Christie's Murphy Explains Why Art Is More Important in the Age of the Internet

Christie’s new CEO, Steven Murphy, starts to amp up the PR with an interview with Peter Aspden in the Financial Times where he compares his experience in the music and publishing industries which were both ravaged by the digital revolution:

The art world, he says, is experiencing similar convulsions. “It will not escape the same kind of tumult. It is exploding in several different directions all at once,” he says. Globalisation and the widespread use of the internet keep moving the goalposts, with barely a pause to play the game. […] “I went to see [Tom Stoppard’s play] Arcadia last Friday, for the third time, in New York. And [one of the characters] Valentine says, almost to the audience, ‘This is one of the greatest times to be alive, when everything you thought you knew is wrong.’

“And with this shift of power from west to east, the financial markets being upside down, the internet upending industries, this sense of anxiety which is prevalent – all of that is a kind of soup, that has made people run towards objects, and towards art.”

‘The Art World Is Exploding’ (Financial Times)