Models of art and self-management practices - Essay Example

Modern art deals with money. For centuries artists earned money when they sold their paintings. Nevertheless an image of a ‘poor artist’ can hardly disappear from our consciousness. Artists die and only after their deaths greatness of their talents was acclaimed by public. Currently, researchers claim that “the irrational exuberance of the contemporary art market is about the breeding of money, not the fertility of art, and that commercially precious works of art have become the organ grinder's monkeys of money” (Kuspit).

This apt expression characterizes a shift of the primary objective of art, which is aesthetic pleasure, to a means of enrichment. We live in the epoch of art parody. It is very hard to distil art from a mixture of different stereotypes and concepts around it. In the majority of cases, art issues are mixed with issues from political, economic or technical spheres. Opponents of this point of view may claim that art and money have always been in interdependence. It is possible to claim that nowadays ‘art has become a dependency of money’ (Kuspit).

Huge investments in art in a modern society are directed on art overwhelm. Thus a modern paradigm of art is the following: ‘money is superior to art’ (Kuspit). This can be confirmed by a steady growth of auctions. From the very beginning of history of art, its main function has always been in coding human beliefs, goals and interests. Next to correlation of art and economics, political context of art is also widely discussed. Even museums are compared to “exhibition ventures like, which contribute to the shaping and promotion of the ideas that govern our social relations” (Haacke).

Consequently, artists are considered to be agents, who exert influence on the society. Different political structures, sponsors from political institutions witness the fact that there is an intention to establish relationship between politics and art. If we restore in our memories socio-critical art of previous years, especially after revolutions, we can clearly see that art was a tool of political manipulation. For example, Vladimir Tatlin, a representative of Russian Realism, developed a project The Monument to the Third International (1920).

This project has never been embodied into life, but a spirit of technical progress, a huge power of Russia after revolution was transferred by this artist. Socio-critical art has always been a powerful trigger of society ideological behavior formation. Consequently, this type of art can be saved only at times of great revolutions or turbulent historical events, when politicians involve all possible means in order to create necessary social moods in their countries. Rosler (2010) in her article confirms politicized air of socio-critical and political art: such type of art is a “robust support for revolutionary ideals or displaying identification with provincial localism, with the peasantry or with the urban working classes, especially using fairly ephemeral forms (such as the low-cost prints available in great numbers)” (Rosler 2010).

On the one hand, the author criticizes this type of art, but on the other hand we can think about a propagation of art among public (Rosler 2010). Nowadays in spite of a high-speed technological progress and availability of technical means of communication, participants of auctions have an ability to look at masterpieces, but all the rest of the society can be satisfied by