The podcast entitled Custodians of Culture: Schoolyard Art: Playing Fair without the Referee, by David Hickey, holds similar views to Robert Hughes’ Curse of the Mona Lisa. Each of these pieces by each of these critics is presented in different ways but convey a similar message. Named best documentary at the 2009 Banff International Television Festival, The Mona Lisa Curse is a thought provoking look at the art market revolution. This documentary gives Hughes’ highly opinioned take on the matter; it reveals how art superstars are made. Hickey’s podcast supports Hughes’ assertions, and further paints the picture of the effects of money, greed and commodities in the art world.
In the Custodians of Culture: Schoolyard Art: Playing Fair without the Referee piece, David Hickey talks about the transformation of the way art is created, priced and sold. The transformation in the art market occurred in the 1970’s, and changed the way art is valued to this day. Hickey explains that the reasons for this transition came from the death of installation art, the escalation of available capital and the collapse of institutional authority. The art fair embodies all of these changes. Today, arts value is now based on how much someone is willing to pay for it. There is no one left in the modern art market that offers a fair price for art. People are too focused on making the most amount of money possible, and this takes away from the actual art. Art should be admired and collected for its meaning and the message it presents or the emotion it evokes. He compares the way the art market works to a conversation between his wife and a movie director. His wife stated that she liked the movie for its good values and the movie director replied “Good values. Is that coming back?” This is relative to the way art dealers price and sell art in the modern art market. They are not interested in the actual art itself, or its message. All the dealers care about is selling the most products for the most amount of money possible. The art itself seems to have no internal value to the dealers or the purchasers anymore. Instead, the value of art is determined by how much it can be sold for. This is a greedy way to deal with art, and Hickey does not believe that this is the way it should be done. His podcast asserts his negative opinions of the modern art market in a comical way, yet they still convey the important message that art is no longer properly valued. Artists, dealers, and even the buyers are selling out.
Robert Hughes has a similar view of the art market to David Hickey’s. His documentary entitled The Mona Lisa Curse presents an unfortunate relationship between art and money. It seems that many people consider art a business and are more interested in the money than the artwork. Of course artists need income to support themselves and their families, but the problem with the way the art market sells art is that it victimizes the actual art and causes the creation of art to be a materialistic practice. There is no balance between the pursuit of money and the creation and selling of meaningful art. Art is simply a commodity to many artists and dealers these days and is more valuable according to the price it may be sold at. There is no question that greed has taken over aspects of art, more specifically the art market. Art should be created and valued in a way that embraces the underlying message or the issue that it portrays. It should be admired for its evocation of emotion and intellect. The evolution of the art market to a money hungry business is only detrimental to art, true artists who do not care about money, and the buyers. It is important that art eventually returns to a state in which the work is valued more than its price.
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