Negative real interest rates drove capital into collectibles and artworks
Evidence
Money consequently became useless as a means of storing value for any length of time (the real rate of interest, measured as the money rate of interest minus the rate of inflation, was negative for several years during the 1970s, so dispossessing savers of the value they were seeking to store). … Alternative means had to be found to store value effectively. And so began the vast inflation in certain kinds of asset prices - collectibles, art objects, antiques, houses, and the like. Buying a Degas or Van Gogh in 1973 would surely outstrip almost any other kind of investment in terms of capital gain. Indeed it can be argued that the growth of the art market (with its concern for authorial signature) and the strong commercialization of cultural production since around 1970 have had a lot to do with the search to find alternative means to store value under conditions where the usual money forms were deficient. — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, 1879
Categorization
- XREF: Explains the art market boom as a monetary phenomenon; connects to the running time-space compression thread of this book and to broader debates on finance-driven culture. — connects to: Fine art loses aesthetic value when removed from its creative location into wealth; Capital reabsorbed modernism’s cult of the new as commodity novelty — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry: Selected Essays…, 62; Capitalist commodification displaces the aesthetic value of art — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism: A Critique of…, 69 (+4 more)
Broader Connections
- Capitalist commodification displaces the aesthetic value of art
#expands(0.78) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 69 - Fine art loses aesthetic value when removed from its creative location into wealth
#expands(0.75) - Financialization reshapes cultural industries through macroeconomic shifts.
#expands(0.75) — Andrew deWaard, Derivative Media, 58 - Capital reabsorbed modernism’s cult of the new as commodity novelty
#expands(0.72) — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 62 - The development of credit cards reflects the diminishing materiality of money.
#expands(0.70) — Neil MacGregor, A History of the World in 100 Objects, 1497