485. “I’ve Been Working My Ass Off for You to Make that Profit?”

485.“我一直在为你拼命工作才能赚这么多钱?”

Freakonomics Radio

社会与文化

2021-12-09

46 分钟
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单集简介 ...

The more successful an artist is, the more likely their work will later be resold at auction for a huge markup — and they receive nothing. Should that change? Also: why doesn’t contemporary art impact society the way music and film do? (Part 2 of “The Hidden Side of the Art Market.”)

单集文稿 ...

  • When we think about the art market, we tend to think of the sellers, the galleries and auction houses and the buyers, the art collectors, museums, maybe even some speculators.

  • That's what we looked at last week in the first episode of a three part series we're calling the hidden side of the art market.

  • Those buyers, and really even the sellers, they represent the.

  • The demand side of the equation today, let's talk about the supply side.

  • In other words, the artists.

  • What does the art market look like from their perspective?

  • Well, I would say it's the world's largest unregulated commodities market, except I was corrected by a friend that art is not a commodity.

  • A commodity is like orange juice or copper, so you can't really compare apples and oranges, but it is extremely unregulated and subject to all kinds of monkey business.

  • That's Tom Sacks.

  • I'm an artist, 55 years old, and I live in New York City.

  • I'm a sculptor, and my priority is making sculptures that really expose the transparency in which they're made.

  • Sachs may sound low key, but he's a pretty big deal.

  • His work is in the collection of top museums in New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, Paris, Milan.

  • You get the idea.

  • When we spoke with him, he was in Hamburg, Germany, setting up the fourth installment of a virtual space mission he's been working on for 13 years.

  • We're going to the asteroid known as Vesta on a mining mission because we've run out of gold here on earth.

  • It's a pretty elaborate expedition.

  • You could call it performance art.

  • That's, to me, a dirty word.

  • I say live demonstration.