Art Market Monitor

Global Coverage ~ Unique Analysis

  • AMMpro
  • AMM Fantasy Collecting Game
  • Podcast
  • Contact Us

Jake and Dinos Chapman Explain the Art Market

November 25, 2013 by Marion Maneker

Jake and Dinos Chapman, Oi, Peter, I K-k-kan See Your House from Here
The Financial Times sits down to lunch with Jake and Dinos Chapman to get their take on how the art market works:

“We’re not exactly in that part of the pool,” Dinos says drily. “We’re in the bit you put your feet into to get the germs off.”

He and Jake don’t do badly, though. Recently they were provided with a 17th-century crucifixion scene by a follower of Pieter Brueghel the Younger, which they altered by turning the spectators in the painting into ghoulish monsters. The painting was then placed in an installation in front of a sexually aroused mannequin in a Ku Klux Klan hood and called “Oi Pieter, I k-k-kan see your house from here”. […]

The original painting cost $310,000; after Dinos’s intervention it went for much more. “I don’t know,” Dinos says. The exact figure was $1.2m. Jake: “Worth every penny.”

Do they have feel any responsibility for who buys their art? “We can’t have any responsibility for that. We don’t make it for that purpose,” Dinos says.

The “Brueghel” painting was sourced for them by a private Moscow gallery that mainly caters for wealthy Russians. “It was an offer we couldn’t refuse,” Jake says. Financial? “Everything’s financial,” Dinos replies.  […]

Jake picks up: […] “The point is that the collectors, these are people who have made their money by hanging on to money. They’re not the kind of people who just say, ‘Of course I’ll pay 50 grand for that.’ No, these are people who know the intrinsic value of everything they see. So when they see that” – holding up the crumpled paper ball – “what they’ve done is recognise that this has some kind of symbolic acceleration to high value. They can see the trick.”

He speaks like a spectator, not a participant. “The best thing I can do is place us as what we are, kind of collaborators,” he says. In the Vichyist sense? “Absolutely. We’re implicated, of course we are. It’d be crazy to think that at the best level some things escape the misery of our prostitution, but it’s not really much that does.”

via Lunch with the FT: Jake and Dinos Chapman – FT.com.

More from Art Market Monitor

  • How Important Are Museums to New York?How Important Are Museums to New York?
  • In Praise of Charles SaatchiIn Praise of Charles Saatchi
  • Broad's ConsumptionBroad's Consumption
  • Sotheby's Geneva Jewels = $89mSotheby's Geneva Jewels = $89m
  • Lauren Gioia to Head Communications at Sotheby’sLauren Gioia to Head Communications at Sotheby’s
  • Bonhams Opens Its New HQ with Boris JohnsonBonhams Opens Its New HQ with Boris Johnson

Filed Under: Artists

About Marion Maneker

Want to get Art Market Monitor‘s posts sent to you in our email? Sign up below by clicking on the Subscribe button.

Top Posts

  • Keith Haring’s 1989 Retrospect Comes to Sotheby’s London Prints Sale
  • British Modernists Draw Deep Bidding in Christie's $42 M. London Sales
  • Four of Picasso's Women Valued at $28m Come to Christie's from Rose-Walters Collection
  • Norman Rockwell's Not Gay. But Is He a Great Artist?
  • How to Chant Like an Auctioneer
  • $10 M. Picasso Portrait Unseen for Decades to Sell at Bonhams
  • Tony Podesta's Secret Art Buying
  • Collection of Texas Heiress Anne Marion Expected to Fetch $150 M. at Sotheby’s
  • Vienna Secession Painting, Long Thought to Be Lost, Sets a Record at Auction
  • Phillips to Showcase Helen Frankenthaler at Southampton Outpost
  • About Us/ Contact
  • Podcast
  • AMMpro
  • Newsletter
  • FAQ

twitterfacebooksoundcloud
Privacy Policy
Terms & Conditions
California Privacy Rights
Do Not Sell My Personal Information
Advertise on Art Market Monitor