#diegovelazquez — Public Fediverse posts on home.social

(Roughly) Daily @[email protected] · 2026-08-06 · 08:00 UTC

“A room hung with pictures is a room hung with thoughts”*…

Nearly $1 trillion of art is expected to change hands in the coming decade, as boomers’ art collections get passed down. There won’t be enough buyers or museums to absorb it all. Felix Salmon on what inter-generational transfer may mean for the art world…

… The baby boomers spent money at an astonishing rate. In the single year of 2005, US boomers spent $7 trillion in 2026 dollars, per McKinsey. Twenty years earlier, in 1985, their predecessors in the Silent Generation had spent just $3 trillion in today’s dollars. Spending on art accelerated as the rich got richer, moved into ever-larger houses and became eager to splash out on discretionary purchases.
That unprecedented demand for art created an unprecedented supply of it too. “The art world became professionalized during the lifetime of the boomers,” notes Michael Darling, a co-founder of Museum Exchange, a company that tries to find museums willing to accept donors’ art. The number of artists making a living from their work reached previously unthinkable levels, with a concomitant increase in the number of galleries. There were about 150 art galleries in New York in 1946, per a 2005 Rand report. That doubled by 1961 and then doubled again by the early 2000s. In Los Angeles, the number of galleries went from almost zero in 1957 to more than 400 in 2005.
When patrons were limited to a few royal courts and religious institutions, the number of people who could make a living by producing art was relatively low. The boomers, blessed with vastly greater numbers, turned their money into battalions of collectable artists. In 1988 the Artnet Price Database, which tracks artists sold at auction, included 8,300 artists, including substantially all the Old Masters. By 2012 there were 90,275.
When you inherit art that was expensive when acquired, it’s difficult to think of it as “stuff” that could be thrown away or given to a thrift store. At the same time, storing and figuring out what to do with it can be enormously challenging. One way of making sure someone appreciates the art is to sell it. But finding buyers can be extraordinarily difficult. Most artists get forgotten over time. Even living artists have a hard time selling their work. A dead artist… needs a dealer who’s committed to resuscitating interest in them — and those dealers are few and far between, since it’s nearly always easier to sell the work of a living artist than a dead one.
Just looking at items that can be sold for cash on the secondary market, which is a tiny minority of all the art out there, roughly $1 trillion of art is expected to change hands just in the next 10 years, per Deloitte. No one is ready. The great wealth transfer includes a vast quantity of paintings and sculptures. A small proportion of it will have some sentimental value and be kept for that reason, but most of it is going to get moved out one way or another — sold, donated or even trashed…
[Salmon explores the options: continued stewardship by the heirs, sale (through auction houses or galleries), or donation (to museums)– all of which are, as he explains, fraught. But perhaps the biggest problem is the evolution of taste…]
… An even bigger barrier for inheritors looking to pass on a collection is the way tastes change over time. Boomers grew up looking at artists like Carl Andre or Balthus, congratulating themselves on how daringly receptive they were to the shattering of historical norms; as those norms get rebuilt, younger art lovers are much more likely to find reasons to avoid showing them entirely. Instead, their collections feature more women artists and tend to be more diverse in many other ways too.
The art world doesn’t fixate on the ultra-new in the way Hollywood or pop music does, where most consumption is of products produced and released in the past year or less. All the same, galleries overwhelmingly show new work by living artists, so that’s what most art collectors end up buying. That means heirs often end up inheriting work that used to be new and exciting but today is often little more than a faint memory.
The rise and fall of artists and artistic reputations is the subject of the emerging discipline of cultural evolution. Just as Darwinian evolution selects for species that do the best at surviving, artistic evolution selects for works that continue to attract our attention. Oleg Sobchuk, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany, explains that art disappears from our collective memory first quickly and then slowly, in a process known as bi-exponential decay. “Sometimes we think about art as speaking to something that makes us human, that it’s general and timeless,” he says. “But in most cases, art is about something that is happening at that period of time.” The further we get away from the moment an artwork is made, the less of our attention it can generally command.
In paleontology there’s the concept of the “turnover pulse,” where the rate of extinction rises sharply; it’s not dissimilar to the theory of the paradigm shift in the history of science. In art, it’s been more than a century since the modernist revolution that started with impressionism and continued through Picasso and Duchamp. Now, for the first time, the dominant collectors and curators — not to mention artists — will be people who grew up in the age of the internet.
“Every new media, when it appears, creates some kind of rupture,” Sobchuk says. “Usually it functions as a revolution. The culture was in the hands of a small number of powerful individuals, and then from time to time, you have a technological revolution.” That doesn’t mean digital art will displace painting and sculpture. But it probably means there’s less appetite and reverence for modernism. Which doesn’t bode well for those inheriting a lot of it…
[Salmon explains why, though this transfer is essentially inevitable, it will unfold more slowly than we might think (TLDR: “Because there will still be many boomer buyers for every collector planning ahead and unwinding a collection, there won’t be nearly as much of a supply-and-demand mismatch over the next decade as the broader generational shift might imply…”) He concludes…]
… The great art transfer is a much bigger deal than “what are we going to do with all this stuff.” The art we keep will stay in the canon; the art we discard will be lost to history. All the same, the stuff question is becoming urgent, and its answer is sad, if simple: A tiny proportion of the art we inherit will be treasured and valued, and a little bit more will find a good home elsewhere, perhaps slowly accumulating historical value even if it continues to lose cultural cachet. But most of it will probably acquire signs of physical deterioration and neglect — bumps and scratches and sunbleaching… All artists are mortal, after all, and only a minuscule fraction of them achieves immortality through their work. The rest are bound to fade away, sooner or later.

Ars longa? “Boomers Are Leaving Behind More Art Than Anyone Wants,” (or here), from @felixsalmon.com in @bloomberg.com.

Also worth following: the series in e-flux on the relationship between contemporary art, real estate, housing, gentrification, and the material conditions of artists’ lives. Revisiting earlier pieces, it begins with “Art, Creativity, Urbanism, Part I,” from Martha Rossler.

* Sir Joshua Reynolds

###

As we contemplate the canon, we might send birthday greetings to two artists whose places in the firmament seem, at least so far, secure:

Diego Velázquez was baptized on this date in 1599. A Baroque master of the Spanish Golden Age and leading artist in the court of King Philip IV of Spain and Portugal, he is generally considered one of the greatest artists in the history of Western art.

Self-portrait, c. 1640 (source)

Andrew Warhola was born on this date in 1928 in Pittsburgh, PA. Better known as Andy Warhol, he was a leading figure in the Pop art movement; his work (painting, filmmaking, photography, publishing, and performance art) challenged traditional boundaries between high and low culture and provoked us to think more clearly about the relationship of reference and referent. Widely considered the most important artist of the second half of the 20th century, he was a role model for a generation of post-modernist artists.

Self-portrait, 1986 (source)

#AndyWarhol #art #artGalleries #artMarket #auctionHouses #canon #culture #DiegoVelázquez #estate #history #inheritance #museums #paradigmShift #Velázquez #Warhol

#andywarhol #art #artgalleries #artmarket #auctionhouses #canon

(Roughly) Daily @[email protected] · 2026-08-06 · 08:00 UTC

“A room hung with pictures is a room hung with thoughts”*…

Nearly $1 trillion of art is expected to change hands in the coming decade, as boomers’ art collections get passed down. There won’t be enough buyers or museums to absorb it all. Felix Salmon on what inter-generational transfer may mean for the art world…

… The baby boomers spent money at an astonishing rate. In the single year of 2005, US boomers spent $7 trillion in 2026 dollars, per McKinsey. Twenty years earlier, in 1985, their predecessors in the Silent Generation had spent just $3 trillion in today’s dollars. Spending on art accelerated as the rich got richer, moved into ever-larger houses and became eager to splash out on discretionary purchases.
That unprecedented demand for art created an unprecedented supply of it too. “The art world became professionalized during the lifetime of the boomers,” notes Michael Darling, a co-founder of Museum Exchange, a company that tries to find museums willing to accept donors’ art. The number of artists making a living from their work reached previously unthinkable levels, with a concomitant increase in the number of galleries. There were about 150 art galleries in New York in 1946, per a 2005 Rand report. That doubled by 1961 and then doubled again by the early 2000s. In Los Angeles, the number of galleries went from almost zero in 1957 to more than 400 in 2005.
When patrons were limited to a few royal courts and religious institutions, the number of people who could make a living by producing art was relatively low. The boomers, blessed with vastly greater numbers, turned their money into battalions of collectable artists. In 1988 the Artnet Price Database, which tracks artists sold at auction, included 8,300 artists, including substantially all the Old Masters. By 2012 there were 90,275.
When you inherit art that was expensive when acquired, it’s difficult to think of it as “stuff” that could be thrown away or given to a thrift store. At the same time, storing and figuring out what to do with it can be enormously challenging. One way of making sure someone appreciates the art is to sell it. But finding buyers can be extraordinarily difficult. Most artists get forgotten over time. Even living artists have a hard time selling their work. A dead artist… needs a dealer who’s committed to resuscitating interest in them — and those dealers are few and far between, since it’s nearly always easier to sell the work of a living artist than a dead one.
Just looking at items that can be sold for cash on the secondary market, which is a tiny minority of all the art out there, roughly $1 trillion of art is expected to change hands just in the next 10 years, per Deloitte. No one is ready. The great wealth transfer includes a vast quantity of paintings and sculptures. A small proportion of it will have some sentimental value and be kept for that reason, but most of it is going to get moved out one way or another — sold, donated or even trashed…
[Salmon explores the options: continued stewardship by the heirs, sale (through auction houses or galleries), or donation (to museums)– all of which are, as he explains, fraught. But perhaps the biggest problem is the evolution of taste…]
… An even bigger barrier for inheritors looking to pass on a collection is the way tastes change over time. Boomers grew up looking at artists like Carl Andre or Balthus, congratulating themselves on how daringly receptive they were to the shattering of historical norms; as those norms get rebuilt, younger art lovers are much more likely to find reasons to avoid showing them entirely. Instead, their collections feature more women artists and tend to be more diverse in many other ways too.
The art world doesn’t fixate on the ultra-new in the way Hollywood or pop music does, where most consumption is of products produced and released in the past year or less. All the same, galleries overwhelmingly show new work by living artists, so that’s what most art collectors end up buying. That means heirs often end up inheriting work that used to be new and exciting but today is often little more than a faint memory.
The rise and fall of artists and artistic reputations is the subject of the emerging discipline of cultural evolution. Just as Darwinian evolution selects for species that do the best at surviving, artistic evolution selects for works that continue to attract our attention. Oleg Sobchuk, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany, explains that art disappears from our collective memory first quickly and then slowly, in a process known as bi-exponential decay. “Sometimes we think about art as speaking to something that makes us human, that it’s general and timeless,” he says. “But in most cases, art is about something that is happening at that period of time.” The further we get away from the moment an artwork is made, the less of our attention it can generally command.
In paleontology there’s the concept of the “turnover pulse,” where the rate of extinction rises sharply; it’s not dissimilar to the theory of the paradigm shift in the history of science. In art, it’s been more than a century since the modernist revolution that started with impressionism and continued through Picasso and Duchamp. Now, for the first time, the dominant collectors and curators — not to mention artists — will be people who grew up in the age of the internet.
“Every new media, when it appears, creates some kind of rupture,” Sobchuk says. “Usually it functions as a revolution. The culture was in the hands of a small number of powerful individuals, and then from time to time, you have a technological revolution.” That doesn’t mean digital art will displace painting and sculpture. But it probably means there’s less appetite and reverence for modernism. Which doesn’t bode well for those inheriting a lot of it…
[Salmon explains why, though this transfer is essentially inevitable, it will unfold more slowly than we might think (TLDR: “Because there will still be many boomer buyers for every collector planning ahead and unwinding a collection, there won’t be nearly as much of a supply-and-demand mismatch over the next decade as the broader generational shift might imply…”) He concludes…]
… The great art transfer is a much bigger deal than “what are we going to do with all this stuff.” The art we keep will stay in the canon; the art we discard will be lost to history. All the same, the stuff question is becoming urgent, and its answer is sad, if simple: A tiny proportion of the art we inherit will be treasured and valued, and a little bit more will find a good home elsewhere, perhaps slowly accumulating historical value even if it continues to lose cultural cachet. But most of it will probably acquire signs of physical deterioration and neglect — bumps and scratches and sunbleaching… All artists are mortal, after all, and only a minuscule fraction of them achieves immortality through their work. The rest are bound to fade away, sooner or later.

Ars longa? “Boomers Are Leaving Behind More Art Than Anyone Wants,” (or here), from @felixsalmon.com in @bloomberg.com.

Also worth following: the series in e-flux on the relationship between contemporary art, real estate, housing, gentrification, and the material conditions of artists’ lives. Revisiting earlier pieces, it begins with “Art, Creativity, Urbanism, Part I,” from Martha Rossler.

* Sir Joshua Reynolds

###

As we contemplate the canon, we might send birthday greetings to two artists whose places in the firmament seem, at least so far, secure:

Diego Velázquez was baptized on this date in 1599. A Baroque master of the Spanish Golden Age and leading artist in the court of King Philip IV of Spain and Portugal, he is generally considered one of the greatest artists in the history of Western art.

Self-portrait, c. 1640 (source)

Andrew Warhola was born on this date in 1928 in Pittsburgh, PA. Better known as Andy Warhol, he was a leading figure in the Pop art movement; his work (painting, filmmaking, photography, publishing, and performance art) challenged traditional boundaries between high and low culture and provoked us to think more clearly about the relationship of reference and referent. Widely considered the most important artist of the second half of the 20th century, he was a role model for a generation of post-modernist artists.

Self-portrait, 1986 (source)

#AndyWarhol #art #artGalleries #artMarket #auctionHouses #canon #culture #DiegoVelázquez #estate #history #inheritance #museums #paradigmShift #Velázquez #Warhol

#andywarhol #art #artgalleries #artmarket #auctionhouses #canon

Fixionauta @[email protected] · 2026-07-30 · 13:30 UTC

In the winter of 1879, a 23-year-old John Singer Sargent stood in the Prado, copying Las Meninas (below). The master’s canvas was nearly ten feet tall and had been hanging in that room for over two hundred years, dimmed by varnish and lampblack. Sargent struggled to understand how an artist who was deceased since 1660 could bring painted figures to life. […] His teacher Carolus-Duran had built an entire pedagogy around a single command: ”Velázquez, Velázquez, Velázquez, ceaselessly study Velázquez.” Duran drilled it into every student who walked through the atelier door. Forget about Raphael or Rubens. Instead put your eyes on Velázquez.
What Sargent learned from Velázquez? | James Gurney

Gurney mentions two of my favorite artists in the whole world: John Singer Sargent and Diego Velázquez.

#Art #Arte #DiegoVelázquez #Hipervínculo #Hyperlien #Hyperlink #JohnSingerSargent #Painting #Peinture #Pintura

#art #arte #diegovelazquez #hipervinculo #hyperlien #hyperlink

Apertura Intelectual @[email protected] · 2026-07-16 · 19:00 UTC

Bernal Díaz de Castillo

Por: Francisco Javier Estrada

¿Queremos saber quién es ejemplo de Cronista? Hay que leer a fondo a Bernal Díaz de Castillo. Cuenta Sergio Gaspar Mondragón en el prólogo a Historia verdadera de la Conquista de la Nueva España, reimpresa en 2024, dice: “El año siguiente volvió a viajar al continente, ahora a las órdenes de Juan de Grijalva, y en 1519 por fin exploró con mayor detenimiento las nuevas tierras comandado por Hernán Cortés. Tras ordenas este “dar con los navíos al través”, es decir, que los barrenaran hasta hundirlos, y adentrarse en territorio azteca. El destino del tlatoani mexica estaba decidido. Dos años duró la cruenta guerra entre invasores e indígenas allegados a Moctezuma, pero al fin la urbe mexica fue invadida y con ello se derrumbó uno de los mayores imperios prehispánicos del continente americano”.

El hombre que refiere su presente, estas son palabras de un texto que es clásico de las letras históricas y de crónica de aquella época que funda nuevas culturas en América. Dice: “Capítulo II / Cómo descubrimos la provincia de Yucatán / En ocho días del mes de febrero del año de mil y quinientos y diez y siete salimos de La Habana, donde viven unos indios como salvajes. Y doblada aquella punta y puestos en alta mar, navegamos a nuestra ventura hacia donde se pone el sol. Cuando nos acercábamos junto a tierra vinos venir diez canoas muy grandes que se dicen piraguas, llenas de indios naturales de aquella poblazón.

Y venían estos indios vestidos con camisetas de algodón como jaquetas, y cubiertas sus vergüenzas con unas mantas angostas, y tuvímoslos por hombres de más razón que a los indios de Cuba, porque andaban los de Cuba con las vergüenzas de fuera, eceto las mujeres. Los indios estaban diciendo en su lengua: “Cones cotoche, cones cotoche”, que quiere decir: “Andale acá a mis casas”. Por esa causa pusimos por nombre aquella tierra Punta de Cotoche. Entonces comenzó a dar voces el cacique para que saliesen a nosotros unos escuadrones de indios de guerra. En aquellas escaramuzas prendimos dos indios, que después que se bautizaron, se llamó el uno Julián y el otro Melchior, y entrambos eran trastabados de los ojos. Y lo que más pasó adelante lo diré…”.

Qué lección más clara de lo que debe ser el Cronista, sino es aquel personaje, mujer u hombre que relata con minuciosidad los hechos de su tiempo. Si el cronista que se refiere constantemente a la historia tiene esa tarea de sabiduría del pasado para relatar su presente. El Cronista que más vale es el que enfrenta su presente con valor y con verdad.

Múltiples ejemplos de este clásico de la crónica humana, cito otras palabras de Bernal Díaz del Castillo: “Capítulo XIII / Cómo llegamos aquella isleta que agora se llama San Juan de Ulúa, e a qué causa se le puso aquel nombre, y lo que allí pasamos / Desembarcamos en unos arenales, hallamos una casa de adoratorios, donde estaba un ídolo muy grande y feo, el cual le llamamos Tescatepuca. Y tenían sacrificados de aquel día dos muchachos, y abiertos por los pechos y los corazones, y sangre ofrecida aquel maldito ídolo. Y el general preguntó a un indio, que después de bautizarse se nombró Francisco, que por qué hacían aquello, y respondió que los de Ulúa los mandaban sacrificar y como era torpe de lengua, decía: “Ulúa, Ulúa”, y como nuestro capitán estaba presente y se llamaba Juan y era por eso San Juan de Ulúa.

Fue acordado dado que lo enviásemos a hacer saber al Diego Velázquez que nos enviasen socorro, porque Juan de Grijalva muy gran voluntad tenía de poblar con aquellos pocos soldados que con él estábamos. Pues para hacer aquella embajada acordamos que fuese el capitán Pedro de Alvarado, y también se concertó que llevase todo el oro que se había rescatado, y ropa de mantas y los dolientes y los capitanes escribieron al Diego Velázquez cada uno lo que les pareció. Agora diré como el Diego Velázquez envió en nuestra busca”.

Las palabras escritas hace quinientos años por un personaje que es de leyenda, reconociéndose él como sabedor de poco latín, comprueba que más que ser escritor de abolengo vale más la pena relatar lo que se ve y se estudia con sinceridad. Sin acciones de presumir lo descubierto como lo más grande que se halla hecho en las letras o la literatura.

Libro de muchos capítulos, todos siendo prueba de ese tiempo de heroicidad, conquista, masacres y salvajes esclavitudes que diezmaron las poblaciones indígenas desde el río Bravo hasta la Patagonia. La lectura de Fray Bartolomé de las Casas es suficiente para saber cuánta crueldad por parte de españoles y sus aliados indígenas sufrieron los dueños originarios de estos territorios tan extensos y mucho más grandes en extensión que la Europa de la que venían los imperialistas españoles.

En el capítulo CLV, dice Bernal Díaz del Castillo: “Cómo Gonzalo entró con los doce bergantines a la parte que estaba Guatémuz y le prendió, y lo que sobre ello pasó / Cortés mandó a Gonzalo de Sandoval que entrase con bergantines en el sitio de la ciudad donde estaba retraído Guatémuz con toda la flor de sus capitanes y personas más nobles que en México había, y le mandó que no matase ni hiriese a ningunos indios, salvo si no le diesen guerra, e, aunque se la diesen, que solamente se defendiese y no les hiciese otro mal. Y que les derrocase las casas y muchas barbacanas que habían hecho en la laguna. Y Cortés se subió en el cu mayor del Tlatelulco para ver como Sandoval entraba con los bergantines. Y como el Sandoval entró con gran furia con los bergantines en aquel paraje donde estaban las casas del Guatémuz, y desque se vio cercado el Guatémuz tuvo temor n o lo prendiesen o matasen, y tenía aparejadas cincuenta grandes piraguas con buenos remeros para que, em viéndose en aprieto, salvarse e irse a esconderse en otros pueblos.

Y como vieron que les entraban entre las casas, se embarca en las cincuenta canoas, e ya tenían metido su hacienda y oro y joyas y toda su familia e mujeres. Y se mete en ellas y tira por la laguna adelante, acompañado de muchos capitanes y como en aquel instante iban otras muchas canoas, llena la laguna de ellas, y Sandoval luego tuvo noticia que Guatémuz iba huyendo, mandó a todos los bergantines que dejasen de derrocar casas y barbacoas y siguiesen el alcance de las canoas e mirasen a qué parte iba el Guatémuz, e que no le ofendiese ni le hicieren enojo alguno ninguno, sino que buenamente le procurasen de prender”.

Texto clásico de gran valor para saber lo que sucedió hace más de quinientos años en Mesoamérica, donde se ha de fundar la capital más impresionante de la Nueva España por toda la América. Leer a los Cronistas es ir en busca de la verdad, de ese momento que el estudioso de historia sabiendo que debe relatar su presente, no puede huir a tal tarea, a riesgo de ser sólo un ideólogo al servicio del poder político o económico. Nunca el Cronista debe ser alabador de tales.

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