Andrew Graham-Dixon on the marriage of art and money
Tomorrow we go to the big new show by Monet or Manet or Money or some such guy.
(Martin Amis, Money)
Art and money. What a couple. They seem made for each other; they slip off the tongue, like Simon and Garfunkel or Gilbert and Sullivan (or Gilbert & George). Art always had its followers, but let's be honest about this - Art was a nobody until Money got in on the act, just stuff that got written about on the inside pages of the qualities and not at all in the other papers. Television? Minority programming for sure. BBC 2, maybe. What a change, what a transformation though, since Art got hitched up with Money. How much did you say that Van Gogh went for? $ 50 million plus? That's serious dosh.
Art is sexy, as newsmen like to say, now that it's got together with Money, with cash, with all those big ones. Van Gogh? Rembrandt? The Saatchi Collection - he's selling? Hold the front page. They've even made the cover of Time magazine. They got a banner headline. ''Art and Money'' - a Time special. There are people who think they should stop being seen together like this, but don't knock it - everyone's talking about them.
Some thoughts, then, about Art and Money (the subject won't go away). What does it mean, this fling that they're having? Let's look at them in action. Let's see how they go to work, in the private sector, Monday to Friday, nine to five.
Commercial galleries put on three kinds of exhibition. There are one-person shows and there are theme shows, which may or may not be noticed by the media, and then there are exhibitions from stock, which almost certainly...
