The Art World Reflects The Sleaze Of Extreme Wealth

Donal McGraith, August 20, 2020

I am not really clear how this all works. China seems to make everything. Apple products are made there and the employees are essentially indentured, pretty much slaves in a Dickensian nightmare. China now has this ruling money class who buy art and live in wildly expensive condos in gated communities. It mirrors the rich in the US and I expect with business interest ties, this wealthy class probably operate through tax havens and live nowhere.

An idea occurred to me and I am not sure it can completely be backed up, but from what I read in Max Haiven’s “Art After Money, Money After Art,” I think that the Chinese rich are doing similar things in various tax havens as is happening in the West. I expect that Trump may do the same, not that the Clinton’s are in any much less sleazy. The difference is that they do their penance with various charity work. I expect Hillary has a modicum of decency about her.

What are all too human failings in the lower classes become somehow more sleazy with money. Why, I guess because, you can buy anything with enough money. Even the most dignified of us can be bought. Those who resist this either have a very solid moral core or don’t need the money. Certainly there are enough desperate people out there.

One wonders if with infinite money if it is impossible to measure one’s indulgence. We know that offers come from those aspiring to move up a class but also those falling or about to fall. Both have the taste for what is called the “good life,” but this is perhaps a sort of tedium of little effort, blinding ambition with no struggle. You know you bought your way in and that has to eat at anyone. Even doing good, charity work and such, is spoiled by the sleaze you must hang out with. Even if you are not skimming off your charities, you are getting massive tax breaks, but most will skim or build advantage through them.

That’s one reason why the art world is so sleazy. It is because there is always a critic or art historian available to write advertising copy disguised as academic research for your next purchase or sale. They have to make their living somehow. This is the sum total of art history, advertising copy.