Art is commodified for it is no longer about the work, it is sold as an idea or a concept in nuances of a market.
What it purports to centrally is its potential for an investment, favorite trends and media exposure. It is the marketing drive that matters more than the quality or content.
Works of art, not what artist do, doing is a menial work delegated to others, Weiwei at the Tate Modern makes a statement not painting a bunch of sunflowers withering away but getting millions of ceramic sunflower seeds meticulously painted by an army of cheap labourers.
These are factory produced, formulaic concepts where like in Damian Hirst out pours, automatons are employed to sticks insects on emulations, spin colours or put dots on canvases enmasse. Marketed Gucci style, flogged by marketing execs, its value systematically massaged through auction houses and flushed by a network of speculative investors. We may laugh these off as a sign of our time and continue to do so for a little more while.
Duchamp the erstwhile father of conceptualism last piece, which he worked on in secret for twenty years, at the same time as he was going around telling everyone of the futility to continue making arts, more worthwhile to play chess he insisted. Duchamps swan song melancholically returns to its roots origin. Étant donnés centre piece reveals a “body electric” figure laying in a romantic landscape holding an illuminating light.