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Three Links as We Enter London Fair Week
By caryn | October 15, 2008
- The Wall Street Journal adopts the Chicken Little “the sky is falling stance” in regards to the market decline in the punningly titled “London’s Frieze Prepares for a Chill: Artists, Dealers Fret While Smaller Fairs Bow Out in Wake of Economic Crisis.” It’s a completely valid stance albeit one that was absolutely relevant in the art world this time last year. Meaning, the crunch galleries are feeling isn’t a new thing.
- Another really “not quite new” topic of the further melding of private/commercial/public sectors in art is addressed in the Guardian’s “What price the rise of private art?” Our lines in the art world have always been blurred - it’s a bit like the wild west - but now it’s the ickiness of certain involvements should raise some eyebrows. The following question, one that had really be relevant for years now, is key:
What does all this mean for our museums, which are now in direct competition not just with collectors, but with private museums, commercial galleries and even auction houses when it comes to contemporary art?….
Museums are and must remain the crucial arena for judgment, long learning and critical discrimination, for an approach to art free of the pressures of the market. Susan May quoted something Olafur Eliasson said when they were working on the Turbine Hall project: ‘Museums are radical, meaning they have the capacity to challenge ideas beyond capitalist influence.’
It is a point Gregor Muir makes too. ‘In a sense, there is nothing sadder than standing at the bar and hearing that the Basel Art Fair, which turns over millions, is better than the public Venice Biennale. Museums have moral responsibilities that commerce does not. This country should really keep its talent in the public sector.’
- And then I’m throwing in this link to Doug Harvey’s LA Weekly review on Martin Kippenberger at MOCA because Harvey is just one of the best art writers around…
Martin Kippenberger seems to have been a bit of an asshole. I’m not making a judgment, just an observation. Some of my best friends are assholes. I never actually met Kippenberger during his fabled L.A. sojourns in the early ’90s, but, given his epic drinking and insatiable anti-authoritarianism, we probably wouldn’t have found much to argue about.
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