Bitcoins, Koons, Warhol, Mugrabi and the Art Market
I read a interesting article on Steemit by @sean-king - Why So Many Smart People Have Been Wrong About Bitcoin
He makes the analogy between the internal combustion engine and the fuel that drives it.
A analogy could also be made with the art market.
Jean-Michel Basquiat
What drives the price of a Jeff Koons into the millions? The intrinsic value of the material of a plastic balloon dog is negligible.
One of Jeff Koons’s “balloon dogs” just fetched a record price, but who owns the rest of the litter?
Is the art market going to collapse? What do the economists say about that?
Andy Warhol's Elvis being readied for auction.
Alberto, David and the patriach, Jose Mugrabi
What would happen in that case to the collection of Jose Mugrabi, (The Mugrabis have the biggest Warhol collection in the world outside of the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh.) Meet The World's Biggest Warhol Collector, Who Just Added A $37 Million Work To His Trove: I think they can sleep easy, Jose and his sons Alberto and David Mugrabi. The market is not going to collapse, and if they have any bitcoin, they are safe too!
Is the Art Market in danger because of this: Alibaba Is Selling A Knockoff Version Of Jeff Koons' $58 Million 'Balloon Dog' For $500? Nobody would seriously think that.
For all you fellow starving artists out there, don't think I changed my mind. I am just facing reality, and this is, to paraphrase George Carlin: "a big club, and you and I are not in it!"
Now if this would be worth as much in the market, I'd be happy ..... actually, it is in a collection already, so my buyer would be happy:
Fly-over with Bogomil's Shuttle by Otto Rapp
I get what you are saying here as I experience a gamut of emotions when people see the prices on my handwovens. Some are joyous to hand over their money. Others seem to be calculating how many they could get at Walmart for the price of one of mine.
But I would rather talk about Bogomil's Flight.
The color in the foreground of your art work is a predominant color used in the traditional dress of the Bosnian men as a cummerbund and often woven on a back strap loom which is a stick with say 200 warp threads tied up singly. The warp threads on the other end (warp about the length of an average man's height), is the strings gathered together and knotted over another stick.
The last stick is then tied around a tree and the first stick is tied around the weaver's waist as he/she sits or kneels on the ground. You just keep rolling up the fabric on the first stick as you carefully make woven fabric. It is actually a good way to teach children how to weave, course it can't hope to compete with any of their electronic hypnotizers.
Anyway, it is a color Bogomil would have recognized. Did you know that?
fascinating! I always enjoy others discovering things in my work that I had never thought of!
I had this artwork up in another post some time ago:
https://steemit.com/art/@thermoplastic/artwork-by-otto-rapp-slide-show
About the first part of your comment: yes, I am quite aware of that. People just don't appreciate the skills of handcraft anymore.
I would like to sell my paintings for Bitcoin if I could.
yes, who wouldn't?!
People will always need to transfer funds across borders and generations without government stealing it.
My last word on this was:
For all you fellow starving artists out there, don't think I changed my mind. I am just facing reality, and this is, to paraphrase George Carlin: "a big club, and you and I are not in it!"
I had written about the art market earlier on a couple of occasions:
https://steemit.com/art/@thermoplastic/how-the-fine-art-market-is-a-scam
and
https://steemit.com/art/@thermoplastic/damien-hirst-s-shipwreck-fantasy-sinks-in-venice
Upvoted and followed.
Thanks - likewise!
Really interesting!
This article may interest you:
https://steemit.com/bitcoin/@happeningarts/how-are-the-art-market-and-the-growth-of-bitcoin-correlated
Best!