41–50 of 188 posts
Seth Godin has a great line about how the first person to put a urinal in an art museum was an artist, but the second person to do it was a plumber. It makes an interesting thought experiment about what makes art, what it means to be "creative", and how the world may (or may not) appreciate your work...
Performance, nonetheless, exists as a variable.
Contemporary art is a sophisticated form of money laundering for the very rich. As it almost completely exempt from taxation, it's an ideal vehicle, relatively fungible and open to crazy speculation. The crazy financiarisation of our world made many collectible objects prices skyrocket (see old cars, art, etc). But Contemporary art is the best of all, because, contrary to ancient art or old ferraris, its supply is un…
Can you provide documentation for these supposed tax benefits? (I'm genuinely curious) AFAIK there are no tax benefits at the point of buying the art, and cap gains benefits are no different than stocks, real estate, etc.
What percent of art fetches such high prices? Probably very small. He won the equivalent of the artist lottery, just as some authors win the literary lottery. just randomness.
If both a former president and the next guy do an art piece, I'm pretty certain the president will fetch a higher price for his art work. That's the network effect.
> The art world is a wonderful illustration of the First Law of Success: 'Performance drives success, but when performance can’t be measured, networks drive success.' This is a thought-provoking reframing of "it's not what you know; it's who you know."
Works of art are more than just the objects themselves, however. In particular, works that have expanded the boundaries of what is regarded as art have value as historical artifacts, and the artist who created them reached a higher level of performance, on that particular work (as originality is an important aspect of performance), than those producing works that follow the pattern (including that artist, when producing subsequent works in the same vein.)
This point of view would assign considerable value to Duchamp's original 'Fountain', but not much to a replica, which would compare unfavorably to other, original, examples of signed plumbing. If you want a replica of it, there's probably more intrinsic value in making one for yourself than in buying one.
crypto-coins are an abstraction over art commodities. Devoid of any specific meaning, they are valued according to pure belief. One is justified at any time to purchase them and they are unique. They can be interpreted to have almost any meaning. maybe they should be considered works of art themselves.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you provide documentation for these supposed tax benefits? (I'm genuinely curious) AFAIK there are no tax benefits at the point of buying the art, and cap gains benefits are no different than stocks, real estate, etc.
Here's a great podcast on it: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/02/09/584555705/epis...
I'm guessing that asabjorn's comment is more accurate: People donate art at a fraudulently-inflated price to lower their tax liability.
although i absolutely agree with the analysis of the art world, or world in general, to actually read this makes me very disheartened. and it does not make me want to give up any time spent creating for the sake of networking.
but on modern artists, with my own favourites, there is generally a reason to their success other than being brilliant marketers...Jackson Pollock, for example, had lots of criticism of his work, only for forty years later to discover that his paintings could be judged to be real or fake, by whether or not there were fractals present [1]. i think that is a clear case of someone taking a modern approach to creation, and spending countless hours honing and perfecting their craft for the sake of pure natural aesthetics and discovery.
this article paints like the artists themselves are as fame hungry as the artists critics. lo to find that the 21st century van gogh avoided the art scene completely because of toxicity.
[1]https://aeon.co/ideas/feel-good-fractals-from-ocean-waves-to...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you provide documentation for these supposed tax benefits? (I'm genuinely curious) AFAIK there are no tax benefits at the point of buying the art, and cap gains benefits are no different than stocks, real estate, etc.
Here's a great podcast on it: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/02/09/584555705/epis...
I feel like modern art market is primarily a way for a subsegment of rich people to buy certain intangible goods: These are people that feel lonely, and have low self esteem... They really would like to socialize with cool and charismatic people, and the "modern art scene" is basically a very pricey matchmaking service for them to make friends and go to parties with people that fit this description (i.e. the artists)
Why it was successful is an interesting question. The wealthy has always been important patrons of the arts, and people seem to use the cost of a piece to signify value of the art itself. Imagined or otherwise.
A few documentaries [1 - can't find the main one I was thinking about] [2 - a good video summary on it] and books have exposed that tax deductions on art donations is an incentive to game the system, because it easy to collude with art brokers you know to collect cheap crap art and then donate it. To find a way to collect art you truly adore and then part with it for a tax deduction is much harder.
[1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9878520/ [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZz2PhTQJCA