The Mona Lisa Curse

In his broadcast The Mona Lisa Curse, art critic Robert Hughes presents his view on the current commercial art market and how the price of a work of art has become more significant than its meaning. Hughes argues that the price of a work has more so to do with promotion and publicity rather than the quality of the works themselves. In The Mona Lisa Curse, he traces back to the rise of the commercial art market beginning with the arrival of the Mona Lisa in New York in 1963. According to Hughes the Mona Lisa was treated like a celebrity, and as a result collectors began purchasing works primarily for financial gain. He argues that art is the largest unregulated market in the world apart from the drug market. He claims that art collectors are largely to blame because after they purchase a particular artist's work, they continue to bid up that artists' work in order to increase the value of their own holdings. The surge in prices of works in the contemporary market has led to several undesirable outcomes. First off art tends to be viewed as a commodity, its something owned as much as it's appreciated. Hughes uses artist Damien Hirst and his works as a prime example of how commercial art has transformed into a commodity rather than something intrinsically valued. Second ordinary, average people are beginning to have less access to popular works because museums and galleries are being overtaken by the wealthy who can afford them.