(by Sebastian B)
As far as I got acquainted to Pr. Levin’s research project, I wanted to stress the need for not overstating the singularity of art auctions relative to author forms of commodities and selling. What happens in an art auction is probably not very different from any other marketing process.
We usually grant a very special status to art and view its commodification as problematic. On the one hand, the market is supposed to feature the ocean of commensurability. On the other, the piece of art is viewed as the unique outcome of a singular mind. Besides, auctions bear a specific aura among the different forms of commodification. As a social event, there are meant to dramatize the adjustment between scarcity in supply and multiplicity in demand. The auction, it is assumed, has the magical power of fixing a legitimate price in the realm of uncertainty as opposed to the sell of mass production at a price set before any selling agreement is made. Hence, Charles Smith’s suggests a natural connection between auctions and art. He argues that uncertainty is so high about the value of singular art pieces that a public auction is necessary to give them a value.
There is something I really don’t like about this claim. It assumes that there is such thing as a transparent market where a company sets once for all the value of its widgets. In fact, what happens in art auctions is only the display of what secretly guides the marketing process of most things. The only difference is that according to the economic ideology, commodities are produced and sold according to a transparent, straightforward process. In the course of their design and marketing, coffee mugs or any other consumer product, just as art, encounter redefinitions about their value: they all have an awkward biography.
Such is, at least, the argument of Michel Callon. In the line of Bruno Latour re-consideration of material life, this French sociologist argues that every single product is individualized. There are not two customers who define the value of a product in the same way. The final sale of a product results from the process of adjustment between the properties of the object and the “world” of the customer. The purpose of selling in the auction is not to make up for the uncertainty about the object’s value but rather to meet the demands of a particular “world”, that of the art dealers who attend auctions, and the product. The auction is a redefinition, among many others, of the nature of the art piece, just as when you buy an apple you give it a new significance.
Thus, in my view, we would miss a point if we primarily saw the appraisers work as merely turning “singularity” into “commensurability”. The way I would see the appraiser’s work is a contribution to a process of integrating singularity into a good. It could be compared to the influence of the sales manager within a company over the existence of a technically innovative product. Why not shifting to this paradigm when talking about art rather than staying in the rather dry “art vs. market” dichotomy?
References
Charles Smith, Auctions: The Social Construction of Value
Michel Callon, “La qualité”, Sociologie du travail, 44 (2002), p. 255-287
What a great post.
If you don’t agree that the monetary value of singular art pieces is uncertain before auction houses legitimize a price, then what factors do you think the work’s value might be dependent on?
This is especially hard to answer, I would think, if this is the artist’s first time at auction. No one really considers the intrinsic value of artworks anymore (as compared to in early Renaissance painting, for example, where the value of the pigments determined the price of the painting).
I’m assuming this question has not ever been answered. Otherwise, we would not be constructing a whole research project around it. Still, it’s interesting to think about.
contribution to a process of integrating singularity into a good
At first I thought you were making a case against the notion of ‘fundamental value’, which is in fact a fascinating argument (see here for some of the people we’re reading in class’ take on the thing, esp. Ezra Zuckerman’s.
But then you turn to the role of specialists as doing the work of as integrating singularity into a good. So for you, it’s not turning art from singular to common, it is that art begins as common and is turned into singularity by specialists? Provocative. It works better in your example of a technically innovative product (or better, to make a ‘boring’ commodity something salable and exciting). But I’d love to hear you say more about this, here or in class.
@Ana
For sure, auctions provide the price-index of the market to which other market players may feel compelled adjust. We can see this in Velthuis’ book where gallerists, despite their will to stabilize the markets, are under pressure when an auction establishes a price much higher than theirs.
However, there still is a problem in seeing auctions as reducing market uncertainty, well in fact, ONE kind of uncertainty, the one regarding the levels of demand and supply. In this case, you assume some kind of magical adjustment between supply and demand. It is very hard to sociologically prove the influence of these forces on the market player’s behaviour.
Apart from this, I agree with you, the appraisal definitively reduces uncertainty regarding the product itself. I guess Peter’s story about the real estate agent made this clear. Some people are there to make you focus on the “wrong” and the “right” criteria. I guess though this is compatible with what I put forward in my post. The appraiser plays a role in “definining” the product in a certain way (by selecting the “correct” criteria of valuation) so that it “fits” in a the “world” it will be put into through the auction (the world of art dealers and top collectionners).
@Peter
I guess the level of de-qualification/requalification (to use Callon’s terminology) in the case of an art piece is just as high as say, in the case of the IPad. Now consider the sheer amount of “audiences” an art piece has during its existence (both simultaneously and successively) :
- The “general public” which values them as pedagogical instruments and as objects of national pride
- The art historian who sees the art piece as an object of academic enquiry
- The collectionner who might just see profit in it…
- The specialist…
Once an art piece passes through an auction, it is only one among other stages in its “life”. Rather than passage from singularity to singularity I guess we can talk about passage from singularity to… singularity. Now of course, the people I mentioned above compete during an auction to buy the same piece. But it would be interesting to know how their criteria of valuation differs, and how it is influenced by the “advice” given by the appraiser. Maybe we could see the work of the appraiser as striking a compromise between all these different spheres.
Sorry I made a mistake in the last paragraph of my reply. Instead of “Rather than passage from singularity to singularity I guess…” you should read : “Rather than passage from the common to singularity I guess we can talk about passage from singularity to singularity”.
Numismatic auctions exhibit most of the features of a fine art auction. Even the rarity of art objects may be putative as one of my friends from Cleveland quipped that “Picassos are as common as Bob Fellar autographs.” Numismatic collectors pay millions of dollars for coins that are, after all, fake. The 1804 Dollars and the 1913 Nickels are all known phonies, yet people want them.
If your closest supermarket had only one can of baked beans on the shelf, its price would skyrocket — or there would be a riot, which is, in fact, the newsy outcome of “bargain basement” shopping where open bidding is not in place.
In truth, every market transaction is the auction of a unique item.
Auction houses can “set” whatever price they imagine, but that does not -cause- the price at auction. Neither does the last price paid determine the next offer.
When the mafioso asked “What are these worth?” Mickey Blue Eyes was only quoting Ludwig von Mises: “Whatever someone want to pay.”