Response to the Dave Hickey article: The Birth of the Big, Beautiful, Art Market

    The essay by Dave Hickey critically examines and almost satirizes the art market and the institutions associated with it, but not for the reason that many would suspect. After reading Hickey's meandering essay that was so heavily laden with extended metaphors it practically demands a second read-through, I concluded that he is most certainly ticked off by something- or maybe not.
    To a large extent, I believe that the author is using this essay as an opportunity to play the role of a disillusioned critic of the arts in order to somehow arrive at something truthful and/or meaningful. He very openly rejects an art market that is fickle enough to adopt the sort of consumerist, customize-able  art that was prevalent during post modernism and then reverse back on itself and pretentiously abandon it. Here's what I don't think was mentioned in class and yet was an idea I found all over the article: Dave Hickey likes consumer art- at least to some extent. He simply wishes that customize-able art, which he compares to the low riders and classic cars of his past, would be at peace in its proper context.
    What Hickey is not a fan of, I believe, is that the art market was born from the "low" art idea of feeding the consumer their own desire instead of objects of substance and functionality, and yet it's flippant in it's opinions. The art market "legislated customized art out of existence in a fury of self-important resentment" because the market saw that artists had caught on and it was "cheapening" the art game. The Institution will sell you a pile of dirt as conceptual art but degrade Ed Ruscha as part of a trend in art. This is the point of his manically-written last few paragraphs where he relates the art market to a secular reformation. He is pointing out the reversal and the hypocrisy in the market and at the same time declaring a democracy of opinion when it comes to art.
    I have my own opinions when it comes to the effect that the commercialization of art has on the market and the consumer, my prime suspect being Apple products which so readily offer up their user-friendly vibes to become the new cultural paradigm. However, my focus here was to understand Hickey's argument, and my final conclusion is that he really doesn't have one. I looked him up online, and he's notorious for not saying anything. I agree.

For further reading, this is an excellent and intriguing NPR article:
http://www.npr.org/2015/08/15/432356563/people-love-art-museums-but-has-the-art-itself-become-irrelevant?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=20150815