Washington Depot, Connecticut
Lots of art gallery openings around here today, which will likely feature in upcoming blog posts. The sentiment commercially expressed at this gallery gives me a mixed reaction. It's 100% correct if you buy a work of art because you love it, respond to it, want to live with it in your home, and can afford it. In that case there is only the risk that you were too hasty in your judgement and bought something that has lots of impact but no staying power for you, in which case you can probably resell it before everybody else also figures out it's vapid.
But the comparison to the stock market is troubling. In financial terms, contemporary art—by which I don't mean any school or style but simply work by people alive and doing their work today—is about as secure an investment as penny stocks, or Enron, whether it's a hundred bucks or a hundred thousand. When it gets into the stratosphere of millions pricing it becomes self-fulfilling for a while, but that too shall pass. Especially when paid for a chromogenic print that will fade away. Fools abound.
6 comments:
Seems like you are wondering about the Gursky sale, too.
:-)
Only partly—the part about longevity. I actually kind of like the Gursky snap.
I'm ambivalent about retouching of photographs. I just know that it won't *work* for my pictures. Anything that would get you fired from the New York Times (altering the scene) also doesn't belong in my work. I was thinking more about the financial markets, actually. A rigged game where the house always wins and there's nowhere near as much supervision and regulation as there is at a casino. In the auction market the house always wins as well. Though their workers are left out in the cold. Do a search on Southeby's + labor for some interesting material on that front.
Yes, I was talking about the UV-nonresistant part. But, then --- it's part of the deal.
I like the photo, too - I would really like to see it in real, in its real dimension.
I - as someone living by the Rhine river and knowing the scenery, was a little bit disappointed when I learned about the photoshopping. Somehow I would have loved to think that there is a place somewhere at the banks of the Rhine that is so simple and clear.
Gursky's work is image making, maybe photography. He did some serious redaction in the image I think we're talking about. I do think Jerry Uelsmann is a photographer, and he does some serious manipulation; I'll take Gursky too.
Martina, I think this is what is right about John Camp's essay at TOP. I think he's wrong about the wisdom of the market, but like my friend Pierce, I agree completely that the documentary element is what makes photography meaningful. I don't make pictures that don't have a documentary element, well, except by accident. I can't work up any interest in other people's photographs that don't deal with an actual place/time/event. Staged or set-up photographs leave me cold.
me, too ... :-)
I would prefer a painting or another kind of art form if I want to see something staged etc..
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