The Myth of Possessive Desire
“Who bought that piece?”
This question often wields more power than the artwork’s intrinsic aesthetics
or philosophy. In today’s art world, the collector is not merely a purchaser
but a powerful actor who structures value and inscribes narrative.
Collecting now stands at the ambivalent
intersection of value accumulation and symbolic representation, exposing the
deep structures of desire and the language of power that underlie the art
market. In this age, it is no longer the authenticity or artistic integrity of
a work that determines its value, but the context of its ownership and
narrative capital.
Collecting functions not as a discreet
exercise of taste, but as a visualization—and institutionalization—of
capitalist desire.
From the perspective of Deleuze and
Guattari, desire is not a symptom of lack but a productive force. Collecting,
therefore, is not an act of compensating for what is absent, but an assertion
of new orders, new hierarchies. The collector’s gesture is not aesthetic but
systemic—a symbolic return to the center of power through reified art.
From Aesthetic Sensibility to Social
Position
In the Renaissance, aristocrats used art
collections to visually assert their status. While churches and monarchs used
art for symbolic dominance, the bourgeois class later appropriated it as
cultural capital. In the mid-20th century, figures like Peggy Guggenheim
advanced a new model of “patron-collector” by discovering artists such as
Jackson Pollock, while Charles Saatchi exemplified the “market-maker,”
strategically launching the YBAs (Young British Artists) into the commercial
and critical spotlight.
This shift was not about mere
connoisseurship but about strategically positioning oneself as an arbiter of
value. In Korea, from the 1990s onward, early collectors established themselves
through alliances with public institutions, museums, and galleries—becoming
monopolists of taste. They were not just viewers, but intermediaries shaping
both artists and institutions.
Thus, art became less a matter of
appreciation and more a form of symbolic asset. Collection is now a visual
strategy that reveals one’s position within the hierarchy of capital and
culture.
The Collector as the Market’s Eye
Today’s collectors no longer operate based
on personal taste alone. Their gaze is connected to a complex
network—institutions, media, technology, and finance. Art is increasingly
evaluated based on these five questions:
• Who already owns it? (First-tier
collector status)
• Which institutions have acquired it? (Museum or public collection presence)
• What is its resale potential? (Auction record, liquidity)
• What social message does it carry? (Gender, politics, identity)
• Is it currently trending? (Media visibility, social engagement)
For example, the market value of artists
like Lee Ufan or Yun Hyong-keun—or even emerging artists—rises rapidly through
the triangulated collaboration of collectors, auction houses, and galleries. In
this mechanism, the collector becomes both the market’s eye and the voice of
its narrative.
The market no longer privileges artistic
vision but ownership. Who possesses the work becomes its brand. Thus, artworks
devolve into symbolic markers, cultural commodities, and collectors emerge as
the dominant evaluators of artistic worth.
Art as a Social Signifier — After Bourdieu
Pierre Bourdieu, in Distinction,
argued that cultural capital and taste reproduce class structures. Applied to
the Korean art market, the act of collecting high-value art is less about
aesthetic pleasure and more about asserting or elevating one’s social standing.
When younger collectors say they’re “buying
art instead of luxury cars,” we must read this not as diversification of assets
but as symbolic redefinition of identity. Artworks are not understood per se
but function as linguistic tokens reserved for those “qualified” to comprehend
them. Thus, art becomes a language of exclusion—closed symbolic capital that
encodes class.
Moreover, collecting has evolved to consume
identities—gender, queerness, postcoloniality—as new currencies. A male
collector who buys feminist paintings acquires a “progressive” aesthetic
identity. A global collector of Korean diasporic work performs a cosmopolitan
sensitivity. In every case, it is no longer a matter of what is seen,
but what is owned.
Buying Narratives, Constructing Mythologies
Today’s collectors don’t merely acquire
objects—they purchase narratives: political contexts, identity discourses, and
social messages. The feeling of having made a “righteous acquisition” offers
both ethical justification and cultural capital.
For instance, works on refugee crises,
feminist installations, or paintings emphasizing regional specificity are often
valued more for their political gravity than for their formal innovation.
Collectors, by acquiring them, insert themselves as agents in ongoing cultural
discourses.
A painting armed with narrative becomes more than a collectible—it becomes a
raw material for self-representation.
A male collector of feminist art performs
progressive refinement. A European buyer of Korean diaspora art appears
globally sensitive. These dynamics create new symbolic hierarchies. This is the
art of late capitalism: no longer an expression of interior truth, but of
brandable discourse, aestheticized identity, and consumable narrative. Art
becomes reified—again.
Conclusion: Collusion or Deconstruction?
Collectors are no longer passive buyers.
They are authors of value, co-architects of narrative. What matters is not the
work’s form or experimentation, but its owner and its place in a larger
symbolic economy. This system is fueled by capitalism’s “fantasy of possession”
and its seamless integration with symbolic power.
How far can art still function as art?
When the artwork is no longer a subject of interpretation but a token of social
validation, how can its aesthetic integrity survive? When art holds hands with
capital, does it surrender its autonomy—or paradoxically, gain a broader stage?
We must now ask:
Do you see the artwork—or do you wish to be
seen through it?
This question is no longer about perception
but about the existential conditions of art in a reified age. In this era,
collecting is not an extension of taste but a manifestation of power. And
power, when left uninterrogated, will be endlessly reproduced through the
machinery of capital.
Fine art, grounded in human introspection,
faces a critical juncture. If it fails to deconstruct itself, it risks being
entirely overwritten by the language of capital.
The answer to this dilemma may very well define the moral urgency and
authenticity that artists must embrace in the age of reification.
References
• Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction:
A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, 1979
• Sarah Thornton, Seven
Days in the Art World, 2008
• Olav Velthuis, Talking
Prices, 2005
• Peggy Guggenheim, Confessions
of an Art Addict, 1946
• Charles Saatchi interviews, The
Guardian, 2009
Jay Jongho Kim graduated from the Department of Art Theory at Hongik University and earned his master's degree in Art Planning from the same university. From 1996 to 2006, he worked as a curator at Gallery Seomi, planning director at CAIS Gallery, head of the curatorial research team at Art Center Nabi, director at Gallery Hyundai, and curator at Gana New York. From 2008 to 2017, he served as the executive director of Doosan Gallery Seoul & New York and Doosan Residency New York, introducing Korean contemporary artists to the local scene in New York. After returning to Korea in 2017, he worked as an art consultant, conducting art education, collection consulting, and various art projects. In 2021, he founded A Project Company and is currently running the platforms K-ARTNOW.COM and K-ARTIST.COM, which aim to promote Korean contemporary art on the global stage.
