RachelD4 commenting on Iwban
Iwban chooses to start his blogpost on the Art and Design Industry off with diving right into an example of an Art collector, Petter Stordalen, who has recently been in the news. In avoiding a long introduction on what he will be talking about, he pulls the reader right in with information they can relate to, as they might have seen it on the news already. Only after introducing Petter Stordalen and that he was the art collector who spent more than 400 million krone on art for his hotels, he explains how this might relate to problems in this kind of industry.
Art, almost like no other product, depends heavily on the reputation of artists and even more on the reputations of the galleries which are showing the art pieces. A renounced gallery showing an unknown artists work will increase it’s perceived value immensely. Similarly Iwban expresses his concern in his blog post that the art pieces bought by an art collector like Petter Stordalen, who publicly said he does not have any special knowledge of Art, might decrease the value of the Art he buys.
He explains that it makes the Art industry seem more commercialized than it should be. This relates to what we were discussing in one of our seminars, where we explored how much commercialization is good for certain markets in the art industry and how too much might bear bigger disadvantages. The example he chose is appropriate because it has a level of discussion. He proposes in the beginning that it might harm the art pieces in Petter Stordalens collection but goes on to challenging his approach with the mention of the experienced assistant Petter Stordalen employs to select the best art pieces.
In spite of the case being connected to a part of the syllabus, it would have been good to show the different markets there are in the art industry and which ones could benefit from commercialization instead of only focusing on the harm commerce can do to the value of art. Important in this case might have also been an example of the art pieces Petter Stordalen collects, to show the reader from which kind of segment or market of the industry his art pieces are mainly from. A comparison with a renounced art collector who might have increased the worth of the art he is collecting would have made it easier to see both sides of the coin in this case.
His paragraphs were well wrote and made sense, however splitting them in shorter segments will be advantageous to the reading experience, as would be adding an image to make it more vivid. Overall it was a very interesting approach on the art and design industry and got the reader thinking about how Art has so many more influences on value other than just the attached monetary value.
Making sense of art and design industries 