4 ms·
A symptom of a business where a large part of the monetary value is assigned to a small number of star producers, and this assigning is heavily influenced by a
by brazzy 12y ago
A symptom of a business where a large part of the monetary value is assigned to a small number of star producers, and this assigning is heavily influenced by a class of middlemen who are busily pretending, through social conventions and traditions, that the money is not important, since they profit greatly from the consumers' belief that the non-monetary aspects are the most important ones.
Simchowitz is basically a "munchkin middleman" who blithely ignores said conventions and traditions and addresses a different class of consumers.
edited in reaction to reply
- _delirium 12y agoBased on this article's description, I wouldn't say he's disintermediating it so much as differently intermediating it. It sounds like he's building up an interesting web of social and business conventions to position people as art-stars, cultivate investors in said art-stars' careers and works, cultivate "appreciators" who key on status signals he's inflecting certain artists with, etc. It's still ultimately a lot of a status and positioning game, trying to build someone up as a "major artist" in a way that a critical mass of critics and investors buy, while setting yourself up as the intermediary who controls access to this corner of the art world.
- gbhn 12y agoI'm certainly no art high roller, but my understanding is that the art world has a long history of patrons like this, who have eclectic tastes, large networks of trusting collectors, and an eye for the new. Everyone hates them, until eventually they build the Guggenheim museum and then everyone thinks they were awesome.
- dawnstra8 12y agoI definitely agree that this is a symptom of larger things. Although I'm not so sure about the munchkin remark.