The Art World Is Easy to Dislike. Here Are Some Reasons Not to.

I'd love the NYTimes to provide a guide (maybe time for one of those e-books) as to how to navigate your way through the art market, to understand how these outrageous prices occur, even how to find out what prices art has sold for (it all seems so closed off to the average person). Any good publications you would recommend?

The best thing about the NY artworld? It's moving out and around the country. LA, especially the cheaper east side, is becoming ground zero for contemporary art. Other cities are gaining new voices with affordable rents. Once the hegemony of NYC abates, you'll see a much healthier industry. And that's what it is: an industry, as much as publishing, music, movies and television, or gaming. It's about time we all admitted it.

The "art world" is a disaster area, a toxic waste dump of vulgarity and cash, and mostly designed to line the pockets of the already rich while providing a salve for their guilty consciences ("I'm not a grubby robber baron like Trump, I buy Warhols!", that kind of thing). Fortunately for the rest of us there is the world of art, an entirely different place.

Not to sound to contrary - but wasn't it Nan Goldin's (and Larry Clark's) photos of the 70's and 80's downtown scene that basically wrote the BLUEPRINT for "Heroin Chique". Lets face it - for every black eye she showed, she firstly made that millieu seem very "avant garde, melancholy, glamorous". Many, many an artist/art student moved to NYC with these images in mind. The Obsession commercials/ads of whip thin half dressed models on drugs in the 90's were carbon copies of her "Middle Class art school kids move to big city and hang out in lofts and do dope in their underwear" photos. I think it's great what she's doing now. But I haven't read one ounce of criticism on the earlier work she is best known for now that she is choosing a new take on the subject that is consuming the country and is not all that glamourous. *** Note - Just a few weeks ago this VERY PAPER did a video essay on a young kid in Massachusetts who was struggling with addiction, in and out of jail, fighting with girlfriend and you guessed it - filmed in soft light with long hair model looks which I'm sure were a perk for the filmmakers. It all looked far from bleak aesthetically if it was even trying. The spell Nan Goldin helped cast is wide.

Ever since a poorly serigraphed knockoff of an elvis movie poster sold for $100 Million, does anyone honestly believe that the postmodern 'artworld' art has any relevance to anyone beyond billionaires & their dealers? It was a cheap joke, and as Warhol would be the first to snark, the joke's on You: All of you who are fascinated with the phenomenon that the richest & most powerful patrons pay sums for the Emperor's New Clothes that could bail whole nations out of poverty. Everybody's 15 minutes were used up decades ago. It's not fun, or funny, or remotely fascinating anymore. Artworld artists & celebrity dealers should keep their 10-figure fantasies to themselves. Their whole shtick is an insult to all those suffering for lack of basics. When is enough enough of this? The vast wealth wasted on the fakery of post-pop contemporary 'bluechip' hokum is just the billionaire-class thumbing its nose at the impoverished. Real People everywhere have every reason to despise, resent & write off entirely everything that goes on at 'Art Basel', or any of the other trade-shows masquerading as some cultural apogee which all these dealers & their deluded mega-fatcat investors inexplicably sustain.

Cooler clubs? Yeah, I spend my days about the days of clubs gone by.

I’m sure you love your theory of aesthetics very much, and wouldn’t want anything to happen to it. But you see, here’s the thing: Paradigms shift. Judgments change. Criticism happens. Things that fire insurance doesn’t cover. You seem like a brave artist. Don’t try to prove it.

"often-derided industry" - calling it an "industry" says it all. The problem is that too many artists and critics don't distinguish between a concept and a work of art. Too many people think their concepts are sufficient to make them artists, and too many artists are totally out of touch with the real world.

The art industry has become a version of the 'rap' industry, with interchangeably stupid noisemakers who are secondary to the 'suits' who skim 'money off the top' of bank-funded Ponzi schemes. Donald Trump as president is of a piece with today's junk culture. As with all such articles. this one is about galleries, collectors, money; the square feet of the gallery, who is sleeping with whom, which restaurants are popular: the irrelevancies. Nothing is said about the so-called 'art' because nothing can be said about it other than it reflects two conditions in our god-forsaken country: the hegemony of our waste-based consumptive lifestyle (including advertising) and pointless identity politics. https://frieze.com/article/fire-londons-hayward-gallery-rotting-fish-art... The artists' seemingly exotic identity matters, the 'work' not at all. The world would be better if ... all of this nonsense had not been made. Meanwhile, how about the US Attorney's office investigating art fairs, galleries and collectors for money laundering?

Does anyone else want to see an end to the annual fashion show fiasco at the Met? I find it degrading to the Met's image.

first of all: what is art?...there's plenty (most) out there in the "art world" that I would not consider art (unless by "art" one means any piece of junk/personal statement/performance piece/political remark/any bit of cleverness/any amusing or cute idea (however well crafted...though most often not)..."pill bottles tossed into a fountain during a protest"?...no thanks...

Gee, I don't know, how about supporting contemporary artists instead of ripping them off under the guise of "galleries"?

"Art" can be wonderful. "The art market" is anything but: a Potemkin facade of galleries selling to other galleries at pre-agreed-upon prices, keeping a fake price point afloat. It's despicable and should have been explored for collusion and/or RICO violations aeons ago.

Was excited to read a thoughtful reckoning here, but instead found this thin, preemptive shrug. When I lived in New York City I deeply resented the resigned, apolitical approach my wealthy, native NYC friends had to gentrification and the corporate takeover of Manhattan. "New York is always changing," they said, "this is just the latest iteration!" But this mantra doesn't go very far as an explanation or a worldview -- and it's not very interesting. M.H. Miller professes boredom here with the cyclical criticism the art wold receives, but doesn't really contemplate whether the criticism is boring because the system itself is boring, broken, and self-referential. For commentary that goes much farther, I recommend Jed Perl's 2014 article, "The Cult of Jeff Koons," in the New York Review of Books.

If art is distilled culture, and culture the accumulated wisdom of humans living over time in a specific place, then what happens to art in the face of continuous accelerating global change? Apart from its historical value, does art have any meaning at all in such a context?

The art market is not the art world.

Not referring to it as an industry would be a good start.

It has been said that the role of art now should be to take on that once held by the medieval cathedral- to prompt awe, contemplation, consolation. The Art World is too often alien and closed to the general public. Its first goal should be to remember that art, like literature and music, is meant to be universal and uniting. All the artists mentioned have the best intentions: how can the Art World adjust to let this work flood out into America, rather than travel incognito from the artist's studio to the collector's vault?