Money is the Mother's Milk of Art

Last night I saw an interview with Philippe de Montebello, the former Director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. He mentioned that when the Met bought Rembrandt's Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer ($2.3 million in 1961) there were only three bidders in the running, the major museums in New York, Washington and London. He went on to say that in the subsequent half century billionaires had entered the market in a big way and the auction prices for important works were more than the museums could afford.

He said that museum directors had enjoyed a couple of centuries as the arbiters of public taste in art, but now -- as prices set the standard for taste -- those with the most money become the arbiters. That apparently was bad news for those hired by the print media to be art critics.

In the West it seems to me that it was in the Middle Ages the church which had the money to pay for art and the say as to what was hung in the churches. In the Renaissance, it was the aristocracy that supported artists and set the taste in cooperation with the church. Later, as trading cities developed wealth and an independent merchant class, one found schools of art that met their taste. The major art museums that seek to provide their visitors with a historical view of Western art thus track the taste of those who had the money and power to commission art over history.

I note that taste has changed in the past couple of hundred years. The impressionists were a group that challenged the dominant taste of their day. In the early part of the 20th century, 18th century paintings by Reynolds and Gainsborough set price records that were not matched for decades. The latter part of the 20th century went through a series of schools of art, each out-competing the last by being newer and more revolutionary.

In the interim, schools of art created by local groups or ethnic groups in the United States gained their own audiences, even if left out of the major museums in the capitols of art. Thus the third largest art market in the United States is in Santa Fe, New Mexico, a relatively small city that has a strong market for art by native Americans. There is a market for western art focusing on cowboys, for California art, for paintings of the New England sea coast, etc.

The experts who appreciate works of art and artists that had significant influence over later artists have a justifiable point of view, but de gustibus non est disputandum (in matters of taste there is no dispute).