I’ve been slack in posting with too many shows in the past couple months but I’m gonna be boring the shit out of you all really soon. In the meantime, here is an amazing article on the value of ideas, creativity and the art object.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/16/magazine/16hyde-t.html
Damien Jay sent me the link and introduced me to Lewis Hyde, two of the best parts from the article are:
“Gift economies, as Mauss defines them, are marked by circulation and connectivity: goods have value only insofar as they are treated as gifts, and gifts can remain gifts only if they are continually given away. This results in a kind of engine of community cohesion, in which objects create social, psychological, emotional and spiritual bonds as they pass from hand
to hand.”
and
“Unlike a commodity, whose value begins to decline the moment it changes hands, an artwork gains in value from the act of being circulated-published, shown, written about, passed from generation to generation – from being, at its core, an offering.”
