So what really makes the art world go around is the use of the absence of marketing as marketing. Every dealer is cooler than the next or the previous, all pretending to be oblivious o wanting (or most terribly, needing) a sale of an artwork. The discussion of the market, the rice, the dollars is considered to be so gauche. Funny how the echelons of art commerce epicenters are quite similar to academic departments that convince art students to make art that has no value as a sellable object. I wrote THIS ARTICLE about it (even thought they spelled my name wrong).
Anyway, back to the art market… Those price lists, they are inflated. Because when someone is truly interested in the artwork and they are spending as much as one might on a Mercedes, they are haggling with a ferocity usually reserved for the wrestling arenas of capitalism.
I am curating a show with a lot of work for sale and a few pieces will be borrowed from collectors, not for sale, and yet… when I look at these artworks, they are pretty awesome, I can’t help but think that everything has a price. Maybe when it is not for sale it is at its most attractive. Does one walk the tightrope of tacky in order to not appear to be doing exactly what one is doing? In a world with so many readily-replaceable art objects, apparently one does…