Art, Money and Immortality
When the Ancient Greeks minted their first coin they named it the Obolus. But the Obolus originally meant a spit or meat skewer. When the tribe came together in honour of the ancestors, they roasted whole oxen on skewers, and after feasting, the left overs – the surplus – was left on the spit to burn as sacrifice to the honoured ancestors. And so, in time the meaning of obolus changed from ritual meat skewer to surplus, and finally to coinage – that which is left over after the necessities of life have been purchased.
In death, an obolus was placed in the mouth of the corps, to pay Charon the boatman for the passage across the river Acheron to Hades.
The meaning of surplus, from the sacrifice of meat burned in honour of the ancestors to the wealth of coin, speaks of immortality. Transcending death as a final ending, it ensures its owner the power to purchase an eternal state of remembrance. When the seafaring citizens of Athens spent their wealth on building the Acropolis, they more than honoured their gods; they ensured that their memory would live on in the art they erected on their highest hill.
When the 15th Century Italian trader, Maringhi, commissioned Filippo Lippi to paint a donor painting of the Coronation of the Virgin, he had himself included in the composition. An angel, holding a scroll, points to the kneeling Maringhi. The scroll reads: is (te) perfecit opus (This man carried out the work). There is now no ambiguity about who has to be seen as the creative figure in art. The donor’s wealth will secure him a place with the immortals; the artist is merely a facilitator to his ambitions.
During the last five hundred years since the Lippi/Maringhi contract, artist and client have co-existed in a less-than-affectionate marriage of convenience. Over the last two centuries, middle-men emerged; go-betweens, negotiating between artist and collector, collating, categorising, defining art and enshrining it in museums and private collections. As each new art movement became subsumed into the defining tomes, new movements emerged to refresh the experience art can bring.
But over the last two decades, the old marriage of convenience between artist and collector has been dissolved – if not a full divorce – into a trial separation. Certain collectors have bought up whole studios of art and, by manipulating the markets, have converted them into a multi-billion dollar industry. Some artists have themselves joined in the money game, becoming their own hedge fund managers.
The art market reporter, Josh Baer, commented: “The art movement of the first decade of the 21st Century is the Art Market itself”.
JUST ASK THE MAN - Alan Smith - 30th November 2009
In death, an obolus was placed in the mouth of the corps, to pay Charon the boatman for the passage across the river Acheron to Hades.
The meaning of surplus, from the sacrifice of meat burned in honour of the ancestors to the wealth of coin, speaks of immortality. Transcending death as a final ending, it ensures its owner the power to purchase an eternal state of remembrance. When the seafaring citizens of Athens spent their wealth on building the Acropolis, they more than honoured their gods; they ensured that their memory would live on in the art they erected on their highest hill.
When the 15th Century Italian trader, Maringhi, commissioned Filippo Lippi to paint a donor painting of the Coronation of the Virgin, he had himself included in the composition. An angel, holding a scroll, points to the kneeling Maringhi. The scroll reads: is (te) perfecit opus (This man carried out the work). There is now no ambiguity about who has to be seen as the creative figure in art. The donor’s wealth will secure him a place with the immortals; the artist is merely a facilitator to his ambitions.
During the last five hundred years since the Lippi/Maringhi contract, artist and client have co-existed in a less-than-affectionate marriage of convenience. Over the last two centuries, middle-men emerged; go-betweens, negotiating between artist and collector, collating, categorising, defining art and enshrining it in museums and private collections. As each new art movement became subsumed into the defining tomes, new movements emerged to refresh the experience art can bring.
But over the last two decades, the old marriage of convenience between artist and collector has been dissolved – if not a full divorce – into a trial separation. Certain collectors have bought up whole studios of art and, by manipulating the markets, have converted them into a multi-billion dollar industry. Some artists have themselves joined in the money game, becoming their own hedge fund managers.
The art market reporter, Josh Baer, commented: “The art movement of the first decade of the 21st Century is the Art Market itself”.
JUST ASK THE MAN - Alan Smith - 30th November 2009