A crisis of art commercialization ?

Some scholars believe that art has often become a slaver to "authority" since ancient times. Three "forces" dominate art - religion, politics, and commercialization. Art was a slaver to religion in medieval Europe, when religion governed everything. Art has become a means for promoting dogma, with religious ideas as its connotation and the history and story of religion as its focus. Art altered its topics and motifs when politics became an arbitrary force, entirely obedient to political orthodoxy. Although it is impossible to say that no excellent works have been produced as a result of religious and political pressures, the majority of them show that art has lost its open universe and does not enable individuality and uniqueness to flourish. A thousand individuals on one side, all speaking at the same time. Art is only propaganda, a tool of authority.

A viewer with Mark Rothko’s “No. 7,” part of the Macklowe Collection, during a preview at Sotheby’s before the auction. The work sold for $82.5 million with fees to a bidder in Asia. Angela Weiss/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Now that the reform and opening up have occurred, anybody involved in the arts can freely produce - but art has sadly been caught up in a massive wave of commercialization brought on by capitalist globalisation, and art has been commodified. A crisis unlike any other in art history: it is comprehensive and fighting/escaping for nowhere. Because artists are "passive" in production in an era when religion and politics rule everything; in commercialization time, artists are virtually "active" in their creation because they have an edge in competition. When artists create for the sake of profit, art becomes a dead end.

Art handlers hang Claude Monet’s “Coin du bassin aux nymphas” at Sotheby’s in New York City.

The greatest crisis in the world today is the collapse of spiritual fulfilment. Beauty, youth, flesh and love all become commodities and can be sold - this leads to the degeneration of spiritual harmony, moral ethics and human dignity. Art is also a spiritual value. A poem or a painting cannot immediately measure the value of its goods, because spiritual values cannot be quantified. Works of art doomed to be studied and evaluated by critics, famous titles, and the public's appreciation and confirmation; the artistic value get highlighted in the washing of time. But in the eager and utilitarian contemporary, everything driven to be exchanged for commercial value, so art companies, galleries, brokers, auction companies operate all parties on purpose of seeking profits. The market price of art is skewed, and it seeks to maximize profits by exaggerating, inflating, misleading, and speculating. The "stars" of art - who "got famous" by different promotional strategies and shortcuts have not been examined by art criticism, without public appreciation and confirmation, nor by the test and washing of history and time, are totally based on the "market" as the benchmark. Because of market misleading, some painters sprinted to paint; oil paintings emerged on the gallery wall for sale. "Art commodities" are becoming increasingly akin to "futures" and "stocks" in terms of investment and speculation. Contemporary art has been radical alienated as a result of its extraordinary commercialization.

Lisa Jack | 08:19 AM Wed, May 04, 2022 (PST) Time in Los Angeles, CA Artpendix Press