Art and production
The gallery is a kind of factory. This is not how it wants you to see itself, and it does a wonderful job at hiding the disgusting underbelly of its form. Peel behind the bark of the art world, and one finds a horror of insect-like beasts, the vomit-inducing organs lined by neoliberal, laissez-faire capitalism.
The purpose of the gallery is as follows: To instigate the production of art. To excite the passions of those who wish to be artists. To commission, to allow grants of the bare minimum for the production of art, if necessary. To display such works of art and eventually aid in the sales of these works.
We must follow the process of production here. Materials are gathered from the natural environment. They are refined, and resources are produced, transported into warehouses. These materials are turned into products, which then make their way to shop fronts wherein the artist pays a hefty sum for these "ready made" products. In the studio, the artist works upon these products, eventually hoping to produce a commodity. These commodities gain value through cultural contexts, which are assessed by an expert (often a critic) and then exhibited in a gallery. The exhibition is essentially a kind of marketing, and through this we recieve wealthy patrons who, knowing nothing of the arts, wish to own these works as property in order to increase their social status. The crux of this is that they wish to communicate to others their knowledge of the arts, without having any whatsoever. The price is to correlate with the value of the work.
Of course, we do not live in such a rudimentary state of capitalism as in Marx's time. We have lived through stages of psychological discovery, textual approaches, and an increasing abstraction of value. What we have outlined is only the bare-bones skeleton of the system.
It may strike one as odd, upon inspection, to percieve such hundreds, thousands of artisans hurriedly working in their studios without fault. Many, if not most, torture themselves upon works from which they do not wish to gain any monetary value from. In fact, many willingly pay hundreds out of their own pocket just to exhibit a work. The state of the artist is so bizarre that, if one were to pay another to own a work, it would not look so out of place. From a glance, the artists almost appear enslaved, but where is the master? So much of these behaviours we would not find reasonable, unless one posessed a complete lack of freedom.
The art world is principally running on the systems of self-enslavement described by Byung-Chul Han in his rather well-known work "The Burnout Society" (2010). Forgive me for my limited readings, I know this work is almost a summary of the work made in the 70s. I am ill familiar.
In most facets of life we can observe this principle of self-enslavement, of creating oneself into a kind of "project", but it strikes with eeriness when considering that of the artist. Where others want to "become" better for a higher salary or other benefit, the artist is consistently enslaving themselves only for cultural value. Capitalism has re-framed the arts as a "dream" rather than as a craft, which is what it actually is. They cast this lure of the dream into the ocean, where millions flock amongst themselves in anguish, jumping over eachother to reach this deified goal. And yet it is tasteless, a fake. Nothing more than plastic. But that does not matter. The industry has, through neoliberal economics, created a highly efficient way to enslave artists into constant production, without offering any real compensation, and even making such artists pay to produce. The capitalist system has grown so potently here that it has flipped upside down: The proletariat of the system now pay to work. One has to marvel, for a minute, at how bizarre and effective this system has become. We are being made to pay to produce. This is akin to a cold fire, an impossibility materialised.
Tell me reader, in what other system do people willingly sacrifice their security, their very sustenance, in order to produce for a system? None! And none even within the broader capitalist system. This behavior is uniquely the product of the capitalist arts. The gallery is able to produce millions of unique commodities without any expense, and sell these commodities to the wealthiest of people. It has waived a carrot in front of the millions of artists, now reduced to donkeys, hurriedly whipping themselves forward to produce, to create, to work, to reduce their very life, essence, their time, into objects to be swiftly sold. Capitalism has listened to Marx, and found that alienation is a fickle tool. When artists are merged with their products, they will give their life to produce without end. Systematic, economic suicide.