RSH
IMAGINARY COMMODITIES Over the course of the past 80 or so years
the art world has become something other than a conduit of cultural ideas. It has been infiltrated by banks and investors as a way to park huge sums of wealth in imaginary commodities deemed valuable by said banks and investors. Ultimately this means that a small handful of extremely wealthy individuals is choosing what our museums present as art, which artists are able to reach the public eye through exposure in a tiny clique of magazines, galleries and public and private cultural institutions like the Tate, MOMA, MCA, Whitney, etc. The decision to inflate certain artist’s value in order to make them investable commodities was something that meant they had to control the entire shape of how each of their chosen artists would be presented to the public. Since they were already the largest donors and board members of the major museums the ability to shape this flow of who is worthy and who is not was already at hand.
Artists who don’t make any of their own work, that pay others to produce it like a assembly line, are merely brand names created by weathly investors to facilitate the laundering of money. Brands like Mr Brainwash, Hirst, Emin and many of the supposed art world’s greatest hits of the 80’s and 90’s «born to wealth» spoiled kid who can buy their way into good PR and upscale galleries. This concept that its the ‘idea’ that is important, and not the execution, in the making of art is a ridiculous idiocy that has been perpetrated on the public as part of the process of eliminating any potentially ‘outside’ intrusions into the imaginary commodities market that is called the ‘art world.’ By eliminating the need for skill and talent the rich have made it possible that even the talentless can be deified as artists worthy of investment. Why elevate the poor based on their talent when you can elevate your friend’s spoiled children and their art school chums?