{"id":217968,"date":"2010-01-20T08:48:44","date_gmt":"2010-01-20T13:48:44","guid":{"rendered":"tag:http:\/\/www.economist.com,2009:21004399"},"modified":"2010-01-20T08:48:44","modified_gmt":"2010-01-20T13:48:44","slug":"art-for-arts-sake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/217968","title":{"rendered":"Art for art’s sake"},"content":{"rendered":"

THIS<\/a> is much cooler than a diamond-encrusted skull:<\/p>\n

\n

A Tool to Deceive and Slaughter<\/a> is an artwork by Caleb Larsen, currently for sale on eBay. If it hasn\u2019t sold in the next couple of days \u2014 the minimum bid is $2,500 \u2014 it will go back on eBay. On the other hand, if it does<\/em> sell, it will still<\/em> go back on eBay. That\u2019s what it does, as clearly explained in the legal contract accompanying the work:<\/p>\n

Artist has created a work of art titled \u201cA Tool to Deceive and Slaughter (2009)\u201d (\u201cthe Artwork\u201d) which consists of a black box that places itself for sale on the auction website \u201ceBay\u201d (the \u201cAuction Venue\u201d) every seven (7) days. The Artwork consists of the combination of the black box or cube, the electronics contained therein, and the concept that such a physical object \u201csells itself\u201d every week.<\/p>\n

…Many artists have tried to remove their art from the commercial aspects of the art world \u2014 by making it free, for instance, or by putting on performances, or creating public installations. This one does it by making an artwork which is so<\/em> commercial that it can\u2019t be collected. You could buy the piece today, and it might be worth $100,000 in a few years\u2019 time. But you wouldn\u2019t own it in a few years time, and you would have personally gained only a tiny fraction of the increase in the piece\u2019s value, if anything at all.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

There’s no way around the sell requirement. I was thinking that this could just be a super status piece, for which a determined buyer could bid highest each time, but the owner is not allowed to bid on the item. But perhaps a determined pair of conspirators could swap the item back and forth?<\/p>\n

At any rate, a refreshing idea.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

THIS is much cooler than a diamond-encrusted skull: A Tool to Deceive and Slaughter is an artwork by Caleb Larsen, currently for sale on eBay. If it hasn\u2019t sold in the next couple of days \u2014 the minimum bid is $2,500 \u2014 it will go back on eBay. On the other hand, if it does […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4064,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-217968","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217968","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4064"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=217968"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217968\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=217968"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=217968"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=217968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}