Description

Episode Summary

Art has long been considered a commodity but, thanks in large part to a technologically connected world, accessibility and availability have helped turn creative genius into “cultural capital.” Chad Elias combines an art history lecture with a business seminar to provide a comprehensive lesson on the ways art adds value beyond its beauty. Syd reconnects with his former teacher to discuss Andy Warhol, Banksy, and the business of art, in this episode of The Sydcast. 

Syd Finkelstein 

Syd Finkelstein is the Steven Roth Professor of Management at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. He holds a Master’s degree from the London School of Economics and a Ph.D. from Columbia University. Professor Finkelstein has published 25 books and 90 articles, including the bestsellers Why Smart Executives Fail and Superbosses: How Exceptional Leaders Master the Flow of Talent, whichLinkedIn Chairman Reid Hoffman calls the “leadership guide for the Networked Age.” He is also a Fellow of the Academy of Management, a consultant and speaker to leading companies around the world, and a top 25 on the Global Thinkers 50 list of top management gurus. Professor Finkelstein’s research and consulting work often relies on in-depth and personal interviews with hundreds of people, an experience that led him to create and host his own podcast, The Sydcast, to uncover and share the stories of all sorts of fascinating people in business, sports, entertainment, politics, academia, and everyday life. 

Chad Elias

Chad Elias is an Assistant Professor of Art History at Dartmouth College and Tate Modern Research Fellow. His first book, Posthumous Images: Contemporary Art and Memory Politics in Post-Civil War Lebanon, was published by Duke University Press in 2018. Reviews of Posthumous Images have appeared in Arab Studies Quarterly, Art Journal, Art Papers, the Journal of Arabic Literature, Object, and Third Text.  

In collaboration with the Hood Museum, Chad organized a multidisciplinary symposium, “Futures Uncertain: A Symposium on Contemporary Art in the Anthropocene,” which explored questions relating to resource extraction, carbon imaginaries, species extinction and evocations of the deep past and worlds-to-come in contemporary art.  

Another research project analyzed how contemporary artists critically engage with artificial intelligence (AI), machine vision, virtual reality, and 3D printing as rapidly evolving forms that are marked by indeterminacies. The project argues that these technologies serve to unsettle identity formations that span ontological boundaries (i.e. between human and non-human actants) and established hierarchies that are encoded across racial and gender lines. 

Insights from this episode:

• Details on what contemporary art is, how it got started, and the impact that term has had on art history. 
• Benefits to an artist of outsourcing their work and why art has become a business-class asset.
• Difficulties associated with pricing art, how new technology is impacting value, and where there is room for improvement.
• How the process of buying art is changing and is making art more accessible to greater audiences.
• Parallels between the art and business world and the success that happens when they intersect. 
• How artists like Andy Warhol and Banksy capitalize on their art and how that has impacted the image of the value of art. 

Quotes from the show:

• “During the postmodern period, and in the aftermath, art became increasingly detached from the notion of manual or technical skill.” — Chad Elias [23:35]
• “It’s no accident that contemporary artists also start to think of their work as something that is no longer just tied to materialized forms of production but actually to the production of ideas.” — Chad Elias [25:31]
• On finding the parallels between art and business: “It involves dispensing with the mythology of the romantic artist who is somehow detached from commercial and economic interest and just makes work for the love of art.” — Chad Elias [26:31]
• “It’s difficult to determine the pricing systems that operate in contemporary art, partly because of the opacity of the system.” — Chad Elias [29:23]
• “You can draw a connection between the critical or symbolic value that is attached to a particular artist’s practice over time and the economic value that is assigned to their work.” — Chad Elias [31:05]
• “The art world, and the art market in particular, is a quite curious economy.” — Chad Elias [34:06]
• “[Andy Warhol] was considered, I don’t know if it’s right to say he was a great artist, but he certainly was a very successful, but also highly influential artist.” — Syd Finkelstein [40:19]
• On Banksy: “The anonymity of the artist is part of the mystique and draw.” — Chad Elias [43:45]
• On making money: “When someone does or has an image of doing really good things for society, but makes  a lot of money doing it, there’s a negative reaction to that person.” — Syd Finkelstein [48:10]
• “Even the idea of authenticity, of sincerity, in contemporary art is held with a large degree of suspicion.” — Chad Elias [59:27]

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Syd Finkelstein

Website: http://thesydcast.com

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Twitter: @sydfinkelstein

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Chad Elias

Email: Chad.Elias@Dartmouth.edu

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This episode was produced and managed by Podcast Laundry (www.podcastlaundry.com)