The Price of Everything

It's hardly a new observation that capitalism and money have swamped the production and appreciation of art around the world in recent decades. It's not even a new subject for a documentary.

Yet "The Price of Everything" explores this topic in an unhurried and largely nonjudgmental way. Sharp and thought-provoking comments are provided by working artists, dealers, art historians, wealthy collectors, and even auctioneers, but the movie doesn't take sides.

Hugely successful and almost industrial-scale sculptor Jeff Koons (fittingly, a former Wall Street trader) is contrasted with once-hot, now largely forgotten abstract painter Larry Poons, quietly continuing to labor in his converted barn of a studio in the woods at the age of 80.

Nigerian-born collage and paint artist Njideka Akunyiki Crosby pursues her work calmly and wonders about how she can and will develop over time. Older photorealist painter Marilyn Minter looks wrily back as much as forward. Amy Cappellazzo, an executive at Sotheby's, speaks feelingly of the beauty and meaning of art while simultaneously citing the prices she expects pieces to bring at auction and the people she has in mind to get to buy them.

Although it can feel a bit aimless -- more of a mosaic than a panorama or story with an arc -- there is a structure to this film. Preparations are made in anticipation of a major Sotheby's auction and an exhibit by a once-celebrated-but-now-obscure artist, both of which occur near the end.

There's no urgency, and no climax. If there are heroes or villains, you'll have to pick them yourself. Just allow the comments of the articulate interviewees, and the beauty of the artpieces, wash through your eyes and ears . . . and draw your own conclusions.

It's important to be able to separate the documentary quality from the subject itself. Whilst most of us will be fascinated with the world these people live in, that should have no bearing on whether the documentary is good, bad or indifferent.

The film itself is high quality in terms of production, access to artists, retailers and buyers. It's interesting to see the varying viewpoints from each. But, for me, there needed to be some more critical questioning of each source. Without this there's a very fine line between deterimining whether you're watching a bonafide documentary or a subtle mocumentary. I would like to have seen interviewees being challenged more - from the over-zealous critics reading too much into the classic artists' works to the artists producing what many would consider to be the works of the untalented who have jumped on the bandwagon to con the gullible.

The film is a very easy watch and I think most of us will be left shaking our heads at the shallowness of the art world. The term "The emperor's new clothes" springs to mind and you're just wanting the producers to be that little boy at the side of the road who shouts out that the emperor is naked. I know I was shouting it lots!

All I can say is that there are some truly insipid and awful people featured in this film.

These documentaries lamenting the hyper-ueber-capitalization of the art world are now coming out in a steady stream. The overarching theme is the effect that the commodification of art is having upon artists themselves. As portrayed here, artists are either adopted as protégés by powerful art brokers, or they are completely ignored and destined to live out their lives in a state of penury. Meanwhile, many ¨collectors¨ are really investors looking to flip artworks in the manner in which they flip real estate--purely for profit.

This particular version of the story offers especially derogatory portraits of corporate-artists (for lack of a better term) such as Jeff Koons, but also of the dealers who negotiate what are apparently trades in many cases (to avoid tax debt), and the collectors whom they woo. Once again, I come away with the impression that the collectors and dealers being interviewed have no idea how sad they come off to the people watching the film. They must think that they are going to be famous for these appearances. At most, the collectors featured may attain a modicum of infamy for their motley and sometimes aesthetically repugnant juxtaposition of large numbers of works whose only true connection is found in their insanely high ticket price. As for the dealers? Just ordinary opportunists who have seized upon a peculiarly lucrative development in the history of art.

It seems safe to say that this film will will not encourage people to become collectors and may in fact contribute to the prognosticated pop of the bubble. Fortunately there is no effort here (as in Blurred Lines) to lobby for regulation of the art market, which would be a complete and unmitigated disaster. Just look at the effect that government intervention had on art in the USSR...

There's always somebody would and could accommodate you to spend it by telling you "investments in modern art" is the wisest thing to do.

These contemporary paintings or sculptures we saw in this documentary, some of them looked pretty nice, but lot of them were absolutely disgusting, pretentious and totally unnecessary. But there's always a market for junk or garbage as long as those filthy rich people became addicted to collect them. The contemporary arts are for the rich people, but means nothing to the poor. If you are worried about your monthly bills, credit card debts, the groceries expenses, your kids' education fees, your tax to IRS....as long as you have such worries, the so-called "Art" or "Contemporary Arts" don't mean jacksh@t at all, just a lot of chemically created color paints profusely littered on canvasses.

Artists, like musicians, are the entertainers for the rich who are like the water for the plants, without them, entertainers got no support and their creativities would be drained and dried up. It's like those "Supporting Your Troops", "Supporting Your Local Business" or the latest "Make America Great Again" slogans, if you are unemployed, deep in debts, not with blind political believes, those big words, just like the modern contemporary arts, simply mean nothing at all. So you must have enough extra money that you can freely throw around, these craps won't have any meaning to you, albeit buying or collect them.

The Sun finally would be burnt itself out and becomes a Red Giant in the long run, it'll swallow up the Earth and disintegrate it, owing a piece of real estate property or a contemporary artwork would suddenly become so meaningless and laughable. "The Price of Everything" in other words, simply means "The Price of Nothing".