East Eats West

Supreme art at the MOMA in New York

Picture: A visitor in front of Katharina Fritsche sculptures at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

During my stay in New York I visited the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) four times as the art on display is heavenly. I have never in my whole life been to a museum with such an exquisite collection. Apparently many tourists agreed and the museum was flooded with visitors on the weekend. My last visit was on Wednesday after 5pm, half an hour before closing. The difference was profound as most tourists had left. I was able to sit in front of Monet's lily painting for fifteen minutes without anyone interrupting my view. Sublime! 

Visit MOMA's website: www.moma.org

About good taste or against marketing

Picture: A tea shop in Chengdu, China.

Recently I attended a speech by Hans-Peter Reichmuth of the Reichmuth wine dynasty in Zurich. He founded a specialty and comestibles company focusing on quality premium tea, honey, oil and the like. The topic of his short speech was about good taste in food. He made a strong proposition that taste has to do with cultivation and time. Only if a person invests time and honest interests in a product, be it wine or tea,can one start appreciating the differences. In Hans-Peter's eyes taste has to do with selecting between good and bad and this ability has to be nurtured over years. It is about learning to discern and not being influenced by packing or marketing. Good taste therefore juxtaposes marketing. Marketing is trying to seduce us away from good taste. Marketing is pretending to help us decide more quickly and easily. But in fact, it takes away from us an important decision. Good taste requires us to follow a product along the production process. It is about finding the roots. He compared it to finding the truth and authenticity. And not surprisingly, good taste in food is linked to craftmanship. Industrial mass-production is exactly the opposite of it. Therefore a well-developed taste helps us to decide between only an appearance and reality. And the only way of developing taste is to invest time, a lot of it.

When art meets luxury goods

Picture: An installation from 2004 by the late artist Jason Rhoades. Just recently one of his installation sold for almost one million dollars.

Anyone who thought that the financial and investment crisis of 2008 would have stopped people's appetite for speculation was proven wrong by the meteoric rise of prices in properties, wines and contemporary art. In fact, the art market did not slump a second in the crisis, quite in contrast. The growing number of wealthy and super-wealthy people have shifted their interests from stocks and bonds to paintings and sculptures. Auctions in recent years have been able to trumpet one record result after another. The downside is that art has been commercialized to new heights. It is not uncommon that sought-after artist have to do more than five shows a year in order to satisfy demand. With Jeff Koons, Damien Hirst and Takashi Murakami taking Andy Warhol's factory idea to new heights, the contemporary art market is resembling more and more the luxury goods market. No wonder that high-end luxury manufacturers like Louis Vuitton have collections designed by artists. I am sure it is only a matter of time before Steve Jobs is declared an artist and iPads are sold as contemporary art!