VIFF Review: The Great Contemporary Art Bubble

The Great Contemporary Art Bubble
Granville 7 Theatre 1
Saturday, October 3 2009 3:30pm

British art critic Ben Lewis exposes the corrupt business practices which lead to the recent astronomical price increases in contemporary art auctions, and how the players followed the classic market bubble to its inevitable catastrophic conclusion.

Lewis conducts surprisingly candid interviews with gallery owners, artists, collectors, and other art insiders who tacitly acknowledge the corruption and manipulation of the system with a nod and a wink. Everyone is in on this confidence game where there is every incentive not to declare the emperor has no clothes.

Lewis' most devastating moment is his acquisition of an inventory list of the White Cube Gallery documenting the vast number of unsold Damien Hirst works. Leaked to the art press it throws the rarified art world into controversy.

Hirst has the last laugh as his Sotheby's auction (ironically on the same day as Lehman Brothers goes bankrupt) without representation by a dealer or gallery generates a record 125 million US dollars directly to him. In order to safeguard the value of their inventories, his former dealers are forced to bid on, and purchase lots to keep prices up.

But all bubbles eventually collapse, and subsequent art auctions become a cruel joke as lot after lot is left unsold and auction houses are plunged into debt over their guarantees in a situation parallelling the financial markets.

Since few of us could ever manage to bid millions on a work of art it would seem this is just a game of one upmanship between billionaires without consequence for the general public. This is far from true as public money must be used by public institutions to purchase significant works at inflated price for their collections. In addition media coverage gives legitimacy to works for their monetary value regardless of any aesthetic considerations.

Lewis bravely declares that the emperor has no clothes, but with the world economy deeply wounded the customers for inflated art have run out. This era of contemporary art as speculative commodity has come to an end as surely as tulip bulbs, derivatives, and subprime mortgages.