Modern art was born in large part by resistance against growth of the upper class. The early days of the industrial age were well documented by philosopher Walter Benjamin in his posthumous book the Arcades Project. The art arcades - the first shopping mall art - were booming at the end of the 19th century. Entertaining poetry was booming as well. Benjamin writes about the poet Charles Baudelaire as the first modern because he rejects the demands of the poetry market and embraces difficulty. Modern art begins as an anti-commercial movement. A market for modern art slowly developed and evolved up until the late 1960s, the art market contained a healthy amount of democratic possibility. Anyone could afford work if they just sacrificed a little. In the early 1970s we saw the first art auction of living artists work. This radically changed the art market so much I would say it establishes a new one. This new art market explodes first in the 1980s. Dissipates. By the 2000s, it returns. It is a market mirroring the global corporate ideology of free market capitalism which also emerged full blown in the early 1970s. The kind of market is - today - the hyper capitalism of Wall Street, the falseness of corporate media, the manipulation of corporate entertainment and the seizing of the government through economic influence. All of these things grow together. Today, one consequence is art has become investment instead of culture.
Posted on: Fri, 07 Feb 2014 01:57:26 +0000
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