BBC Art Dealing Game Show Reveals“Crisis Of Commodification” In Galleries

(MENAFN- USA Art News) The BBC's new reality-style game show, The Big Deal, hosted by Steph McGovern, has drawn attention to what critics describe as a“crisis of commodification” in the art world. The six-part series, produced by Stellify Media, features seven pairs of amateur contestants aiming to become“successful art dealers.”

Inspired by the format of Bargain Hunt, The Big Deal tasks contestants with generating profits from contemporary art. Teams compete by selling works from recent art college graduates at a small London auction, decorating luxury executive homes, marketing prints at a specialist fair in Margate, and promoting pieces by two Berlin -based artists via an online auction. The competition includes an episode-by-episode knockout element, similar to The Great British Bake Off, with the winning pair receiving £50,000 worth of“brilliant British art.” McGovern, a financial journalist and the daughter of a sculptor, oversees the show alongside Cordelia de Freitas, director of the Aqua Art Fair in Miami.

While McGovern stated,“We all think we have great taste, buying and collecting art is something we can all have a go at,” critics argue that the show reduces art to a mere commodity. This perspective echoes concerns about other BBC programming, such as 2025's The Great Art Fraud, which focused on Inigo Philbrick. One half of the Berlin artist duo 44flavours observed in the fourth episode, as a contestant debated commission rates,“The focus should be more on the work, not selling it.”

This“cash-in-the-gallery mindset” is seen as reflecting broader trends in the art market, where tech-driven finance has increasingly treated fine art as a speculative investment. This environment contributes to anxieties among professional dealers operating physical galleries, especially as the art market anticipates new trading cycles, including the upcoming Frieze London and Art Basel Paris fairs in October. While auction houses are reportedly thriving, many gallerists at all market levels are finding it challenging to sell contemporary, particularly new, art.

In June, Marc Spiegler, former global director of the Art Basel fair group, addressed these concerns in a New York Times opinion piece titled“Art Galleries Art Not OK.” Spiegler, who spoke with several dealers before the Art Basel fair in Switzerland, noted,“Uncertainty abounded,” adding,“Many are questioning the fundamentals of their business. It's as if the art world they know has fallen off its axis.” Spiegler has proposed solutions such as curbing flipping and fostering local markets instead of costly international fairs. Price transparency and a focus on established, lower-risk sales are also suggested, along with the potential benefits of artificial intelligence in areas like shipping information or data analytics, topics to be explored at the Art Business Conference in London in October.

In August, art market commentator Josh Baer echoed these sentiments in his Baer Faxt online newsletter after a podcast with Spiegler and New York art adviser Amy Cappellazzo, stating,“More than ever, one thing is clear, this is an urgent issue with no easy fix.” Cappellazzo emphasized on Baer's podcast,“You have to question your assumptions all of the time to be excellent.” Yet, a persistent, unspoken assumption within the market is the continuous output of“excellent artists” from art colleges, particularly in the US and Europe, who are expected to drive future growth.

Meanwhile, some of the contemporary art market's“Biggest Things” are aging. Yayoi Kusama, whose works generated $162 million in auction sales in 2022, passed away in August. David Hockney, whose 1972 painting Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) sold for $90.3 million at Christie's in 2018, setting an auction record for a living artist at the time, died in June. Both artists were active during the 1960s counter-culture, a period of widespread questioning of assumptions. Paintings by Kusama and Hockney, especially from their early periods, are expected to maintain high prices in a market increasingly favoring“blue chip” art. However, the market currently faces a challenge in identifying living painters to fill the void left by these artists, particularly given its continued reliance on painting as a medium. Frieze magazine's October review of the“25 Best Works of the 21st Century” did not include a single painting, reflecting the difficulty dealers have in monetizing performance, installation, and video art.

Cappellazzo also noted that artists are extensively utilizing AI. This raises the question of whether AI-generated art could represent a future direction for contemporary galleries, given the increasing cultural focus on machine learning.

Source: The Art Newspaper

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