Artist as Monopolist

Though I'm only linking to it now, Ryan Avent responded in a very timely manner to my question about highly skilled labor organization, saying that the Chinese art sweatshop isn't an extraordinary example:

Even for workers with valuable skills, wages are determined by supply and demand. If there is a large pool of similarly skilled artists, then the wages for such workers will be bid down. In the sweatshop case, ability with a paintbrush shouldn't be viewed any differently than other artisanal skills.

The big jumps in bargaining power and wages come from other avenues. On the one hand, skilled craftsmen can organize and erect barriers to entry. Guilds had this effect, as do modern professional organizations; both guarantee quality—to an extent—but also reduce labor supply and push up wages. The Chinese sweatshop workers, like many other skilled and unskilled workers before them, would no doubt have difficulty putting together a Monet Knock-off Painters Union.

On the other hand, a truly outstanding talent offering a unique product can remove himself from the system and develop pricing power. Damien Hirst, in other words, has a monopoly on Hirsts. This allows him to limit supply and raise the price of his art. Plus no one can enter the Hirst market and compete with him.

Emphasis mine. This is an aspect of art that changed totally with the Victorian concepts of authenticity and author, breaking entirely from previous (i.e., Renaissance) ideas about the artist. Consider Elaine Sturtevant (who, it seems, now goes just by Sturtevant): Her work consists entirely of copies of other artists' work. So far as I know, she has not in 40 years created an original artwork (for a typical value of "original"), instead laboriously re-creating painting, sculpture, film, and performance by artists ranging from Andy Warhol to Paul McCarthy. (You may recall her Duchamp copymades in last year's Whitney Biennial.)

Despite the fabricated nature of her work, Sturtevant nevertheless has a monopoly on Sturtevants, so to speak—her works are sold at rates she sets, independently from the value of the works she references but also higher than the value of reproductions like prints. A Sturtevant copy of a Duchamp readymade object is categorically different from a Chinese factory reproduction of a Vermeer, even though the activity is essentially similar. ("Rather a long run for such a short slide," says A Fistful of Euros.)

On the original question of art produced by Chinese sweatshops, Megan McArdle says, "I am willing, indeed eager, to listen to an argument from Mr Capps that this is culturally or artistically a Bad Thing." Sorry to disappoint, but I don't think it is so culturally or artistically Bad. People who hope to buy gauche home decor at Wal-Mart, by all means, have at. In fact, people may buy all manner of Chinese-manufactured widgets at Wal-Mart, these paintings among them. I just don't accept that it is art that these Chinese painters are producing. Sweatshop-produced paintings don't meet this economic precondition of Western art: Art is produced by an artist who has a monopoly on that art, no matter what it is.

Posted by Kriston at August 28, 2007 2:55 PM