Corporate Art, pt. 2

Takasi Murakami for Louis Vuitton

This is kind of related to what I was writing about earlier with corporate art. In the Cartoon Issue of the New Yorker, there's a Talk of the Town (those are my favorite - so short and interesting) about the artist Paul McCarthy's installation in New York City. (find the whole article here)

"Business art is the step that comes after Art,” saith Warhol the Prophet, and, thirty years later, we know whereof he spake. The mergers of art and commerce accumulate on every side, as brand-name artists such as Damien Hirst, Richard Prince, and Takashi Murakami endorse and/or provide luxury items for Louis Vuitton, Fendi, and other purveyors. One such venture kicked off last week in the West Village, where Paul McCarthy, a California-based artist known for his reliably disturbing installations, has converted the Maccarone gallery into a chocolate factory. Peter Paul Chocolates LLC, as he calls the enterprise, will operate through the end of 2007, turning out Santa Claus figurines for the Christmas trade."

Art and commerce seem like they would be strange bedfellows. In my intense ridiculously long paper I had to write before break, most of it centered on how the Church has become more commercially focused (megachurches, emphasis on numbers and turn-out, etc.). It seems like capitalism has seeped into the parts of life that are not supposed to be utilitarian and is working at forcing them into a business model. I hate it. It seems perverted.