Art technicians: The industry’s dirty secret, or all part of the process?

Reposting an old comment. The art world obeys supply and demand - where demand has no relation to the real world. Damien Hirst is a marketing genius. He needs a factory to build his art, much like Porsche.

If you are more curious about the contemporary art world market and why $29M is not that expensive[1], I recommend "The $12 Million Stuffed Shark: The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art". In general, brand (in this case Christie's and Sotheby's) ranks supreme above all else. Once you are branded, you can pretty much sell anything as expensive art. Also, an interesting factoid - when we hear of Far East/Middle East buyers bidding tens of millions (or more) for a painting, we naturally tend to think - who buys that without seeing it - but as the book points out - the painting has most likely gone to see the buyer already (e.g. Dubai/Hong Kong pre-auction private tour).

Excerpts from the book:

"Money itself has little meaning in the upper echelons of the art world -- everyone has it. What impresses is ownership of a rare and treasured work such as Jasper Johns' 1958 White Flag. The person who owns it (currently Michael Ovitz in Los Angeles) is above the art crowd, untouchable. What the rich seem to want to acquire is what economists call positional good; things that prove to the rest of the world that they really are rich."

Jasper Johns' White Flag

http://michaelovitz.blogspot.com/2011/04/weve-featured-this-...

http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/1998.329

Estimates on the artist economy: "40k artists resident in London (about same number in NYC)

For London and NYC each: 75 superstar artists (>$1M/yr income)

300 mature, successful artists (>$100k/yr income)

5,000 part time artists (need to supplement their income)"

https://www.amazon.com/The-Million-Stuffed-Shark-Contemporar...

[1] "If a great apartment costs $30 million, than a Rothko [big deal famous contemporary artist] that hangs in the featured spot in the living room can also be worth $30 million - as much as the value of the apartment. But no one could envision a $72.8 million apartment to use for comparison..."

“Very little is actually about execution, because the execution's primary purpose is to represent the idea. It's the actual idea that contains the values.” This quote from the article is a strange reflection of what the world of software development teaches.

to quote Modest Mouse

"All them eager actors / gladly taking credit / For the lines created / by the people tucked away from sight"

It applies to companies as well.

Although I am not an Entrepreneur, I have read some books and blogs around Entrepreneurship. The conses seems to be that Entrepreneurs almost universally put way to much value and weight into their idea. In business the idea isn't worth shit, the execution is.

One of the longstanding examples of this that immediately sprung to mind is Dale Chihuly (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dale_Chihuly), the renown glass sculptor.

Except Chihuly has not physically produced ANY of the glass sculptures attributed to him since 1979: "...he continued to blow glass until he dislocated his right shoulder in a 1979 bodysurfing accident. No longer able to hold the glass blowing pipe, he hired others to do the work."

It's an interesting thought experiment about what art actually IS: is art the idea behind the piece? Is it the skill that the individual has in physically bringing the piece to life? If the person with the vision doesn't physically produce the outcome, is it still their art?

It's pretty easy to sit back and say "No, of course not, if you only have the vision and don't do any of the work, then you don't get all of the credit!" And yet, think about how this translates over to the technology world. Whose name is associated with the iPhone? Steve Jobs. Did he, alone, design all aspects of the device? Perhaps. Did he code every chip, bevel every edge, sketch every wireframe? No. Did it come to fruition in a vacuum? Of course not, and yet very few of us can name any of the other individuals who collaborated with Jobs. Does Steve Jobs deserve credit for the invention? Of course, and he signed off on every design decision and charted the course for the device to come into existence. However, he was not an independent actor, but a spearheading collaborator with a very large team coming together to work on one project. And yet, Steve Jobs is the name we know.

So in that vein, is Dale Chihuly an artist? If he only designs the pieces (and from what I've seen, "designing" consists of vaguely sketching out colored shapes on large pieces of paper and then overseeing all of the glassblowers who make the various parts of his sculptures) but he never physically produces ANY of the sculptures attributed to his name, does he deserve all of the credit? If he oversees the whole process, start to finish, and has final say on every single aspect of the sculpture, should he be lauded for his vision even though it was not his effort that brought that vision to life?