“When Art Becomes too Commercialized”

Dave Hickey, like many of us, is truly able to see that making money is often more important in today’s world than selling a product that is actual useful to its producer and to its buyer. Although this is unfortunate, it is the way of the world today in general-and it is also the way of the art world. Hickey clearly states within his speech Custodians of Culture: Schoolyard Art: Playing Fair Without the Referee that: “Artists like money better than art.” This may be hard to believe, but it becomes fairly evident when paintings and pictures are sold for millions of dollars by investors who know nothing about art. Thus, the artist does not care who the painting is going to, if the buyer actually enjoys art, or what will happen to his or her piece of art. It is all about the circulation of money and using capitalism to succeed on either end of the spectrum, buyer or artist, in the art world. Instead of collecting art that is not only appealing to the buyer but also appealing for the artist to create, it is all about getting buyers to bid top dollar; Hickey tries to convince his audience that the best way to distribute art is to sell art to members of the community who will promote it in a way that does not have to involve money.

Hickey uses a metaphor to really emphasize the exploitation of art due to the strong influence of capitalism. He refers to “hotel art shows,” in which artists display their work in different hotel rooms and people walk through the halls and pick and choose what they would be willing to pay for. In this sense, this is like walking through a grocery store while artists wait at the check-out ready to claim their profit. It is also like speed shopping; buyers are not looking merely at the work itself, they are looking at the price tag. This is not always the best way to shop. Hickey then compares this scenario to another scene that took place in Baghdad when criminals kept items they stole in hotel rooms for others to buy. Hickey refers to these scenarios as “absolute raw capitalism.” Within both scenarios, the artists and the criminals are not concerned with the quality of the items, they are concerned with profit.

Thus, Hickey promotes a policy that he believes to be the most successful way of “selling” art. Hickey explains that an artist should sell his or her piece to a gallery, the gallery should sell this piece to the community which would represent public virtue instead of mere capitalism, and finally the art would be sold to museums for profit. By selling art to community members, it is a form of public virtue because it allows people to see the influence and meaning of art and does not focus merely on capitalism. Then, when a member of the community is done with a specific piece, he or she can sell it to a museum for their own profit. Also, throughout this process, artists would not be the only ones raking in massive amounts of money. This is a fair, and virtuous way of “selling” and “distributing” art.

Now, Hickey finds it important for artists to reevaluate their process of creating art to sell. Hickey explains that artists, “need to show art that they like.” Basically, artists need to stop creating art that they know will sell and create art that they find to be meaningful and that they enjoy working on. It is a real shame that the process of creating art has turned into a process that is meaningless and comparative to an assembly line process, when artists and buyers value the price tag over the deeper content. As Hickey puts it so nicely and bluntly: “There is so much money out there it makes you cry.”