Disappearing acts: fictitious capital, aesthetic atheism, and the artworld

ABSTRACT

This article argues that as the market for art rises to prominence both economically and conceptually, the artwork becomes a form of ‘fictitious capital’ that threatens the ontological status of the object and forces reconsideration of the role of the museum. These issues are examined through the lens of empirical market data, contemporary art, and analytic aesthetics. David Carrier’s conception of ‘aesthetic atheism’ is tested against the background of both recent developments in the art market and creative strategies that stage the disappearance of the artwork. It is argued that the proliferation of spectacular auctions, art fairs, and information about sales prices results in a new object of appreciation: the market itself. The result is that the market is ‘aestheticized’ and constituted as a unique sphere of social goods in which the values traditionally associated with art are displaced.

KEYWORDS:

• Art market
• fictitious capital
• financialization
• museum

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Yoram Eshkol-Rokach, Susanne Meyer-Abich, and Alan Thomas for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributor

Kathryn Brown is a lecturer in art history and visual culture at Loughborough University in the United Kingdom. Her publications span nineteenth- and twentieth-century French art and literature, artists’ books, dada, digital art history, and the art market. Her books include Women Readers in French Painting 1870–1890 (Routledge, 2012), Matisse’s Poets: Critical Performance in the Artist’s Book (Bloomsbury Academic, 2017), Henri Matisse (forthcoming Reaktion) and as editor and contributor The Art Book Tradition in Twentieth-Century Europe (Routledge 2013), Interactive Contemporary Art: Participation in Practice (I.B.Tauris, 2014), Perspectives on Degas (Routledge, 2017) and Digital Humanities and Art History (Routledge, 2020). Brown has held visiting fellowships at Tulane University, the Australian National University, and the Center for Advanced Studies in the Visual Arts in Washington DC. Her research has been supported by numerous awards, including most recently from the Terra Foundation for American Art. Brown is the series editor of Contextualizing Art Markets for Bloomsbury Academic.

Notes

1 Ambroise Vollard had, for example, made a major commitment to André Derain in 1905 when he acquired all of the artist’s studio stock, undertook representation of the artist, and commissioned him to paint a series of views of London. See Rebecca A. Rabinow, Douglas W. Druick and Maryline Assante di Panzillo et al. (2006, 354).

2 Georgina Adam surveys various more recent attempts to structure financial products derived from artworks, the majority of which have failed (2017, 131–46). For an overview of the emergence of such art investment products in the twentieth century see Velthuis and Coslor (2012) and Upton-Hansen (2018).

3 In her 1912 interview with Henri Matisse, Clara Taggart MacChesney could not resist hinting at Matisse’s commercial success and contribution to a growing enthusiasm for art investment: ‘M. Matisse sells his canvases as fast as he can paint them, but, if the report is true, speculators buy the majority’ (Flam 1995, 69).

4 Noah Horowitz (2014, 135) draws attention, for example, to the overlap between Frieze’s art sales business (through its art fair) and its art writing business, noting allegations of conflict of interest.

5 Aude De Kerros (2017) also examines the impact of financialization on the creation and exhibition of contemporary art, going so far as to suggest that contemporary production has been subsumed under the banner of ‘Financial Art’ (13). She argues further that art criticism no longer exists and that it has been displaced by a rhetoric of marketing (38–8).

6 For a contrasting view see Michael Hutter’s (2015) discussion of the ways in which different arenas of ‘play’ (e.g. artistic and economic) can ‘irritate’ each other in a productive logic that brings about innovative products and experiences as well as mutual sources of value. My view also differs from that of Max Haiven who understands art as ‘a derivative of capitalism’ (2018, 15). On this view, art and finance are, in fact, mutually constitutive.

7 Writing from a legal perspective, Brian L. Frye (2019) offers his own semi-serious view of this issue in his defense of the idea that transactions for the sale of conceptual art (works that are primarily abstract ideas that cannot be copyrighted in any meaningful way) are, in fact, trades of unregistered securities that violate the US Securities Act of 1933. For further discussion of the impacts of financialization on art see Upton-Hansen (2018) and Haiven (2018). For Haiven, the ‘magic’ of financialization renders ‘practices and processes part of its apparatuses even without their direct commodification or monetization’ (2018, 225).

8 Susanne Meyer-Abich mentioned to me an important cultural counterpoint to this issue as regards the restitution of looted art. When looted art is returned by museums to individuals and families, the case is often made that the financialization of the work (as opposed to its maintenance as part of a museum collection) is regrettable, even though the heirs are within their rights to make the sale. The example brings to the fore the point that financialization is more easily accepted and indeed celebrated in some spheres rather than others. I am grateful to Susanne for pointing out this conflict to me.

9 There is an analogy here between storage in freeports and storage in museum holdings. I view the latter as falling within a different category on the grounds that works in museum storage remain part of the publicly available assets of the institution. Furthermore, there are various initiatives to make stored works available to the public including, for example, the visible art storage and study center of the Luce Foundation Center for American Art in Washington DC.

10 While Danto (2005) is the most famous exponent of this view, an alternative account is proposed by Noëll Carroll (1998).