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Art Critical of the Art Market and its Surrogates
The exhibition Art Critical of the Art Market and its Surrogates features artwork by Michael Asher, Marcel Broodthaers, Andrea Fraser, Guerilla Girls, Hans Haacke, Vermeir & Heiremans, Cameron Rowland, and Hito Steyerl — artists known for their critique of market influences on art. 

Vermeir & Heiremans’ Masquerade (2015) and Cameron Rowland’s Pass-Thru (2014) address the natural perversions of capitalist transaction. Masquerade highlights the peculiar nature of what Mark Fisher calls capitalist realism by applying commercial techniques to ‘sell the artist’ as a brand—an approach which we would otherwise take for granted if we were being pitched a vacuum cleaner for example. Vermeir & Heiremans direct the audience’s attention to the element of capitalist transaction embedded in the global art market, unless capitalist realism has saturated so much of reality that the irony goes unnoticed. Pass-Thru invites us to consider a perspex bulletproof exchange carousel, removed from its normal context, and interrogate it as a manifestation of the necessity of inequality for capitalism to function. As a material artifact of the capitalist system, the bulletproof exchange carousel enforces the normalized notion that property is at risk in environments afflicted by economic inequality. In environments where one could plausibly argue that poverty and other forms of inequality are imposed, enterprising capitalists will market an escape from poverty (through the sale of alcohol or lottery tickets for example) to poor consumers in order to profit from them. The bulletproof exchange carousel’s existence simultaneously requires and perpetuates the condition of poverty. In contexts marked by structural poverty, the carousel facilitates transactions in which the product, the risk of theft, and the need for protection are all symptoms of the same socio-economic condition.  Like Vermeir & Heiremans, Rowland displays the normalized elements and materials of capitalist transactions for our interrogation.

This notion of a necessary condition of inequality for capitalism to function also presents itself through Andrea Fraser’s work L’1%, C’est moi (2011) which documents the modes of profit and philanthropic activities of the art market’s leading collectors and how their financial power affects the art world, making it clear as she says that “If we look at the incomes of this class, it is conspicuous that their profits are based on the growth of income inequality all over the world.” In this essay Fraser acknowledges that within a reality shaped by capitalism, “Any claim that we represent a progressive social force while our activities are directly subsidized by the engines of inequality can only contribute to the justification of that inequality – the (not so) new legitimation function of art museums.” In this cutting documentary work, Fraser investigates and calls attention to the art market’s role in perpetuating structural economic inequality.

Not unlike Fraser’s presentation that appears less like a traditional artwork and more like a financial report, Marcel Broodthaers presents works that are framed by the language and the aesthetics of business and address the notion of ‘value.’ Broodthaers presents a gold bar that may be purchased for its material value as a commodity and its cultural value as an artwork simultaneously, implying that these two types of valuation are one and the same in the eyes of a capitalist. Broodthaers’ paired prints, Museum - Museum, feature a grid of gold bars with names of artists (Magritte, Ingres, Duchamp, etc.) beneath the gold bars and in the accompanying print features commodities (gasoline, sugar, tobacco, etc.), representing artwork reduced to commodities. Capitalist commodification in the realm of business has seeped into art museums, which are rarely public. Although frequently presented as institutions driven by public interests, private art museums are influenced by the aims of boards often overseen by individuals driven by the interests of the market, as Fraser demonstrates. Private museums benefit from the market assigning monetary value to artworks when it validates the cultural value of their own collections and when their leadership uses their powers to benefit personally (lucrative tax write offs, raising the value of their own art, and art washing, for example). Broodthaers brings this reality into focus for the art viewer.      

Additionally,Museum - Museum questions the value of originality imposed by museums. Museum - Museum includes along the bottom row of both prints the words “Imitation,” “Copy,” “False,” and “Original,” assigning an implied relational value to each object dependent on the viewer’s understanding of what each term means in the museum space. Within a capitalist framework, the “copy” must be denounced as devoid of value to protect the capital of the owner. The cultural and monetary values of original artworks have thus become inflated, with museums and its scholars becoming arbiters of value. With this work, Broodthaers blurs this notion of authority. Throughout his career, Broodthaers’ faux museums, text and image artworks, and installations, have critiqued economic and cultural constructs to challenge the presumed notions of value.

Similar to the irony of Vermeir & Heiremans’s presentation of art as a financial instrument, Hans Haacke presents quotes from prominent business leaders designed for display. The quotes include Robert Kingsley’s declaration that art is a “social lubricant” and Nelson Rockefeller’s declaration, “My appreciation of art is esthetic rather than intellectual. I’m not really concerned with what the artist means.” The presentation of matter-of-fact statements by business leaders simultaneously on the boards of museums and international corporations are concerned with art’s capital utility. We might assume that in a museum context, audiences who understand the significance of art in our societies can discriminate between business interests concerning art’s value and its actual power, however the satirical nature of the work may be lost within the paradigm of capitalist realism.

Asher’s Renovation = Eviction / Rénovation = Expulsion (1991) addresses both materiality similar to Broodthaers’ work and the question of utility as introduced by Haacke. In the interest of upholding a critique of the capitalist position on housing, Asher repurposed the metal of the furnaces of renovated residential buildings for underserved residents. With the material, he cast iron plaques with information inscribed that empowered the tenants and informed them of their housing rights. In doing so Renovation = Eviction called attention to attempts of government authorities and real estate investors abusing their power to displace residents by initiating mandatory renovations in lived-in homes or by raising rent to amounts landlords know tenants can not afford. He repurposed the furnace iron to an art material for a specific audience with the aim of empowering them and in a sense elevating their own value as tenants. In line with Haacke, Asher’s work underscores the need for a broader conception of what art’s value and who art is for.

Hito Steyerl’s lecture “Is the Museum a Battlefield?” (2013) highlights the institutional complicity in violence museums  engage in by accepting funds from corporations that also support the  military-industrial complex and illegal wars. Being financially driven to support its goals, art institutions are at risk of overlooking or ignoring moral failings as long as the utopian ideal that they have set for themselves is supported and presented. Steyerl’s film shares her investigation revealing how inextricable art and war are in its proceedings through constant affiliations between sites of violence and sites for art dissemination.

The Guerilla Girls appropriate the authority of religion to present a “Ten Commandments” Code of Ethics for Art Museums (1990) to establish principles that capitalists who invest in the business of art should abide by in operating with or within museums and art institutions. For example The Guerilla Girls command,  “thou shalt not permit corporations to launder their public images in museums. . .” and “thou shalt not useth thy influence to enhance the value of thine collection . . .”. The works in this exhibition illustrate the immorality of a permeating capitalist mindset impacting art exhibition and reception. Like the other artworks in this exhibition, they remind us of existing systemic inequalities impacting art, including the drive for “[collector class] profits based on the growth of income inequality” and the complicity in violence among cultural institutions to question who determines art’s value.                        

The works presented call on the viewer to reconsider the authority of art museums as cultural institutions and their influences, aims, and entrenchment in the capitalist system. The diversity in specific interests and mediums allows us to marvel at and appreciate where these artworks converge at the intersection between art and capitalist critique, and encourages us to reevaluate where art fits into our world as a driver of both cultural growth or economic exploitation.


List of Works:

- Andrea Fraser L’1%, C’est moi, 2011. PDF. Link to PDF

- Cameron Rowland Pass-Thru, 2014. Acrylic, hardware, 24-hour rotator disc. 23 x 20 x 21 inches (58.42 x 50.80 x 53.34 cm)

- Hans Haacke On Social Grease, 1975. 6 plaques. Photoengraved magnesium plates mounted on aluminum. 30” x 30” (76.2 x 76.2 cm).

- Hito Steyerl Is The Museum a Battlefield?, 2013. Video.

- Guerilla Girls Guerrilla Girls' Code of Ethics for Art Museums, 1990. Posters.

- Marcel Broodthaers Museum - Museum, 1972. Two screenprints. 33 x 46 1/2" (83.9 x 118.2 cm); sheet (each): 33 x 23 1/4" (83 x 59.1 cm)

- Marcel Broodthaers Gold Bar Stamped with an Eagle, 1970-1971.

- Michael Asher "Renovation = Eviction / Rénovation = Expulsion", 1991. Cast iron.

- Vermeir & Heiremans Masquerade, 2015. Video.


 

Hito Steyerl 
Is The Museum a Battlefield? 2013 
Video