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Fairland
Fairland is a wide-ranging collection of analytical standpoints and possible visions on the role of the art fair as a temporary realm of possibility—a vivid metaphor of our time. Exploring the phenomenon of "fairization" as a physical body, or rather, a symbolic territory, the book gathers words and images by authors coming from different disciplines, spanning from the curatorial field to ethnological studies, from economic history, to architecture and visual art practices. Looking at the art fair not just as market or cultural event, but as a solid piece of the art system with all its relationships, hierarchies and social legitimation processes, Fairland is an heterogeneous mix of critical thoughts and sagacious utopias. Examinng a space where the complex relationships between art and commerce, charisma and money are problematized, it investigates how shaping and curating this space today could be seen as a challenging and revelatory practice full of clued for the future. Fairland is an editorial project commissioned by Vincenzo de Bellis for the 19th edition of miart, International Modern and Contemporary Art Fair, Milan. Fairland is produced by miart, Miland and Depart Foundation, Rome.
- GenresArt
177 pages, Paperback
First published March 28, 2014
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October 6, 2024
1. Stephano Baia Curioni's essay is steeped in something which one might call wavering confusion. He isn't seriously capable of analyzing the contemporary art fair precisely because he is none too critical of the capitalist system that props it up. He thinks that art ought remain independent--independent in the sense it cannot be eaten up by buyers' demands, the state, or so-called external constraints, without realizing the most massive constraint to the liberty of art is the very notion that art can be commodified and sold as if it's use value were equal to it's exchange value. It is the commodification of art, for the sake of buying it, that is the reason why art is not at liberty; it is not his paltry definition of freedom, a definition which is given body via the notion of an autonomy of a given group, or, that is to say, autonomy for one and not the other, nor especially all, artists. This essay has key insights and points; the very questioning tone it has is fine; however, it cannot maintain itself coherently. Especially the idea of a "free" fair.
2. Second essay is very good. It is from a more left perspective, even trotting out the term neoliberal. The point here is precisely the one made above--that art, in its current form, is given body and power via the rich, not the poor or the many. In a financial crisis, the art world is able to expand, gatekept by the rich. We talk about the underbelly of art and hte world--maintenance workers who are not seen, not heard--and the glittery roof in which they exist; the parallel of a second job. its ver ygood. The atuhors make one crucial mistake, however, by htinking the commodity is not the same thing in art as in the rest of the world; they forget that the commodity is defined by the exchange value, that is to say, that the use value of it (the 'intangibles') acts the same. The example of the miner magnate buying art is case in point, used wrongly; but the idea isn't so much that it ought to be viewed as such, but that these things have an intangible value outside of common parlance. It can be exclusive to the rich in the same way a yacht to cruise ship is.
4. Kersten Geers
This essay is defined by misunderstanding. The museum she references first, it has walls of glass and doors which are opaque; the building is lit in such a manner that each art piece, situated in their respective rooms, come into contact with it. Life and vitality, even the opening of a door will bring. It is a structure personalizing and interconnected; I view it, via her description, like a series of Impressionistic paintings of the same subject.
But does this place really break free from the market? No, it does not; commercialization remains. It is precisely that such a building is a spectacle that attendance therein can be bought and sold--regardless of whether it was freely accessible or not, one can imagine selling tickets to again admittance--and it is precisely that this building exists within the broader system of capitalism that pronounces the death knell of any anti-commercial interests. (It is, after all, going to attract tourists; tourists who will spend their money, if not there, than somewhere else nearby.)
This museum, far from breaking free from the supposed chain of the market, is only liable only to be a structure of it, behaving as any other formal structure would; or, if not behaving as such, doing so in a way mediated primarily by policy decisions, not art (e.g., free admittance versus paid admittance). The power of capitalism in a consumer society is that it generates of itself a cultural critique--or, one must say, a status quo--built around consumerism that has only one value: re-orientation into itself. It can eat everything up without giving anything bad; denaturing even the sharpest critique. The meaning behind the museum--indeed, the artistry of it--could so easily be lost on minds not situated to understand it's complexity. And therein lies the rub.
Her conclusion that the art fair should turn away the facade and show itself as a stark marketplace--a real marketplace, not the faux-city marketplace--is in a sense promoting something already bad for something worse. Without the so-called facade of artistic appreciation backing it up--without, let us say, the gimmick of the art fair, allowing it to have some semblance of humanity, even if it is a rich person's humanity and a rich person's supposed appreciation of art--is to make it cynical. How can she even suppose that allowing economic status to determine venue space--that is to say, allow plots to be bought (with inequality resulting therefrom)--would be a good or liberating idea is beyond me. The same issues that plague the art fair would, incidentally, be heightened by this. All that is radical about doing such a thing is that we strip away even the human face of capitalism from one of the last best places of cultural potency: art.
2. Second essay is very good. It is from a more left perspective, even trotting out the term neoliberal. The point here is precisely the one made above--that art, in its current form, is given body and power via the rich, not the poor or the many. In a financial crisis, the art world is able to expand, gatekept by the rich. We talk about the underbelly of art and hte world--maintenance workers who are not seen, not heard--and the glittery roof in which they exist; the parallel of a second job. its ver ygood. The atuhors make one crucial mistake, however, by htinking the commodity is not the same thing in art as in the rest of the world; they forget that the commodity is defined by the exchange value, that is to say, that the use value of it (the 'intangibles') acts the same. The example of the miner magnate buying art is case in point, used wrongly; but the idea isn't so much that it ought to be viewed as such, but that these things have an intangible value outside of common parlance. It can be exclusive to the rich in the same way a yacht to cruise ship is.
4. Kersten Geers
This essay is defined by misunderstanding. The museum she references first, it has walls of glass and doors which are opaque; the building is lit in such a manner that each art piece, situated in their respective rooms, come into contact with it. Life and vitality, even the opening of a door will bring. It is a structure personalizing and interconnected; I view it, via her description, like a series of Impressionistic paintings of the same subject.
But does this place really break free from the market? No, it does not; commercialization remains. It is precisely that such a building is a spectacle that attendance therein can be bought and sold--regardless of whether it was freely accessible or not, one can imagine selling tickets to again admittance--and it is precisely that this building exists within the broader system of capitalism that pronounces the death knell of any anti-commercial interests. (It is, after all, going to attract tourists; tourists who will spend their money, if not there, than somewhere else nearby.)
This museum, far from breaking free from the supposed chain of the market, is only liable only to be a structure of it, behaving as any other formal structure would; or, if not behaving as such, doing so in a way mediated primarily by policy decisions, not art (e.g., free admittance versus paid admittance). The power of capitalism in a consumer society is that it generates of itself a cultural critique--or, one must say, a status quo--built around consumerism that has only one value: re-orientation into itself. It can eat everything up without giving anything bad; denaturing even the sharpest critique. The meaning behind the museum--indeed, the artistry of it--could so easily be lost on minds not situated to understand it's complexity. And therein lies the rub.
Her conclusion that the art fair should turn away the facade and show itself as a stark marketplace--a real marketplace, not the faux-city marketplace--is in a sense promoting something already bad for something worse. Without the so-called facade of artistic appreciation backing it up--without, let us say, the gimmick of the art fair, allowing it to have some semblance of humanity, even if it is a rich person's humanity and a rich person's supposed appreciation of art--is to make it cynical. How can she even suppose that allowing economic status to determine venue space--that is to say, allow plots to be bought (with inequality resulting therefrom)--would be a good or liberating idea is beyond me. The same issues that plague the art fair would, incidentally, be heightened by this. All that is radical about doing such a thing is that we strip away even the human face of capitalism from one of the last best places of cultural potency: art.
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