MEDIATOR BETWEEN CULTURE AND COMMERCE
Today’s luxury-goods companies do more than just produce high-price merchandise. They provide visual artists with support that is as all embracing as that given to artists during the Renaissance, be it by making expensive purchases or even establishing their own museums.
The Medici of today are not named Cosimo or Lorenzo, but Prada, Trussardi, Gucci. Luxury-goods companies not only seek artistic inspiration, but have become a major factor in the reception of contemporary art. Like the Medici back then, for these mercantile financiers it is not only a matter of selfless art patronage but of a complex strategy of cultural involvement and its commercialization.
The alliance is logical: the mechanisms of the contemporary art market for marketing works of art as the most prestigious of all lifestyle and investment products are more than related to those of the fashion industry.
Consequently, the presentation of contemporary art in the cultural and fashion metropolis of Milan is first and foremost made possible by corporate initiatives, whether they be the artistic interventions by the Fondazione Nicola Trussardi, the exhibition space of the Pirelli HangarBicocca Foundation, or the far-reaching schemes by Prada.
Next year, the Prada group will add a further facet to its extensive influence in the cultural sphere with the opening of a 17,500 square-meter museum in Milan designed by the star architect Rem Koolhaas (69).
Even now, Prada has organized exhibitions of contemporary art, put on a show in a museum in Venice, made film festivals possible, brought out publications in the area of culture, and initiated conferences, events, and performances worldwide. The current market valuation of Italian art from the 1960s (not only by Piero Manzoni and Lucio Fontana, but by Domenico Gnoli, Alberto Burr, and others) also has something to do with Prada's pioneering and propagating work and with that of the long-standing curator Germano Celant (73), who on the one hand has prepared exhibitions of Italian art for Larry Gagosian's leading art dealing and gallery system, yet on the other has also built up one of most extensive collections of Italian postwar avant-garde art for Prada over the last decade. The prizes awarded to these artists have multiplied over the past twenty-four months.
In this respect, Prada has uplifted the cultural scene in Italy and helped it to gain the international recognition it deserves, has enabled exhibitions and the publication of catalogues, and at the same time has developed a corresponding collection. Yet to the outside, at Prada the commercial and the cultural spheres are deliberately kept separate.
Their Own Auction House? No Problem!
The competition clearly goes about it more directly: Louis Vuitton not only has its display windows designed by artists such as Ólafur Elíasson (47); the current "it bag" (the handbag that pulls in the most sales) is designed by a hip protagonist in the art world such as Takashi Murakami (52), Richard Prince (64), or Yayoi Kusama (85).
Bernard Arnault (65), the major shareholder of Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy, which also manages brands like Dior, Fendi, Givenchy, or De Beers, is currently having a spectacular museum, designed by Frank Gehry (85), built in Paris that will open late this year. In doing so, the second-richest man in France, who has already contemplated moving to Belgium for tax reasons, is demonstrating his national bond as well as the continuation of his strategy of assimilating the world of fashion and culture.
It may seem extravagant to have buildings erected for art. But for an industry that is used to constructing a temporary palace in the desert of Dubai for a single fashion show--which Chanel did in May--it is one investment among many.
No one plays the overall exploitation chain of art--from nonprofit involvement all the way to high-price auctioneering--better and more lucratively than the Frenchman François Pinault (77): in the dual role of entrepreneur and art collector, he owns luxury and lifestyle brands such as Gucci, YSL, or Puma; operates two art museums in Venice; and owns the auction house Christie's--and at the same time he possesses one of the largest art collections. In 2006, the magazine "Art Review" elected him the most powerful figure in the art world.
Those, for example, who follow the public exhibitions in his art spaces, which almost exclusively present works from the Pinault collection, will note that one or the other work presented there and designated as the newest art is later sold at Christie's for record prices. Thus artists such as Urs Fischer (41), Rudolf Stingel (57), or Piotr Uklanski (45) are now assessed much differently
Pinault is also one of the leading collectors of Jeff Koons (59)--and helpful when it comes to realizing Koons's presentations in Versailles or the retrospective at the Centre Pompidou in late November. Fashion entrepreneurs are "tastemakers"--in the meantime not only for next season's clothing, but also for the art of our time.