Yes, those are flawless diamonds, all 8,601 of them. I don’t know about the teeth, but they might be expensive dental work, too. At any rate, this piece was purchased for 100 million dollars and is the most expensive contemporary art work ever made – so far. I say so far because all of us who create art aspire to get the ultimate market value for our work, preferably upfront. It was Damien Hirst, the artist who created this piece, who put that idea into our heads. We should sell at the price that collecors bid the work up to. Artist should get more money on the front end, For the Love of God! (which is also the name of this piece of art).
Of course, Hirst went so far as to completely go around the normal gate-keepers: the galleries and the art dealers. He did an auction of new work from his studio in 2008 by going straight to Sotheby’s auction house. He was duly punished as an art world outcast for a number of years, a story that art publications made a cautionary tale out of. However, he made a startling comeback in Venice in 2017, where he sold over 300 million dollars of art! So what is Hirst’s secret? Well, he seems to have turned his art into a luxury goods business on the one hand, and on the other, once his reputation was built, he went solo (or rogue depending on your point of view). Rather like those actors who left the old Hollywood studio system, Hirst left the galleries to deal direct.
Of course, Hirst isn’t the only artist who, after having gained fame, took it to the outer limits. Time for a famous story about the old money machine himself, Pablo Picasso, of whom his daughter Maya said, “My father is a man who lives modestly, with a lot of money in his pocket.” This matches a quote from the King Midas of Art himself, saying humbly, “I’d like to live as a poor man with lots of money.” Of course, his various villas on the French Riviera show that he may have failed in this ambition. However, this contradiction in his life did not seem to bother him at all. Nor did his life long declaration of being a communist conflict for one minute with his huge valuable art collection (his own work and yes, some pieces by Matisse).
Just to show how far he could go to demonstrate his “art” power, he once made his own money. When shown a new 500 franc bill, he asked to look it over. A friend handed him the new bill which had a border in white.
Picasso looked at it and said, “I am King Midas. In two seconds I can make this into a 1,000 francs.” He took a pen and began to draw a bull fight along the white edges of the bill. Afterward he signed it, of course. He then handed it back to the man, who later showed it off to a group of friends, one of whom immediately gave him 1,000 francs for it, proving Picasso’s point. Picasso/Midas was known to pay for meals by signing napkins he had doodled on. His most interesting foray into creating his own money was when he ran into trouble with the SPA, the French SPCA, in Vallauris, where in 1961, a bull fight had been held in his honor. A lawsuit was filed about animal cruelty, costing him legal fees of 5,000 francs. The artist sent his lawyer a check that he had designed, for 5,000 francs, with a date and his signature. The lawyer framed it and kept it in his office – a truly original Picasso.
Gustave Courbet was a 19th century French painter that wanted to push the boundaries of art. Even though he painted during a period of Romanticism, his focus was on Realism, which was a rejection of the romantic painting that had been held over from the 18th century. In particular he wanted to deal with the plight of the working man. However, he did not necessarily want to be poor himself. While he is famous for shaking things up with paintings like the one above or his even more famous, Origin of the World, musee-orsay.fr, he claimed that he “minted money with flowers.” And so he did with these very sweet paintings that we now might see reprinted on candy box covers. Most of them bore names like A Basket of Flowers or Flowers in a Basket, and they sold very well.
Specialization is nothing new in the world of art. Titian did it with his portraits in 16th century Venice. He even had a niche within a niche when it came to doing portraits of Charles V of Spain. Everyone who was anyone wanted a portrait painted by Titian, and for great sums of money, the artist was happy to oblige. In some ways, he may have been a forerunner of Andy Warhol, who also specialized in portraits. Men, women, children, dogs, even cans of soup got his stylized two-dimensional treatment at “The Factory,” as Warhol’s studio was called. Even though he did not approach creating any feeling of depth in his portraits, Warhol worked on the faces of his clients like a master plastic surgeon. He would elongate a neck, shorten a nose, enlarge lips, clarify the skin tone, or simply pop in unusual colors, all to embellish the look of his subjects. And he churned the images out en masse, which makes the name of his studio take on a truly industrial connotation.
While it would be truly wonderful to use these examples to debunk the image of the starving artist, what makes for success combines a number of factors, not the least of which is timing. A great step forward into a new era of painting, at just the right moment, combined with a talent for marketing and the ability to create mystique, can do the trick but are difficult to align.
This leaves us to think of the Patron Saint of the Starving Artist, Vincent Van Gogh, here drawn by Henri Toulouse-Lautrec. His life story is full of “what ifs.” What if he had been born a bit later? What if his brother, Theo, had been a more daring art marketer? What if his estate had gotten even a small percentage of the monies that have traded hands over the years to buy his paintings? That last is something for all artists to think about. How about that instead of just owning the rights to our images for our lifetimes and for 70 years after our deaths?
What if the artist or the estate of the artist got paid a precentage of the sale each time a painting changed hands through purchase? Film actors get residuals anytime anything they performed in is run on television anywhere around the world. Residuals of that type might be an idea that would please both Damien Hirst and Pablo Picasso, and keep the wolves from the door of many another artist.
Primay sources for some of the information in this article are Les Artists Ont Toujours Aimé L’argent (Artists Have Always Loved Money) by Judith Benhamou-Huet and “The False Narrative of Damien Hirst’s Rise and Fall” by Felix Salmon newyorker.com.
Images of work by Damien Hirst and Andy Warhol used in accordance with Fair Use Policy for purposes of critique and review.
Marjorie Vernelle is an artist, writer, college professor, and traveler. For more see the Pages at ofartandwine.com or her author page at amazon.com and her art at Vernelle Art Boutique vernellestudio.com.
90+ Point Wine$
Wine making like painting produces a wide range of products, varying from the truly awful to the exquisitely divine. We are sticking with divinity here, as we approach the subject of 90+ Point Wines. First of all, who among us did not even guess that wine had scores like on a final exam? As a teacher, my eyes focused clearly when I first came across this scoring system. I wondered what wine gets a grade of 90+? I admit that as a teacher I seldom had monies for bottles of wine costing hundreds of dollars. Of course now that I intend to be a rich artist, watch out!
Just to satisfy your curiosity as to how high the prices can go, here is a link to “The World’s Top 50 Most Expensive Wines” wine-seacher.com. Believe me these are in the Damien Hirst category. For most of the rest of us, a look at 90+ point wines that cost $100 or less brings the whole subject into reach. So what does that 90+ score mean?
There is a lifestyle magazine called Wine Spectator, founded in San Diego in 1976. It was purchased by its current publisher and editor, Marvin R. Shanken, a few years later. It was he who started the Wine Spectator Wine Tastings in 1986. Naturally, if you are going to compare tastes, there must be some system for ranking the different wines. Hence a grading system was developed. For a detailed wine tasting chart and the rankings of wines from different countries, click this link winespectator.com.
As with your final exam essay, for those of you who remember any of those, 95-100 is A, stratospherically divine. 90-94 is an A- which is outstanding, to be sure. 85-89 is very good, special even. 80-84 is good but well made. 75-79 is passing, moderately drinkable. Below that one gets into plonk, a term from Australian English that means wine of low cost and low quality.
There are several magazines that deal with wine ratings; however, their standards vary. Wine Enthusiast, for example, is a bit more generous in its ratings. As in the art world, the world of wines has its top critics, the Clement Greenberg or Robert Hughes of the industry. Wine Spectator’s Robert Parker plays a major role in the setting of prices of Bordeaux wines. He is of such fame that the French made him Chevalier de L’Order de la Legion d’Honneur. He also has his own monthly publication called The Wine Advocate. Michael Broadbent, who passed away last year, was the person known for establishing the wine auction during his time as a specialist at Christie’s.
So now let’s get down to the basics, like how the ordinary wine enthusiast experiences some of these wines. Here Robert Parker does not let us down. Millesima Fine Wine has a detailed list of 90+ wines, with the rankings by Parker, that range in price from around $20 to about $80 (see millesima-usa.com). They include red wines, whites, sparkling wines and champagne, Burgundy wines, as well as white Bordeaux, and all with his ranking numbers. These tend to range around 92 on the grading scale and offer excellent tasting experiences.
Another way to get the experience of these wines is to join a wine club. Cellars Wine Club, for instance, has a 90+ Point Wine Club with wines that rank those points on Robert Parker’s scale. One can enjoy a shipment of a couple of bottles or endulge one’s desires to expand one’s knowledge of these fine wines by joining the 90+ Point Case Club. All of the wines come with tasting notes and free shipping.
Art and wine have so much in common, from the artistry and science of their creation, and the way they can be viewed and tasted, to the role of the critics in helping to define and shape what we enjoy. As I say when giving the premise that this blog is based upon, art and wine are the perfect cultural pairing.
Articles used in this look at 90+ Point wines are linked in blue.
Of Art and Wine affiliates with Bluehost.com and CellarsWineClub.com and may earn from qualifying purchases.
©marjorie vernelle 2021
Coming Soon: Pre-Raphaelites and Melancholy Women, plus Wine in the Anglophone World.
Though when looking at this painting, one might not think of the Pre-Raphaelites as rebels, in fact, they were. They wanted to go back to the art that came before the Renaissance of Raphael, Michelangelo, and Leonardo. Yet while they wanted to turn back the hands of time, their art does have links to the forward movement of Impressionism.