Translator: TED Translators admin Reviewer: Leonardo Silva
The art world is a fantastical and fascinating realm.
And like any industry, there is a spectrum of things happening.
So for example, in the art world,
on the one hand, you have the pure imagination of artistic objects,
and on the other,
an exclusive business and an elite financial playground.
The economic adventure of art is truly thrilling.
Recent auction records disclose astronomical amounts of money
being paid for art.
Why do collectors of multimillion-dollar artworks
say yes to such hefty price tags?
So speaking of fantasy and investment,
I offer this painting, the False Mirror, by the surrealist artist René Magritte,
as a kind of fitting entry into the conversation.
Look into this massive eye.
The sky's the limit.
Magritte once stated in a letter to a colleague,
"The only painting worth looking at has the same raison d'etre
as the raison d'etre of the world:
mystery."
The French term "raison d'etre" means "reason for being."
And what is art without a sexy French word here and there.
Anyway, I think Magritte's idea, his statement,
correctly echoes an open-ended idea about aesthetics.
First, the raison d'etre, or reason for being,
embodies the sentiment behind the actual objects themselves.
Artworks emulate the myth, beauty, and complexity of our species.
Second, the so-called fog of mystery surrounding art
is precisely its allure.
So in the spirit of Magritte's claim,
I would like to consider two paintings worth looking at.
On the left, we have a work by the mighty Italian Renaissance master
Leonardo da Vinci.
Or, so we are told by a group of leading experts
involved in the authenticity of this piece.
Salvator Mundi, or Savior of the World,
painted circa 1500.
It's an image of Jesus,
one of the most significant figures in history.
On the right, we have a painting
by the equally mighty Jean-Michel Basquiat,
Untitled, 1982.
This is an image of a colorful, frenetic skull
in an abstract environment.
Both paintings are portraiture.
Last year, these two paintings shattered existing auction records
by selling for unimaginable sums,
attracting a flurry of attention and press,
before and after their appearances at the art market.
Let's look at these paintings again.
Untitled, 1982.
Basquiat painted this when he was 21 years old.
He sold it that year for $4,000.
He died tragically in fact only a few years later
at the youthful age of 27.
He was at the height of his career.
In May 2017,
this painting auctioned for 110 million dollars
at a Sotheby's sale in New York,
establishing a new record for the artist.
The collector of this piece had to aggressively beat out other bidders.
What drove him to say, "Yes, I will break the bank for this"?
Salvator Mundi, this painting possesses a storied past.
However, the provenance of this work is unconfirmed.
This painting may or may not have been painted by Leonardo himself.
It's not proven.
In November 2017,
Salvator Mundi auctioned for the price of 450 million dollars
at a Christie's sale in New York.
This staggering sum obliterated all previous auction records,
making it the single most expensive work of art
ever sold privately at auction.
This painting measures 25 by 19 inches.
Every square inch is worth millions.
The collector -
what motivated the collector of this painting
to say yes to something so controversial?
I would like to mention
that Salvator Mundi was included in a contemporary sale.
This old master painting was, in fact,
billed alongside works by artists from the 20th century,
including Andy Warhol.
Andy Warhol, the king of pop,
gave us his famed Brillo box artworks.
Total art celebrity,
still widely admired for his enduring mark on global contemporary art and culture.
Recall that massive eye that is seeing.
Warhol did see the yes factor in art.
He understood the value of art is not about the quality, per se.
Rather, the value of art is precisely the irrationality of art,
and irrational narratives are what propel us, actually,
to behold an object as a singular treasure in the universe.
So this Brillo box was, in fact, blasphemous.
Art as blatant commercial endeavor.
In fact, certain theorists said, "Man, this is the end of art."
So perhaps, the end of art is a TED Talk for another day.
But art can never end, impossible.
So I would argue that, in fact, the ...
kind of astonishing values that we're seeing
do, in fact, represent
a Magritte-inspired false mirror.
And a game of smoke and mirrors.
And a symbolic mirror that reflects
the kind of extreme fetishizations of the capitalist world
that we live in now.
So if we connect Magritte's ideas with Warhol's,
we might understand the value of art
as inscrutable financial endeavor.
And if we connect or compare or consider
the Leonardo painting with the Basquiat painting,
we might see the total haphazard eccentricity
of value in art.
And during the nearly 500 years
between the creation of these two paintings,
everything has changed.
Society, culture, politics, economics, artistic technologies,
but the fundamentals of art remain.
Art is mystery, art is metaphor, art is magic and legacy.
So, yes, a select few get to gamble
with that so-called secrecy
at the highest level.
Yes, we do want to partake
in the phantasmagorical, transformational, grand utopia of art.
And yes, we welcome artistic reasons for being
that defy the ordinary
and present the urgent themes and extraordinary mysteries
of our universal human experience.
Thank you.
(Applause)