The Commodification of Culture: Money, Aesthetics and the Contemporary Art Racket – Part I
The Commodification of Culture: Money, Aesthetics and the Contemporary Art Racket – Part I

Summary/Abstract: “How useless is painting”, wrote Pascal, “which attracts admiration by the resemblance of things, the originals of which we do not admire!” This is the sort of reaction that might well be engendered in the uninitiated after a visit to the exhibits of the annual Turner Prize in London’s Tate Gallery. It may or may not be deemed an adequate response to Piero Manzoni’s Merda d’Artista, a limited edition of ninety small cans, each containing a thirty-gram turd of the artist. (Or possibly not containing the turd, because an obligation enjoined on the purchasers was that the cans should never be opened and so far apparently none of them has been. The last [unopened] can to appear on the market fetched ₤97,250 at Sotheby’s in 2008.) Manzoni’s inspiration for this line of work was a remark made by his father, namely: “your art is a load of shit” (his father happened to own a canning factory). Actually it is not quite true that no Manzoni can has ever been opened: in 1989 Bernard Bazile, a French artist, exhibited a partially opened one as his own work at the Centre Georges Pompidou and labelled it “Boîte ouverte de Piero Manzoni” – thus illustrating that Manzonism had become a highly marketable commodity. Indeed Manzoni himself was nothing if not inventive in regard to marketing his genius; for example, you could also buy balloons containing the artist’s breath (they were labelled “Fiato d’artista”)

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