THE ‘80s A Special Report :...

According to Sotheby’s Auction House, there are about 500 people alive today willing and able to pay upwards of $25 million for a work of art--and having bought such a work, their nest eggs wouldn’t be blown. They could do it again next week.

Engorged with vast amounts of credit and the frighteningly huge art-buying budgets of the Japanese, the art world’s gross turnover per year presently hovers at around $50 billion. Always a lawless frontier free of regulation either internal or externally enforced, the art market is presently in the midst of a ferocious plains war being waged with the almighty buck, and at this point, history’s entire cache of visual culture is caught in the crossfire. The only question is who’ll prove to be the dirtiest gunslinger: collectors, dealers, artists or auction houses. All are vying for the title with equal fervor.

The old world idea of the art dealer as aristocratic connoisseur is dead, and has been replaced by a new breed--typified by L.A.’s prodigal son Larry (Go-Go) Gagosian--who conduct business with the killer instincts of corporate raiders.

This hard-nosed selling is fine with many contemporary collectors, as collecting has undergone a radical transformation as well; the collector as sympathetic patron honored at the priviledge of supporting work he admires is obsolete. Advertising magnate/collector Charles Saatchi (the Donald Trump of the art world), got a leg up by purchasing entire exhibitions in one fell swoop, thus gaining control of the market on work by artists powerless to prevent the transaction. And, when Saatchi loses interest in one of his artist/holdings--as he did in Sandro Chia--the bottom falls out of that market.

Not that artists are innocent victims of this unseemly turn of events. This is the first time in history that artists who are not only living, but have yet to reach their 50th birthdays can command prices in the millions. With big bucks like this changing hands, young artists no longer enter the field like Jesuit missionaries consigning themselves to lives deprived of creature comforts; they jump into the cocktail party fray angling for a prime spot on the gravy train line.

Julian Schnabel delivered the first body blow to the centuries old archtype of the artist as a sensitive creature with no head for figures, and in his wake came an unwashed horde of self-promoters with a taste for Molino chairs, lap pools, and Armani suits.

This would all be a harmless folly but for the fact that for centuries art has functioned as a sort of spiritual rudder for the human race; struggling under the weight of millions of dollars, it’s having a hard time keeping its course. The price wars of the ‘80s have transformed art from the deeply personal experience it has traditionally been to a form of blockbusting entertainment. Viewing a painting valued at $53.9 million (as Van Gogh’s “Irises” is) is akin to gawking at a sideshow freak; the price tag upstages anything else that might be in the work.

And, there’s another insidious side effect to all this; the skyrocketing price of art has had a dire effect on the cost of insuring art for exhibition. Consequently, art is in the process of moving out of the public domain and into the hands of the wealthy few.

The Taste Makers project was edited by David Fox, assistant Sunday Calendar editor.