Chukwuma Agubokwu

Child-like, not childish.

blakegopnik: Daily Pic (Miami Basel edition): “White Snow Dwarf (Bashful),” a plastic sculpture by Paul McCarthy. All three copies of it were sold for $950,000 – each – at the Art Basel Miami Beach fair, running through Sunday night. You can read my big feature article on art’s insane prices in the upcoming Newsweek. (Or now, at TheDailyBeast.com). One interesting thought that didn’t get into that piece came to me care of dealer Marc Glimcher, of Pace Gallery. He suggested that the rewards we humans get from buying and selling art are as much about the web of human contacts it involves as about the objects being bought and sold. We are hard-wired for complex social and symbolic interactions, and it could be that the art market exists to let us exercise the mental muscles involved in those interactions at their purest. Figuring out who wants what and who has the power to get what and what is most worth getting and what we’re willing to do to get it – that is what we human apes do. The art market lets us do it, because art is such a flexible carrier of meaning and value. What a playground is to kids, the art market is to their parents. Photo by Colby Katz. Daily Pic, along with more global art news, can also be found on the  Art Beast page at TheDailyBeast.com. O RLY?

blakegopnik:

Daily Pic (Miami Basel edition): “White Snow Dwarf (Bashful),” a plastic sculpture by Paul McCarthy. All three copies of it were sold for $950,000 – each – at the Art Basel Miami Beach fair, running through Sunday night. You can read my big feature article on art’s insane prices in the upcoming Newsweek. (Or now, at TheDailyBeast.com). One interesting thought that didn’t get into that piece came to me care of dealer Marc Glimcher, of Pace Gallery. He suggested that the rewards we humans get from buying and selling art are as much about the web of human contacts it involves as about the objects being bought and sold. We are hard-wired for complex social and symbolic interactions, and it could be that the art market exists to let us exercise the mental muscles involved in those interactions at their purest. Figuring out who wants what and who has the power to get what and what is most worth getting and what we’re willing to do to get it – that is what we human apes do. The art market lets us do it, because art is such a flexible carrier of meaning and value. What a playground is to kids, the art market is to their parents. Photo by Colby Katz.

Daily Pic, along with more global art news, can also be found on the  Art Beast page at TheDailyBeast.com.

O RLY?
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