The Ethical Cost of High-Price Art by Peter Singer
In New York last month, Christie’s sold $745 million worth of postwar and contemporary art, the highest total it has ever reached in a single auction. In a more ethical world, to spend tens of millions of dollars on works of art would be status-lowering, not status-enhancing.
Duccio is a major figure who worked during a key transitional moment in the history of Western art, and few of his paintings have survived.
In a 1987 interview with a group of art critics, Koons referred to the work that was sold last month, calling it “The ‘Jim Beam’ work.” Koons had exhibited this piece — an oversize, stainless steel toy train filled with bourbon — in an exhibition called “Luxury and Degradation,” that, according to the New York Times, examined “Shallowness, excess and the dangers of luxury in the high-flying 1980s.”
Art as a critique of luxury and excess! Art as opposition to the widening gap between the rich and the poor! How noble and courageous that sounds.
The art market’s greatest strength is its ability to co-opt any radical demands that a work of art makes, and turn it into another consumer good for the super-rich.
If artists, art critics, and art buyers really had any interest in reducing the widening gap between the rich and the poor, they would be focusing their efforts on developing countries, where spending a few thousand dollars on the purchase of works by indigenous artists could make a real difference to the wellbeing of entire villages.
Originally published at Cogly.
