Even if you find contemporary art totally compelling there is always a niggling doubt that some of the people who use it to advance their careers and the odd institution don’t really get it. An obvious case is the art auction where artists are asked to donate art works worth thousands of dollars – way above the amount any of these organisations would dare suggest ordinary punters contribute. How is this possible? Largely because people struggle to believe that work has any real value, particularly before it is sold. Hit up the CEO of a corp for $10,000 and you are talking about one-and-a-half-weeks serious pay – that’s not going to happen – while asking an artist for a painting or a sculpture that would sell for the same amount is seen as reasonable.
We came across another classic case of this value paradox when we happened to see how Dane Mitchell’s winning work was returned by the Waikato Museum’s Trust Waikato National Art Award. You may recall that the work comprised of the wrappings used by other artists when submitting their own work to the competition. You might think, that given the controversy over Mitchell’s work winning the Award, that the Waikato Museum would have made a crate and returned the work professionally packed. Not a bit of it. In the spirit of Mitchell himself, the institution crammed it into a pre-used cardboard box, threw in the exhibition labels for good luck (complete with blue tack) and taped it up. While they knew it was art, they were obviously confidant it didn’t have any real value.
Image: Mitchell's award winning art arrives back from the gallery
