Thursday

Art simply will not die

Commonly, people say Visual Arts and Visual Art sales since 1980 is similar to the flicker of a flame, waning and then strong, at best. This is because, statistically, yes, the arts are down, but this is only relative to multi-million dollar art sales taking place day after day. Like art itself, the market is dependent on the opinion (or confidence) people have in it. When their confidence is weary, that is, when their perception is distorted, they buy less, and the market is then regurgitated back to them over and over again, consistently recreating our fears by reminding us that the market is “down.” Down? According to whom? They’ve been trying to say the arts are down, but I know that it’s not.

A smaller, more recent, example of this entire scenario taking place happened in late 2007, when people’s imaginary fears of a weak market allowed 20 of Jeff Koons’ lots and a painting by Van Gogh to go unsold causing a 28% drop in Bid shares the following day. After a week of wallet-weariness people decided, on the advice of some economist perhaps, to go ahead and purchase $23.6 million of Jeff’s work, setting 16 price records. Other artists were also involved in the record-setting. Continue…