As someone who spent a good number of years working with the business end of art, I suppose it need to confess to a certain degree of cynicism.
With that out of the way...
... the other day, I found myself watching a live webcast of one of international art auctioneer Sotheby's auction sales in London. Well, at least I watched part of it.
The sale featured a number of "important works," including a number of pieces by actual living artists. Most of the items under the hammer sold for amounts ranging from the hundreds of thousands of US Dollars to the tens of millions.
Now, I am not going to speculate on the nature of art collecting and what makes something valuable, but one thing that has long been of interest to me is the question of what makes one artist's work "important" and another artist's virtually identical work for all intents and purposes unknown.
Take "a series of colorful stripes" on canvas, in the guise of "Modern Art."
It's merits aside, what we are looking at is something that was probably attempted 100 times by someone before the work at hand was created, and has probably been attempted 100 more times since the work at hand was created.
So if you line up these 100's of paintings next to each other, how did one of them end up being "rare and important," and the remaining majority largely inconsequential?
Were the stripes of this one piece somehow more authentic? Were they painted with more feeling? Were they more aesthetically pleasing? Why, for example, was it Bridget Riley who became world famous, and not any number of other aspiring artists doing something very similar?
Are we truly looking at a case for this all being a matter of fortune and someone having the "right" manager and publicist, at the right time?
I can't help but lean towards the latter... and I say that, examining the issue from the perspective of dealing in art for 15+ years.
Of course art — and the enjoyment and valuation of art — is ultimately in the eyes of the beholder. And sometimes people are persuaded that the story behind a piece of work adds more "value" than the work, itself.
These factors are all part of the "mystery" of art... what do YOU think?
Thanks for reading!
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All images are my own