Sign in  |  Register

The New Criterion

America’s leading review of the arts and intellectual life
- Harry Mount, the London Telegraph

Notes & Comments

January 2009

The art market bubble

On the folly of speculating on contemporary art.

What’s the silliest thing you have heard in the past year or two? Take your time. Our candidate comes from Tobias Meyer, Sotheby’s head of contemporary art, who declared in 2007 that “the best art is the most expensive because the market is so smart.”

Now, we are great admirers of the wisdom of the market. But would even the most doctrinaire free-marketeer—one, anyway, not dazzled by the glitter of the contemporary art world—argue that market price determined aesthetic value? The philosopher David Hume famously argued that “durable appreciation,” not any intrinsic quality, ultimately provided the measure of artistic value. Whether Hume was correct is a matter of dispute. But at least he placed the locus of value in long-term public judgment and delectation, not sticker price.

We came across that quotation from Mr. Meyer in “A Second Tulip Mania,” an artic ...

This article is available to subscribers and for individual purchase

Subscribe to TNC (Print and Online editions)

Subscribe to TNC (Online only)

Purchase article credit and clip this article

If you already have an account login first

This article originally appeared in The New Criterion, Volume 27 January 2009, on page 2

Copyright © 2010 The New Criterion | www.newcriterion.com

http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/The-art-market-bubble-3978
rate this article for your user profile

E-mail to friend


The New Criterion

You might also enjoy

Dhimmitude at the Met

On the Met's new galleries dedicated to art from the "Arab Lands, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia, and Late South Asia."

The Malaysian alternative

On linguistic timorousness off the Timor coast.

The Hamilton follies cont'd

On the costs of contemporary college education.

Most popular

view more >

download
first delivery

The New Criterion is now optimized for Mobile Devices

Webcasts

Elucidations & Corrections: Arts Criticism
The Goldring Arts Journalism Program S. I. New House School of Public Communications at Syracuse University honors "The New Criterion."


Swallow Anthology Reading at The Grolier


New Criterion-Social Affairs Unit Conference: Part 4
"The Criminalization of Making Money" by Lionel Shriver, Recorded 9/25/09