Most expensive artwork, ever. 1 Billion dollars as 1 Billion dollars
Well, Damien Hirst just got trumped as the most valuable living artist. Michael Marcovici has created an artwork worth a billion dollars, out of a billion dollars.
ONE BILLION DOLLAR by Michael Marcovici
In the words of the artist “One Billion Dollars is stacked on 12 standard pallets, altogether 10 Million 100 USD Notes. One Billion Dollar is not so much about what you see but what you could do or not do with the money. Besides this it is the most expensive piece of art ever made.”
We’ve written to Michael to confirm details, but I’m presuming this is a conceptual art project* which costs a Billion dollars to buy, the payment for which is returned to you as the artwork. Question is, have you purchased the work if you don’t pass over the cash to the artist but rather pile it on 12 pallets yourself? If you have a Billion dollars sitting around on 12 pallets in your garage, are you plagiarising his work?
Those who argue Marcovici isn’t the most valuable living artist until this work has sold are overlooking the inherant value of the artwork, unquestionable in this particular piece.
Whether its resale value will benefit from infamy and artistic worth against the tide of a flailing US Dollar is another issue altogether.
*We’ve had word from the artist there is a strategy currently being employed to physically realise this project… awesome! However Michael points out that “actually no bank has this amount of cash, there are several cash handling facilities where the old money gets exchanged to new notes and where money from large retailers is handled, places like those have sufficient amounts of cash for such an action, the problem is just that it is expensive to do it because timing is very tight already in these places (and security too)… for now its a concept and maybe it will stay one… thats fine, it was mainly to draw attention to the part that value and pricing plays in art and everything else… ”
Marcovici’s website http://sites.google.com/site/artmarcovici
and his Artabase profile
via Infosthetics.com
So if the raw materials cost 1 billion dollars and the artwork’s value is 1 billion dollars, then the hand (and mind) of the artist has contributed nothing in financial value to the realisation of the work.
Claims that “Damien Hirst just got trumped as the most valuable living artist” must then be incorrect and Marcovici (for this work at least) could be arguably the “least valuable living artist”.
Comment by Amanda — January 15, 2009 @ 2:01 am
ERROR CORRECTION.
In your piece about artists Michael Marcovici, the artist says “…this it is the most expensive piece of art ever made.”
This is not true. Although I am sure that acquiring the bills and the pallets cost him time and money, I am certain this piece did not cost him one billion dollars.
Unless the artists paid one billion to make this art, please amend your review to recognize that the artist statement is false. It may seem a trivial difference to you, but as an art blog, I feel its an important one.
Scott Kennedy, 2009/01/14 at 10:41 PM
Comment by admin — January 15, 2009 @ 2:06 am
i’ll give you $50 for it
Comment by B'jae — January 15, 2009 @ 11:06 am
How can it be the most expensive work of art ever created if it’s only a concept yet? It would be somewhat interesting as a finished piece.
Comment by sarahelizabeth — January 15, 2009 @ 5:45 pm
I think it depends on whether you believe in Conceptual art or not. I’m a big fan.
You might argue then that if I say I’ve come up with a work that is a trillion dollars as a trillion dollars that I’m instantly worth more, however it would be very obvious that I wasn’t the first artist to come up with the idea, so I couldn’t really claim the work as mine (from a conceptual art point of view).
So Michael’s work will always trump because the concept itself was the idea of the most valuable work, by making a work whose value was unquestionable in a monetary sense.
I think this piece is fantastic, very topical given all the hoo-hah about art market value and other associated bollocks.
A similar work along this vein was the KLF’s performance art piece where they burned a 100 million pounds - all their profits from their hit song. The KLF - the band, was a conceptual art performance piece itself (read the KLF manual if you don’t know this history). Whether or not they really burned the money doesn’t matter, the point is they succeeded in making a stupid amount of money out of a stupid industry just by playing by the industry’s stupid rules.
Michael’s work plays the same tactics in a different industry.
Serving the cash up on an industrial palett further emphasizes the manufactured nature of many profiteerist commercial artworks.
- Rebecca Cannon
Comment by admin — January 16, 2009 @ 3:11 am