Some Responses to the Return to Object Fetishism

The return to objects in current art practices seems an almost natural outcome of the ebbing wave of relational art. Yet the question remains as to whether objects had really disappeared from the landscape of the 1990s and early 2000s, or had we simply refused to acknowledge them? The last Québec Triennial proposed that we take a nuanced approach to the issue, by bringing emerging artists who foreground objects and materials (Jacynthe Carrier, Mathieu Latulippe, Julie Favreau) into dialogue with artists like Massimo Guerrera, who have embodied the relational art movement in Québec, yet for whom objects and know-how are no less present.1 1  - Cf. Johanne Sloan’s article in the Triennial catalogue, which analyzes the work of Valérie Blass, BGL, and Michel de Broin: Johanne Sloan, “Everyday Objects, Enigmatic Materials,” The Québec Triennial 2011: The Work Ahead of Us, (Montréal: Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, 2011), 325-335.

I would like to consider a few recent works that share many similarities in the way they approach the question of the object, particularly the question of commodity fetishism, which has been the subject of renewed interest in recent years. Commodity fetishism is certainly the most spectacular aspect of the real or assumed return to objects in the past decade, culminating in some million-dollar sales of neo-pop art pieces during the art market boom of 2006-2008. Emblematic works of the period, to recall just a few, include Damien Hirst’s For the Love of God, a skull inlaid with thousands of diamonds, which sold for 100 million dollars in 2007; Takashi Murakami’s exhibition at the MOCA in Los Angeles the same year, which presented bags the artist had designed for the Louis Vuitton luxury brand; and Guilty, the yacht that Greek-Cypriot collector Dakis Joannou commissioned Jeff Koons to decorate in 2008. The surprising thing about these productions — aside from the outrageous sums they fetch — is the forthrightness with which they transform themselves into merchandise or luxury goods. They seem in fact to have forgone any critical function, content simply with the power of fascination they hold over collectors.² 2 - I commented on this phenomenon in 2008: see Jean-Philippe Uzel, “Trickster Objects in Contemporary Art,” translated by Ron Ross, in Thérèse Saint-Gelais, ed., The Undecidable: Gaps and Displacements of Contemporary Art (Montréal: Les éditions esse, 2008), 179-190.