M HKA Ensembles

Book, 17.8 x 11.7 cm, 124 p., language : English, publisher : The Leopard Press, New York, ISBN : 978-0981546834.

Collection: Collection M HKA, Antwerp (Inv. no. B 2027/562).

Literary synopsis

Fuck Seth Price presents the contemporary art world in all of its manic, horrible glory: its commercial market flooded with money, its inhabitants buffeted by existential doubts, its artists under siege by the digital. The book concerns an unnamed male artist who, Price writes on the first page, one day “found himself carrying out strange and horrible acts: murder and abduction, most disturbingly, but also other furtive activities that he couldn’t quite make sense of.” By this point, we’re told, the artist had pretty much stopped making art, having minted a tidy fortune by making abstract paintings that he carefully calibrated to appeal to collectors. The book suggests that the job of being an artist, for many leading figures today, consists in large part in managing a business, negotiating control with outside interests (there’s a nice exegesis on the parallels between Jeff Koons and Kanye West), flying to the openings of oligarchs’ private museums, feeling guilty about the decadence, and deciding when to compromise.

- Andrew Russeth

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