Art as a commodity

Having read Marx's article The Fetishism of the Commodity and made notes under the label Learning Notes,  we are asked four questions:

Can you see ways in which this may help us to understand the art market?

 

In simple terms, definitely. Art is a commodity with modest use value, however much labour is invested therein. It has decorative uses, and, before the advent of the camera, was the source of portraiture but little use value besides. Furthermore, the value of paintings is a great deal more than the sum of the materials used, so there is indeed an "enigmatical character of the product of labour" (Marx, 1867) Moreover, to an untrained (and sometimes trained) eye, one Old Master is very much the same as another. Valuing art is therefore very much about the perception of the artist as opposed to the product, for example why a Rembrandt painting is worth hundreds of times more than one from a less well known painter. This explains why the process of attribution (actually working out who painted a work) by art historians is so important. Howells and Negreiros point out that a suspiciously large number of paintings have been attributed to Rembrandt and quote the example of one - Man Wearing a Gilt Helmet - that was once a prime exhibit in Berlins' Staatliche Museum but has now been disattributed. In terms of art history (and, one might add, value) "..it has now fallen completely apart" (Howells and Negreiros 2012, p69). In a reverse example, recently a painting bought for £400 at a Cheshire antiques shop was valued on BBC's Antiques Roadshow at 1,000 times as much once it was established to be a Van Dyck. (BBC,2013). 

These examples show that the exchange value of commodity, in Marxian terms, is in the brand name of the artist rather than the pigment, the  frame and the canvas. It is doubtful that Van Dyck would have invested 1,000 more hours of labour than anyone else when painting the Magistrate of Brussels yet the cachet of the brand name imbues the commodity with a much higher value. To quote directly from Marx's article:

"whenever, by an exchange, we equate as values our different products, by that very act, we also equate, as human labour, the different kinds of labour expended upon them. We are not aware of this, nevertheless we do it." 

In other words, we value Van Dyck's labour at 1,000 times more than that of an unknown 17th century artist. We may not be aware of that fact, but that is the result. Perhaps the whole area of investing in alternative assets (fine art, vintage cars, fine wines, watches to name a few) is the ultimate commodity fetish. In a discussion on the investment nuances of alternative assets, analysts argue that individuals should concentrate on areas they know and products from which they derive pleasure and use, not simply the hoped for increase in value (BBC 2014). Part of the pleasure for some includes showing off their assets, and there is little to beat what is by definition a unique asset; this uniqueness defines the art market more than other alternative asset classes and explains why museums have to raise exorbitant sums in order to retain works in public view, and why many paintings are literally 'priceless': the market has not been tested for works such as the Mona Lisa.

Does the article above go any way to explain the sort of work made by artists such as Jeff Koons?

This question is an extension of the first. Jeff Koons is a neo pop artist and a couple of examples of his work are discussed below. On November 12 2013, his Balloon Dog (Orange) was sold for $58.4m, the highest price ever achieved for the work of a living artist at auction (Time, 2013). Commodity fetishism has come a long way since Marx wrote but in essence the concept is still applicable - just as Van Dyck's portrait of a magistrate is 1,000 times more valuable than if the product were the result of exactly the same pigment applied in the same way by an unknown or lesser known artist, so Balloon Dog (Orange) is worth probably 1,000,000 times more as it is the product of a well known artist.

But the question is more general than that - does the concept apply to this sort of work, i.e. neo pop. I think that can only be answered by considering the motives of the artists and the buyers. If other artists follow the school in order that their work is seen more, respected, and (most would hope) purchased then it does apply, or at least it applies if the last is a prime motivation. The motivation is that the perception that the market for the products of their labour values pop art more highly than if they produce more traditional work. Classical economic theory would say that is the market working - buyers like neo pop and pay more for it than other art, so produce it.

Consider the motives of the buyers. Their motives may be a genuine love of neo pop; a desire to ensure they are seen to be in mainstream of art and can therefore impress friends and family; or an outright punt on the products as an investment in a perceived growing market. The last one is the ultimate fool's paradise and driven by greed. Marx's article had nothing to say on 'market fever', the desire not to miss an asset bubble, perhaps because they are just that: assets whose value never had a labour element or whose value has become disconnected therefrom (Dutch tulips in early 17th century, Tokyo real estate in 1980s for example). 

As regards the second motive, I think the idea of labour content in exchange value has a disconnected with the result. People buying to impress are almost beyond the market and this behaviour is more akin to the self-aggrandisement of leaders of past peoples having tombs and temples built for them, as discussed by Diamond (2005) among others. There is a point for the super rich where money loses value because they have more of it than they can possibly spend on material needs; their needs then become vanity related, such as spending $58.4m on a sculpture of a balloon dog. 

The motive of a love of neo pop is impossible to prove, but it raises the question of fun, i.e whether the work of Koons and similar is popular simple because it is light, it is not deemed to be serious. In this respect, Marx has little to say as the idea of a frivolous value is not within his theory, it is perhaps a function more of contemporary socioeconomics, though there were plenty of examples in nineteenth century: follies for example. 

Find some examples of Koons' work and read up on Koons

Koons is prolific. His website lists 23 series of work, most containing many separate works of art. Nowadays he does not even produce his own work. When asked about this in a interview his reply was that "...even though somebody else is applying that mark it is exactly the way I would do it. Every part [of the work] is an extension of my being." (Time, 2012). Two of his most well known works are below.

Woman in a Tub (part of his Banality series) is on display at The Art Institute in Chicago  The sculpture is an unsophisticated sexual joke of which Koons explains: 

“There’s a snorkel and somebody is doing something to her under the water because she’s grabbing her breasts for protection. But the viewer also wants to victimize her.”
(Woman in a Tub, 1988).

This is an interesting comment and takes us back from Marx very directly to Fenichel's scoptophilic instinct. Koons is almost literally suggesting the viewer devours the sculpture with his eyes

Woman in a Tub (Jeff Koons,1988)

Balloon Dog (Orange) is part of the Celebration series, and almost inevitably one of the most well known it was sold for  the record $58m in November 2013 as referred to above. It is characteristically fun and almost a tease on the notion that a balloon dog is itself a creation using simple props, but then taking that a stage further by sculpting the creation; a sort of second level of artwork.

Balloon Dog (orange) (Jeff Koons)

A good reference for Koons is his own website. His work has been exhibited internationally; he is cited in many books and periodicals. His paintings are less well known than his sculptures and sell for less. He was born into a family that had no pretensions artistically. He studied at the Maryland Institute College of Art and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He was a commodity broker for a period before steadily gaining notoriety in 1980s, setting up a studio in New York; he now owns a 1500 sq m factory near Hudosn river rail yards. Koons has won many awards, receiving the US State Department's Medal of Arts in 2013. His website  lists many exhibitions.

Find a couple of examples of artists who work in a similar way to Koons

Artsy (2014a) identifies Neo Geo (Neo Geometric Conceptualism) as a unfying term for the work of Jeff Koons and three other artists: Ashley Bickerton, Peter Halley and Meyer Vaisman. 

Halley is also a New Yorker, and is known for using Roll-a-Tex, a textured paint used for decoration. He notes relations beween what he calls 'prisons' and 'cells',  thus challenging the minimalist idea of neutrality in rigid shapes (Artsy, 2014b). An example of Halley's work is Exploding Cell (2013):

Peter Halley, Exploding Cell, 2013

Ashley Bickerton is another artist originating form New York's east side and identified as a simialr genre to Koons. In 1993, he moved to Indonesia where he specialises in iconography of tropical surrealism, green headed characters, and assemblages, Green Head with Inlay 1 being an example (Wikipedia, 2014)

Ashley Bickerton, Green Head with Inlay 1, 2007

Conclusion

I enjoyed this project and think I understood the articel and follow on questions well. It was challenging to relate the theory directly to an artist and his work. This subject is new to me and until receive some feedback cannot be sure that am on right track, but considered that I understood the project and addressed my response to the questions raised.

References:

Artsy (2014a) Neo-Geo Available from http://artsy.net/gene/neo-geo [Accessed 17 January 2014]

Artsy (2014b) Peter Hally Available from https://artsy.net/artist/peter-halley [Accessed 17 January 2014]

BBC (2013) Antiques Roadshow portrait revealed to be by Anthony Van Dyck

Available from http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-25535536 [Accessed 13 January 2014]

BBC (2014) FT Money Show podcast 9 January 2014 [Accessed 11 January 2014]

Diamond (2005) Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed  New York: Penguin Books.

Howells and Negreiros (2012) Visual Culture. Revised 2^nd ed. Cambridge: Polity Press

Marx (1867) The Fetishism of Commodities Available from http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm#S4 [Accessed 13 January 2014]

Koons (1988) Woman in a Tub http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/artwork/186545 [Accessed 13 January 2014]

Time (2012)  Youtube interview. Available from 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBkRALSJUvw [Accessed 16 January 2014]

 Time (2013)  Newsfeed 14 November 2013 Available from  http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/11/14/an-orange-balloon-dog-sold-for-58-4-million-so-here-are-10-cool-jeff-koons-balloon-pieces/

Wikipedia (2014) Ashley Bickerton Available from http://en.wikipedia.org wiki/Ashley_Bickerton [Accessed 17 January 2014]

Woman in a Tub (1988) Available from http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/artwork/186545  [Accessed 16 January 2014]