JANET HUNTER
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Commodification and Contemporary Art

6/17/2018

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"When a product becomes indistinguishable from others like it and consumers buy on price alone, it becomes a commodity."
-​"Investopedia", Forbes, quoted in Thomas Crow, "Historical Returns", Artforum, April 2008

"We have made a virtue out of the pursuit of material self-interest: indeed, this very pursuit now constitutes whatever remains of our collective purpose. We know what things cost but have no idea what they are worth."
- Tony Judt, "Ill Fares the Land", New York Review of Books, April 29, 2010

"The greatest consequence of the commoditization of art is the loss of the integrity of the object because it is with the integrity of the object that all lasting value lies."
- Michael Findlay, "The value of Art: Money, Power, Beauty", Prestel, New York
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What Is "Contemporary" Art?

4/13/2018

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"Contemporary art is a period of information disorder, a condition of perfect aesthetic entropy."
                                                                                                       - Arthur Danto, "The End of Art", 1997

""What is contemporary ​art?" is (clearly) not the same question as "What is ​art?" The former basically asks us to define what is particularly "contemporary" about art - not, significantly enough, what is particularly artistic about it."
   - Dieter Roelstraete, "What Is Not Contemporary Art? The View From Jena, eflux Journal, 2009 

"...the artist is conceived less as an individual producer of discrete objects than as a collaborator and producer of situations; the work of art as a finite, portable, commodifiable product is preconceived as an ongoing or long term project with an unclear beginning and end; while the audience, previously conceived as a "viewer" or "beholder", is now positioned as a co-producer or participant."
                 - Claire Bishop, Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship, 2012

"Not only do they [contemporary art fairs] adjoin buyers and sellers of contemporary art goods and services, but they streamline the contemporary art experience into a tightly packaged event- a lifestyle- for the international business elite."
                        - Noah Horowitz, Director of the Americas for Art Basel in Miami Beach since 2015
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What is Art? 1966 to 2018

2/27/2018

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"A work of art is a thing in the world not just a text or commentary on the world." 
~ Susan Sontag, Beyond Interpretation, 1966.

"Art has become another field of politics in an over-politicized time." 
"Art has been demoted from aesthetic judgement to tests of ideological soundness."
"The current critical culture rates work by what it says about racism, misogyny, colonialism, populism, identity, bourgeois values etc."
"The essence of an aesthetic creation is the technique, not the message, to be judged on its own terms, not ideology."
~ Janan Ganesh, Financial Times, January 27, 2018.

Also have a read of the New Yorker article by Calvin Tomkins called "The Whole Thing is Crazy", January 29, 2018 edition, click here to link to the New Yorker site. 


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Why Comments rather than a Blog?

2/20/2018

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Blogs are usually too subjective, banal, lengthy and have too little to do with any real understanding of the larger art world in terms of historical context. 

I wish to educate in terms of the latter, hence "comment".
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    About 

    Comments, thoughts, inspirations and contemplations. Here you will find occasional posts by Janet about art and the art world.

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  • Home
  • Artist Statement
    • CV
  • Artwork
    • Winterstone
    • Bronze
    • Gypsum
    • Resin
  • Contact