Art as Pork Belly | The Gift and the End of ‘The Original’

Jonny has been posting some great stuff on The Gift. And tonight on Front Row – BBC Radio 4’s flagship arts programme – there was a great piece about the inflated price of art.

One expert made it clear that the people buying Pollocks for $140 million, and Warhols for tens of millions have one thing in mind: selling them for even more in a few years.

This is the final tragedy of gift become play-thing of the market. Any spirit within the work is destroyed in the face of the business mind. It has become no more than another commodity – steel, pork bellies – to be sold on for profit.

There are those, thank God, who work to subvert this possibility of their work becoming dollar-focused by putting an end to the idea of ‘the original’. And I think it is more here that Hyde’s spirit of the gift remains.

Technorati: BBC | Front Row | Pollock | Warhol