Is Modern Finance Ruining Modern Art? (Part 1): Mark C. Taylor
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Jan. 30 (Bloomberg) -- Art and money have always beeninseparable. As Andy Warhol declared almost four decades ago,“Business art is the step that comes after Art.” During thepast several decades, however, this relationship has beentransformed by the appearance of a new form of capitalism:finance capitalism.
In previous forms of capitalism -- agricultural,industrial and consumer -- people made money by buying andselling labor and material goods; in finance capitalism, bycontrast, wealth is created by circulating signs backed bynothing other than other signs. When investment becomes morespeculative, the rate of circulation accelerates and thefloating signifiers, which now constitute wealth, proliferate.