After the debate on value-setting between Luc Boltanski, Arnaud Esquerre and Nancy Fraser in NLR 106, Chin-tao Wu examines relations between the luxury industry and high art. Why are James Turrell, Daniel Buren and Olafur Eliasson producing works for Louis Vuitton and Chanel?
The art of Doris Salcedo as test-case for the complex interaction of aesthetics and commerce. For works aiming to commemorate lives lost in Colombia’s civil wars, what are the consequences—economic, ethical, critical—of integration into the circuits of both memory and market?
Against claims for a de-territorialized, fully globalized art world, Chin-tao Wu measures the stubborn realities of continued Western dominance. Birthplace and residence of art-festival participants as indices of enduring hierarchy.
Why Japanese department-store owners turned their upper floors over to Vuillard, Degas and Kandinsky at the height of the bubble economy. Consumption of high art as packaging for the mass commodity.
“With the Government giving less to art and education,somebody’s got to give more. And that somebody is America’s corporations.” read more