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The mysterious world of the value of art

“ Any price—many millions, a buck fifty—paid for any work of art is absurd. Or call it fiduciary poetry. People keep noting that the value of art is strictly subjective, but that truth sinks in only so far, if at all. ” — said the renowned art critic of The New Yorker Peter Schjeldahl.  It might indeed be absurd to pay millions for artwork, and yet many millions are regularly changing hands in the world of art. The Nathaniel Kahn’s documentary “ The Price of Everything ” exactly emphasizes this far-reaching speculation mania where art collectors are more obsessed with the classic financial world’s principle of “buy low — sell high” than with the actual art. Greed seems to have become the name of the game.  Truth must be told, the art market is a huge market. One of the highlight titles in the March 08, 2019 Artsy.net newsletter was: “ The Global Art Market Reached $67.4 Billion in 2018, up 6% ”. Those already are impressive numbers and the market is believed to be ...
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A review of the online exhibition "Artistic Expressions"

Carl Gustav Jung said: “There can be no transforming of darkness into light and of apathy into movement without emotion”. Emotions drive us, drown us and lift us. Emotions are life. Therefore if one truly wants to capture life, one needs to capture emotions. And what could be more representative of emotions than the looks, postures, and gestures contained in the human emotion? The exhibition “Artistic Expressions” displayed at the Réunion des musées nationaux - Grand Palais (Paris), features sixty paintings spanning from the fifteenth to the twentieth-century made by different artists in a range of styles. The paintings are grouped into eight categories covering emotions from tenderness associated with an early childhood to ordeals of adolescence, sprinkled with laughter, soddened with melancholy and ultimately balancing between power and fear. The circle of life. Love and Death. The theme of tenderness opens the exhibition. Maternal tenderness is showcased through the painting b...

Is Mediation a Good Choice for Art- Related Disputes?

Art is probably as versatile as human nature. There is rarely an art object that is plain and straightforward. Most of the times there are numerous layers, influences, interpretations, and perceptions. Conflicts, where art objects are involved, are, likewise, multifaceted. It is not only purely legal issues which are at stake. Frequently, there are also moral, cultural, historical, diplomatic and spiritual considerations involved. Even art-related legal issues alone are generally fairly complex because of the lack of uniform legal norms. Often art-related disputes are cross-border. Besides, sometimes art-related disputes are a direct consequence of certain historical events (which might also still lack legal appraisal). To drop in a metaphor, trying to solve art-related disputes in a national court of a particular country is like trying to squeeze a three-dimensional object into a two-dimensional frame hoping that it would somehow fit. The bottom line: it does not; and if it doe...