The Sentimental Value of Art

During the 1960s and 1970s an entire section of conceptual art turned to laying bare the economic, political and ideological biases of arts institutions. However, this critique was quickly reclaimed by the institutions, too happy to show works that tended to highlight the very places the works attempted to critique.1 1  - Daniel Buren’s work is exemplary in this regard. Conceived in situ, his work lent visibility to the establishments in which they were installed, while attempting to examine them critically. In the 1980s a second generation of emerging artists re-launched the debate, this time focusing on the many processes in the institutionalization of art — processes in which the artist is always necessarily involved. Andrea Fraser writes: “Every time we speak of the ‘institution’ as other than ‘us,’ we disavow our role in the creation and perpetuation of its condition. We avoid responsibility for, or action against, the everyday complicities, compromises, and censorship — above all, self-censorship — which are driven by our own interests in the field and the benefits we derive from it. It’s not a question of inside or outside, or the number and scale of various organized sites for the production, presentation, and distribution of art. It’s not a question of being against the institution: We are the institution.”2 2  - Andrea Fraser, “From the Critique of Institutions to an Institution of Critique,” Artforum 44, no. 1 (September 2005): 283.

Fraser is an artist who first became well-known for Museum Highlights (1989), an unusual guided visit of Philadelphia’s Museum of Art in which she diverted attention away from the exhibited works, directing it instead towards the museum’s auxiliary spaces (ticket counter, cafeteria, washrooms, etc.) The artist first conceived of her artistic practice as a service — educational, or even contemplative — for which she could be remunerated, yet without creating any object with a market value that could subsequently be produced and resold.³ 3 - In this regard, see Andrea Fraser “What’s Intangible, Transitory, Mediating, Participatory, and Rendered in the Public Sphere?” October 80 (Spring 1997): 111-116. Fraser revised her position around 2000, having realized that museum establishments were henceforth looking for major, ambitious shows likely to generate revenue. With invitations from museums becoming increasingly rare, Fraser faced the fact that she had to sell work and become part of the art market in order to survive: “The first impulse was probably, well, if I’m gonnahaveta [sic] sell it, I might as well sell it. The first impulse was to perform an extreme literalization of the old metaphor of selling art as prostitution, of the artist as prostitute, and it was rooted in what felt to me like a very painful choice between continuing to be an artist and betraying what I believe in as an artist.”⁴ 4 - Andrea Fraser interviewed by Yilmaz Dziewior, “Interview with Andrea Fraser” in Andrea Fraser. Works: 1984 to 2003, ed. Yilmaz Dziewior (Cologne: Dumont, 2003), 99. Fraser explains how she got the idea for her Untitled (2003) project as follows. The artist asked the Friedrich Petzel Gallery in New York to find a collector willing to be part of the project but whose identity would remain hidden. For the sum of $20,000 US, half of which would be paid to the gallery in commission, the collector purchased the opportunity to have sexual relations with the artist, an act which would be filmed and transformed into a 60-minute unedited video work in an edition of five numbered copies, the first of which would belong to the collector.