Art and Money: Giacometti's Plaster, Murakami's Record, and the Unbuyable Artwork

Adrien Maeght recounts a 1950s anecdote where Alberto Giacometti destroyed a plaster sculpture after a collector offered an astronomical sum, unable to bear the work being reduced to mere monetary value. Today, the art world has shifted: since Andy Warhol, some artists embrace the market. Takashi Murakami, whose exhibition at Fondation Cartier in Paris coincided with a record price of €421,078 for a fiberglass manga-inspired sculpture at a May 2002 New York auction, openly states his ambition to blend Anselm Kiefer and Jeff Koons. He describes the art market as a small distribution network of wealthy individuals and museums, and views the shift from the Western patron system to an independent, artist-to-artist economic logic as foundational for contemporary art. In contrast, Pierre Huyghe, France's representative at the 2001 Venice Biennale and represented by Marian Goodman Gallery, tells a story about Michael Asher: a collector who wanted to own an Asher work had the artist move a boundary wall between his and his neighbor's property, causing the collector to lose physical space while gaining mental space. Huyghe advocates for the idea of an artwork that cannot be bought, calling it the finest product of capitalist society.