Christie’s tried to sell a Brancusi like a luxury perfume
And reminded us of exactly what is wrong with the art market.
By Carrie Scott
The art world is stuck between a rock and a hard place. Sales are down, and people seem to value the arts less and less as we launch ourselves further and further into this performative dystopia. Collectively, we need to work out how to get people to care about art again. And we need them to care in the way they care about their handbags and their celebrities and their TikTok stars. But if we try to advertise fine art by using the same language we use to sell luxury goods, then I am afraid we are missing the point entirely.
Which is why this Nicole Kidman times Brancusi advert for last night’s Christie’s sale has (maybe) flopped. I don’t think we should blame them for trying - it’s the only language they understand.
Let me back up half a second. The auction included a remarkable Brancusi that was part of S.I. Newhouse’s personal collection. As the co-owner of the Condé Nast media empire, Newhouse was a leading figure in American cultural life, and basically invented modern day glossy advertising. So I totally understand why we ended up with what feels like a perfume advertisement as our campaign for the auction. But it falls down so incredibly flat because the team here totally forgot that art isn’t a luxury good. It’s essential. The over financialisation of the art market turned art into an asset, which has meant, we’ve TOTALLY forgotten why art matters in the first place. And what we need to do is remind everyone of the real value of art.
This Brancusi sculpture is valuable because Brancusi paired sculpture back almost to the point of abstraction. Not all the way, but just to the very edge of reality. And the impact of this, reverberates across art history. Brancusi worked directly with the material, direct carving into his stone, as opposed to the significantly more common practice at the time of making a model to be cast or executed by others. And so often his work communicated the idea of something rather than the appearance. Take Bird In Space, where the notion of flight itself appears, rather than the appearance of a particular bird. Or look at The Kiss. It’s the simplified union of these two figures, of male and female coming together, that makes us see something essential, something truthful, something about the human condition and about the material, the block of stone itself.
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, 1976. © 2023 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris
Constantin Brancusi, The Kiss, 1916, limestone, 58.4 x 33.7 x 25.4 cm (Philadelphia Museum of Art)
Some will argue that the advert is a booming success because we’re all talking about it. And in this attention economy, that’s a result. It doesn’t matter if we hate it. We’re engaging.
And yet, I think this was a huge missed opportunity. Studio 11F - the multi-disciplinary creative studio that was commissioned by Christie’s or Newhouse’s estate to make this film could have done more. Director Stephen Tyler, who won an award for this documentary short exploring the world of night shift workers, should have and absolutely could have asked Nicole to sit with that sculpture. To look at it. To describe what she sees as a woman who has had to sculpt her face and her image for decades. I think we would have had an unparalleled result, one that shows the total profound human effect of art on our hearts and souls. We would have seen way art holds up a mirror to society. Instead, they missed the mark entirely and let her dance around this sculpture like it’s as passing a concern as Coty’s next fragrance.
Team. Come on! Let’s do better.
And yet, maybe it’s me that has this all wrong. The Brancusi sold last night and it fetched $107.6 million, a 50 percent increase from the Romanian sculptor’s previous auction high. So maybe the commercial worked. Maybe it’s responsible for attracting a new collector into that room. Maybe I’m the odd man out here.
In seriously great timing, Pace Gallery just announced that they now globally represent The Constantin Brancusi Estate. I wonder what they make of the ad? Will it bring in new buyers for Brancusi or continue to alienate people from the art world?