2021-12-09
46 分钟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.”)
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.