The quandary at the heart of The Price of Everything, the art world documentary recently acquired by HBO, is summed up in a scene with the great German artist Gerhard Richter. Gesturing to one of his own paintings, Richter explains, “It’s not good when this is the value of a house. It’s not fair. I like it, but it’s not a house.”
Fairness and basic human needs such as shelter, however, are far from the minds of most of the participants in Nathaniel Kahn’s busy, stylish account of money and contemporary art. The opening credits bloom and fade over a breakneck montage of art auctions; the shouted numbers are in the millions, the artworks—Stella, Warhol, Richter—are chivvied along as props in the play of conspicuous consumption. As hammers fall, the voice of ex-auctioneer Simon de Pury intones, “Art and money have always gone hand in hand… It’s very important for good to be expensive… The only way for cultural artifacts to survive is for them to have a commercial value.”
It’s a statement so silly (plenty of extant cultural artifacts predate money by millennia) that one can only assume it is meant to shock rather than to be believed, a gauntlet thrown in the face of wimpy platitudes about art’s ineffable value. But viewers who anticipate a filmic celebration of capitalism as a force for cultural good, or alternatively, a condemnation of commodification, will be disappointed. The Price of Everything develops no particular argument, posits no solutions, uncovers no scandals. It isn’t a polemic, it’s a portrait, and in its mix of the grotesque and the earnest, a pragmatic and recognizable one.
Once upon a time, the buying and selling of art was conducted discreetly in back rooms; auctions were the dingy purview of specialist dealers; and contemporary art barely got a look in. Today, the contemporary art market is a glossy subject of public display and fascination (this is quite different from the art itself being fascinating to most people). Record prices for paintings appear above the fold in newspapers; the villainous art dealer is a common cinematic trope. The attraction is only partly explained by eye-popping sales: the global trade in art in 2017 was estimated at $63.7 billion, which is a lot of money, but tiddlywinks in comparison to other commodity classes (the Japanese automobile maker Toyota alone pulled in four times that amount that year). Unlike the automotive industry, however, the art business is mostly privately held and unregulated, so its workings are opaque. Then there is the fact that nobody needs a painting to get to work or put a roof over their heads, as well as the reality that aesthetic experience is stubbornly subjective. Finally, there’s the discomfort many feel in talking about art as a commodity class at all. Add moral anxiety to mystery and money, and you’ve got a hook.