Post Capitalistic Auction as Contemporary Art

Post Capitalistic Auction (PCA) is an event conceived and organized by the artist Jingyi Wang. Unlike in an ordinary auction, bids are not only made in “money.” “Opportunity,” “understanding,” and “exchange” can also contribute to the hammer price.

To explain what is meant here by “exchange,” Wang cites an interesting example. She says that when she discussed PCA with a friend, he asked:

“What if I was a very famous blogger with a million fans around the world, and I really liked the work of some start up artist. What if I proposed that if she gave me her work, I would destroy it, but I would make a video documentation of the destruction that I would put on my blog?”

If this happened, the artwork would be physically lost — but a million people would learn the artist’s name, as well as what the work looked like when it existed. It would be a great way to create an “opportunity” out of an “exchange.”

For a fair few people, this talk of destruction will bring Banksy’s act to mind. The moment the hammer fell on one of the anonymous artist’s works at Sotheby’s in London, the painting was torn up by a shredder that Banksy had installed in the frame in advance. That happened on October 5, 2018. According to Wang, however, her friend mentioned this idea around February of the same year. Their conversation took place at least half a year before the incident; in other words, it anticipated Banksy.

An artwork is destroyed, and crowds witness the whole thing. It is because they both involve this that Wang’s friend’s idea recalls Banksy’s act. But they differ in a few significant ways: the artist’s fame, the work’s original value, the context of its destruction, whether or not any of it is left. And that is not all.

The biggest difference is between the agents of the works’ destruction. In Banksy’s case, it is of course the artist himself, and one can even argue that the pre-shredded painting is an unfinished work in the process of being made. But under Wang’s friend’s proposal, the agent is not the person who created the original artwork but the “very famous blogger with a million fans.” The original artwork was initially completed, but then ceased to exist as a result of the destruction.

So it isn’t Banksy we ought to think of here. A far better comparison is Robert Rauschenberg’s act-as-artwork, which has long been famous.

One day in 1953, Rauschenberg visited the atelier of Willem de Kooning, “the most revered of the Abstract Expressionists,” where he acquired a drawing. Then, over the course of several weeks, he used an eraser to almost entirely erase the drawing by this painter he so respected. He had already done this to his own works, but it was the first time he did it to another artist’s. It should be noted that he did this with de Kooning’s permission, of course.

This work, which is now known as Erased de Kooning Drawing, was created through a process almost identical to that proposed by Wang’s friend, and is attributed (not to de Kooning but) to Rauschenberg. Hence the “very famous blogger with a million fans” — or Wang’s friend, positing the blogger — could be considered, like Rauschenberg, to be the creator of a new act-as-artwork. The blogger would not merely bring great fame to the original artwork and artist.

By destroying the original work, by carrying out the act of obliteration, they could also generate new artistic value. But for this to happen, the blogger must declare their act to be “art”; and even if they do so, it goes without saying that the act-as-artwork’s value as “art” will be judged by its audience.

Through the unplanned “cooperation” between participating artists and bidders, PCA has the potential to generate this new kind of artistic value. This is what is so interesting about it. As existing auction houses like Christie’s and Sotheby’s follow a business model that derives income from premiums, bids made in anything but “money” (and in some cases “exchange”) are unacceptable. Wang’s idea for such a platform can be described as “artistic” in itself.

We can look forward not just to the bidders’ ideas, but also to the fact that the artists — knowing in advance that the bidders may get involved — will bear this in mind and submit interesting artworks. If the auction works, it could result in an intellectual and/or aesthetic dialogue between the artists and the bidders. It would mark the birth of an interactive art that is genuinely contemporary, and not about flaunting technology.

Already in the past, artists were expressing fears about abnormal leaps in the prices of artworks. Marcel Duchamp did so, as did Joseph Beuys, Hans Haacke, and Christian Boltanski. If they saw today’s insane market, and how it is driving young artists wild, Duchamp or Beuys would surely let out a sigh of dismay, or get angry.

On the other hand, serious artists are increasingly inclined to work in the fields of total installation — taking after Ilya & Emilia Kabakov — and performance (or the performing arts). Just as consumerism and tourism are seeing a shift “from things to experiences,” or “from having to doing,” the same thing is happening in art. This tendency seems consistent with recent social movements like the sharing economy and Creative Commons. Its watchwords are “less stuff” and “sharing.”

Why are contemporary artists tending toward installation and performance? One reason must be that there are limits to what one can express in a physical object, whether two- or three-dimensional. One can’t necessarily fit everything one wants to say in a work into individual paintings, or photographs, or sculptures. Hence the move into space and time.

I believe another reason is that artists want as many people as possible to be aware of their works. Physical artworks are small and thus easy to sell. But a unique work can only be given to one person, editions only to a few dozen at most. On the other hand, installations and performances are not readily packaged and sold, but they are easily shared. To put it a better way, most artists are probably happy as long as their work is shared (although they are happiest of all if they can sell it too).

What is thereby shared is, of course, an “experience.” Audiences go home not with a thing, but with memories of an experience.

As I stressed in my book What Is Contemporary Art?, concepts, not things, are paramount in contemporary art. A physical, substantial “work” that is sold as a thing is no more than a means to evoke the concept, to call it to mind. If the collectors who rush around markets purchase works without thinking about the concepts behind them, they might as well be spending their money on wrapping paper.

Joseph Kosuth has spoken to the effect that “art is not an expensive decoration, but an earnest activity that bears comparison to intellectual spheres like philosophy.” If PCA offers an opportunity to impart this extremely serious argument to people, it will be a wonderful thing.

– Tetsuya Ozaki, journalist and producer, translated by Alex Dudok de Wit