«I JUST READ EVERYTHING»

But how long can this go on? How will the growing, grotesque disparity between our belief that we "own" modern art and the glaring reality that it is bought and sold by the super-rich, survive these times? In 2009, Athens was being touted as a rising contemporary art centre, with collectors, fairs, new galleries. Art is fully globalised, and seems to be operating as a separate world system while all around it crashes. I am not prophesying disaster for it. If people go on believing in it, art may even be a clue to the survival and recovery of world capitalism. On a more local level, if British people keep on loving new art even as the rich carry it home, it probably also means the coalition is destined to a decade or so of power and the left is toast. Or if the times here and elsewhere prove harder to stabilise, if the rocks in the road get bigger – well, the art system will probably still go on. But will we be looking?

Jonathan Jones
The Guardian
July 2 2011