ABSTRACT
Our ancestors 40,000 years ago felt compelled to carve out of rock and ivory representations of nudes and effigies of the animals that they hunted, creating work that has influenced a generation of Modern painters and sculptors. The compulsion of early man to make art suggests that it was important to his survival; as important perhaps as food and warmth. Art of the Ice Age is not a commodity. Early Christian art is not a commodity; art made for the temple, the shrine, the mosque and the cathedral is not a commodity, although it can all be commoditised. Art that is a commodity is such because it exists within a world that packages needs and desires into goods. Art that is made today but has not sold on the global art market is not art because the system within which it exists does not recognise it as such. The art of the past has intrinsic qualities that may have been fabricated by a commodity market, but need not have been. It carries with it internal, aesthetic characteristics that define it as art irrespective of whether we place the same value on it today. But some art is completely free of an association with other merchandise. This material that has been exchanged within different systems may not be a commodity, but it is art. The value of the art commodity is expressed in numerals and the value of this other art is stated as a gift. Not a douceur, but a gift without expectation of reward. This art is commonly in the form of craft and will be introduced in the last chapter. In this chapter we will focus on the art commodity around which a distribution system has formed. The system in this instance is replete with bruited sound-bites uttered by participants with strong vested interests; a reflection of our imperfect selves.
