«WASTING MONEY PUTS YOU IN A REAL PARTY MOOD»

The art of the contemporary art boom will for ever be associated with the credit boom. Just as the values of that economic system are now discredited, so too will be the values of the art that went with it. In the future we will no longer have high regard for art that is mass-produced, or dictated over mobile phones to assistants in factory studios. We will be amazed that hedge-fund collectors paid $3 million for framed photographs of Marlboro adverts - works of art by Richard Prince, which were said to be the result of the important new artistic process of “rephotography”.We will not look at the shiny reflective surfaces of Jeff Koons' sculptures (or the immacutely smooth multicoloured surfaces of Murakami's paintings and sculptures) and think that this quality of fabrication makes them important. We will come to regard the art as the baubles of the bubble billionaires.Like all those packaged-up bundles of bad debts, contemporary art had no fundamental value. It was worth just what the market said it was worth.

-Times
May 13 2009