Dave Hickey on "Dealing"

To put it simply: Art and money are cultural fictions with no intrinsic value.

That quote really stood out to me as I was reading Dave Hickey's chapter on art dealing, from his book Air Guitar. When it comes to art, a work is only worth as much as people are willing to pay for it, thus making the demand the commodity, instead of the artwork. How many times have we seen prices skyrocket because of a fad? Take Beanie Babies - they're basically stuffed animals, but for a brief period of time, some of those stuffed animals were selling for thousands and thousands of dollars due to limited supply. A few years later, people barely know what they are, let alone if they're worth anything. This same rule is applied to art - you have the opportunity to buy a piece when the artist is completely unknown, for possibly what can still be considered a high price, but a price that is probably less than half of what you'd pay if this said artist becomes famous. However, like Dave Hickey said, this can easily be a "bad bet" that will never pay off.

With the recent financial meltdowns and crises, it's becoming more and more apparent that our currency is only paper. What a dollar bought yesterday isn't what a dollar buys today. The paper itself has no intrinsic value, only a calculated value that is mutable at best. I liked that Hickey separated art and money - it makes it seem as if everything is more of a trade or a gamble than a sale. Both "trade" and "gamble" are more abstract ideas than "sale," and it makes sense that this idea would appeal to an art crowd (or at least an art crowd that professes a disinterest in All-American capitalism). Overall, I really enjoyed this chapter from Hickey's book. I appreciate his guts in leaving his literary graduate career (which he seems to have returned to, after all) and starting a small gallery. He never seemed to get cocky about his little space, and insisted that he was only making a living, not "making money." WIth the uncertain futures of previously stable careers staring us all in the face, this is probably a great philosophy to adhere to.