La Grande Jatte, Valie Export

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• Seurat’s masterpiece “The Grande Jatte” was purchased for 20.000 Dollars by American art collector Frederick Bartlett for the Art Institute of Chicago. Within a few months apparently, a French consortium tried to buy it back for 400, 000 Dollars, which is some contrast to the price paid for it. It has remained with the Art institute of Chicago ever since.
  
• Mei Moses Art Index:

“Why Collect- Art Three Beauties”: The first beauty of art is the emotional appeal obtained from the visual image of the object. The second beauty of art is the enjoyment most individuals obtain from the process of its acquisition, including, but not limited to, knowledge acquisition, socialisation with like minded collectors and experts, excitement of the chase …etc. The third being its longevity and financial performance.

• Linked to fetishism of the object, in an essay by David Morley titled “Television: More a Visible Object” (from the book “Visual Culture” edited by Chris Jenks)

Reference is made to the TV as being a “trophy of consumerism.” “inside the hollow TV, the ultimate box, is a personal reliquary for fetish objects, or sacra, at the crossroads of everyday life, the commodity world and our common culture. “(p.181) Muria Fishermen in Sri Lanka, where it reports that the richer villagers often bought TV sets which were displayed as the centrepieces of their personal collections of “wealthy signifiers”, despite the fact that the lack of electricity supply in the area made their sets inoperable.

• Video piece we found featuring Ulay and the paring the nails into the bowl of milk shenanigans. Fascinating to speculate on how value is assigned to pieces like that or the Abramovic/Llama piece. I wonder how much of it has to do with the “Value” or to be more accurate, “Standing” of the artist.

• You can’t disassociate the “value” of status (or today what’s known as celebrity status) from the object produced. If someone already well-known produces an object (song/book/painting), it gets lots of publicity, is analysed rather than ignored, so its value is tied up with their status.