Pop Goes the Art Bubble
Pop Goes the Art Bubble
The rich keep spending millions and driving up prices. But what happens when the bubble bursts? But there were surer, subtler signs of the bubble than those: paintings
by Raymond Parker—that were nowhere in sight; carvings by Mary Frank,
also not for sale anywhere; bronzes by David Slivka, unrepresented in
any dealer’s booth. Fifty years ago, in the pages of Art News
magazine, these were billed as figures “of unusual promise and
achievement.” Today a huge Parker canvas sets his auction record at
$60,000 (compared to $34 million for Jeff Koons), while works by Frank
barely break $10,000, and a lone Slivka sculpture on the market goes for
a 10th of that.What sound does a bubble make just before it bursts? We heard it last
week at the Art Basel fair in Miami, where the rich flock to stock up on
art each December. A Richard Prince “nurse,” hung amid Picassos and
Miros, selling for $6.5 million; a Damien Hirst “medicine cabinet”
priced at $4 million; Julie Mehretu squiggles, barely a decade old, for
$2.6 million—all for sale at Art Basel, and all with prices so high they
are bound to crash-land.