If you want substance or meaning, you’re barking up the wrong show…But if you go with the visual flow, thunderbolts of impeccability can keep these thoughts at bay for wonderful minutes at a time. Murakami is a style rider who works between pop art and popular culture.”
Likewise commenting on the meaning of Superflat, Kieko Minami writes, “It can be seen that embedded in the apparently vivid Superflat works, with their total absence of depth, are a variety of cultural, political, social and historical contexts concerning the relationships between high art and subculture, between Japan and America, between contemporary art and traditional Japanese art, between art and capitalism. If we place these contexts within brackets and pretend to ignore them, the strength of the high quality, super flat surface is most apparent, but the moment we summon up these contexts, the picture starts to hint at endless meanings. Smoothness and complication, beauty and high-functionality, Murakami imbues his paintings with unparalleled structure, a structure that resembles an incredibly carefully planned, highly functional cyborg”
These commentaries draw upon the dynamic between the apparent facile nature of Superflat and the contradictory, yet embedded contexts of cultural, political, economic, and artistic relationships and clashes.
Murakami’s business strategy of Superflat is made most apparent in his 2006 collaboration with Louis Vuitton. One of the works created in this collaboration is the 16 x 18cm jewellery case. The case is present in the classic Louis Vuitton style, and displays a graphic of a panda at the forefront. This graphic is a distinct representation of Murakami’s Superflat style, which features elements of anime and Japanese pop-culture. This case in particular sells for about $80k.
What we initially see as the rejuvenation of the brand from high end French couture to “kawaii”, Murakami’s intentions with the collaboration are seemingly more subversive. To most, particularly Westerners, this work seems like a thoughtless perpetuation of presenting Japanese culture as empty, because those who buy it aren’t it for the meaning; they’re buying because it’s “kawaii”, and to Murakami, his work is a burlesque of this.
Adrian Farell writes, “Murakami self-consciously sees his art as an inversion of Orientalism. Like others of his generation (he was born in 1963), he grew up obsessed with America’s power over Japan, and with bitter memories of the wartime experience. There is a kind of ‘passive aggressive’ attitude to the West in the work. He is, in fact, a Japanese nationalist, and as such sees his art as a way of playing up to Western stereotypes of Japan, of fooling Western tastes. There is something quite cynical about how he talks about his art strategy to a Japanese audience.”
In this collaboration, Louis Vuitton seemingly provide most of the historical and cultural attributions of class and wealth, while Murakami’s addition is something vaguely Japanese, commercialising and watering down his art to something that is only seen as cute. Subsequently, Murakami became concerned that the West couldn’t recognise the meanings behind Superflat as well as a Japanese audience. Given his aversion towards the West, particularly America, perhaps there is a passive aggressive sentiment within his work. Murakami allows himself to make a cynical commentary on Western ignorance and attitudes towards Japan, while simultaneously exploiting millions out of such ideas through the people with those exact attitudes ignorantly buying his products. Yet the question regarding the success of this political commentary still remains, considering the West remain oblivious to his critiques. This collaboration, when considering Murakami’s sentiments, can be seen as a perfect representation of his Superflat movement. But as these critiques remain unnoticed by consumers, his work undermines the political and social meanings behind Superflat. Despite Murakami’s intentions, the perpetuation of these inconsistencies is detrimental. By not revealing the meanings behind his work, or by not holding these intentions at all, Murakami will be responsible for the West undermining both art and Japanese culture, resulting in both being morphed into nothing more than a commodity.
Jeff Koons has similarly embraced commodifying and merchandising his art. Facing decades of criticism from people questioning the integrity and capitalistic nature of his work. Scott Timberg proposes the concern, “Does Koons critique or question our society the way substantial artists have? Or does he just amp up its worst qualities and sell it back to us?”
Koons definitely does make this concern evident with his collaboration with H&M, selling $50 purses bearing images of “Balloon Dog”, and auctioning said sculpture in 2013 for $58m, the record for a living artist. This sculpture was one in a series of five. Koons’ subject matter tends to focus on everyday objects, in this case a balloon dog, and blows them up to gargantuan proportions, with these works all equally being 3m in height. These sculptures represent childhood play and disposable culture, with Koons describing them as a “symbol of us”, claiming that the Balloon Dogs reference the subconscious act of inhaling and exhaling, and its symbolism to the human condition.
In 2014, Koons held an exhibition for his works at the Whitney Museum in New York, showcasing a myriad of everyday objects, sculptured out of stainless steel, all colourful and mirror finished. Koons presents a sly critique on middle class values to an overtly middle class audience, and capitalising on the guilty pleasures or plain confusion that viewers take away from his mixed messages of simultaneously criticising and celebrating commercial culture. The ex-Wall Street commodities broker seemingly chose to enable the obscurities of art collecting and commercialising through his powers of persuasion by pushing art dealers to subsidise costs of producing his work. And to Koons’ supporters, this in itself presents as its own movement. His knowledge of business alongside a tendency of risk taking within his work was characterised by Peter Schjeldahl as a “Gilded Age Avant-Gardism.” Making it apparent that the earlier Avant-Garde movements of Abstract art and Fauvism were now being taken in place of the banality and extravagance of Koons’ work. The “Gilded Age Avant-Gardism” of Koons provides a semi-embrace with Dadaism, while Marcel Duchamp present objects like a bicycle wheel and a urinal, Koons similarly portrays large scale sculptures of ordinary and massed-produced objects. But while Duchamp presents Dadaism as the anti-art, Koons’ work presents itself as a commercial austerity. Scott Rothkopf argues that we must perceive Koons’ work “through the eyes of the ready-made.” and likens Koons’ use of ordinary objects to that of Dadaism, but Koons’ boastfulness and extravagance in his work directly contradicts the privacy and reservation of Duchamp, considering his work “Fountain” was never even displayed. Duchamp expressed his concern that art is “a habit-forming drug” and through Dadaism, hoped to break the habit. But Koons’ exorbitant sculptures are nothing Dada-ist in their nature; they are a habit-forming drug for the rich.
Despite the fact that I mostly reject these artists’ willingness to commodify and commercialise their work, part of me can’t help but almost envy their methods of profiting from their work, and the ease in which they do so. No concerns with how commodifying their art undermines any deeper meanings behind it, or how commercialising their own work to such a great extent may affect the art world. Just pure supply and demand. Prioritising themselves in a hyper-competitive capitalist society. While contradicting my personal morals, I admit I find it somewhat admirable, there’s seemingly a deliberate ignorance that comes with embracing capitalism within one’s art, and I suppose that criticising capitalism can only take you so far in regard to commercial success. But mostly I just find it sad. Art is at its best when it is authentic, pure in creativity, freedom, and expression. When an artist asks themselves “What will sell?” that art becomes a commodity. It has a sense of hollowness, and authenticity erodes when an artwork is created to achieve a maximum profit. Unfortunately, artists like Koons and Murakami have succumbed to this. Koons panders to art collectors with his pompous and banal sculptures and uninspiring references to Dadaism and middle-class values. Murakami makes commentaries on Western ignorance through is collaboration with Louis Vuitton, but as these commentaries remain veiled, his criticisms begin to appear to be less of a concern, and more-so a cynical opportunity to exploit and capitalise off this ignorance as he continues to sell these works for thousands of dollars, proving detrimental to both the art world and Japanese culture. Similarly, Koons collaborated with H&M, a brand notoriously known for mass-production, as well as their contributions to consumerist and disposable culture. The collaboration was primarily utilised by Koons to promote his exhibition at the Whitney, and sold $50 purses printed with an image of “Balloon Dog”, while claiming that he “wanted his work to be accessible to people.” Evidently both Koons and Murakami make it apparent that not even the art world is free from the evil in which capitalism manifests itself.
However, art is the antithesis of capitalism. Art is free and sincere, pure in creativity and high in consciousness. An expression of feelings and interpretations created to provoke thought and enlightenment. Life under capitalism is fast paced, where minds cannot see passed the need to pay bills, buy food, and meet deadlines. When we are consumed by capitalistic needs, the artist’s creativity is limited; as is the viewer’s ability to understand art. Commodification stagnates artistic and intellectual growth and produces rushed, thoughtless art that caters to cluttered minds. As capitalism continues to adapt and degrade art, audiences decline in reason, thought, and connection — suffocated by greed.
