inserting "the art" into "the gift shop"

Gift Shop Poetics:
The Art of Decommodifiying the Commodified Through Commodification

by Olivia Shih


In contemporary capitalist societies, people no longer speak in words. We speak in commodities. A disproportionate amount of our lives are spent producing and consuming commodities, and in Karl Marx’s words, this fetishism of commodities “converts every product into a social hieroglyphic.”[1] Our language of commodities, compounded with an ingeniously designed cycle of production and consumption, creates a world of hyper-consumerism complete with its own language and raison d'être: to consume.

To break through the cycle of hyper-consumerism, one could, as Nicholas Bourriaud suggests, enter the art exhibition—“the arena of representational commerce,” which allows “inter-human commerce” that deviates from the social context of everyday consumerism.[2] However, this break from the superstructure of consumerism in contemporary life is often momentary and site-specific. Upon exiting the exhibition, the viewer reverts back to the role of a consumer. On the other hand, “edible artwork,” in the form of the art exhibition gift shop, can surpass boundaries of time and locale. The average art exhibition viewer can leave the art exhibition gift shop with a physical object, an object that carries traces of the art and can cross over the exhibition threshold into everyday life. When created in an ironic or humorous way that subverts social context, souvenirs from the art exhibition gift shop serve as reminders of the consumerist superstructure.

The gift shop with its “edible artwork” becomes a space for relational aesthetics, defined by Bourriaud as “an art taking as its theoretical horizon the realm of human interactions and its social context.”[3] As each visitor wanders into the gift shop, consumerist desires manifest, and consumers witness one another in this state of desire. In addition, what these consumers are buying into are not commodities, but art sugarcoated in a commodity-like appearance and condensed into the scale and form of gift shop souvenirs.

Already, the art world has produced influential artists who have successfully co-opted and subverted consumerism in their art, revealing the mechanism behind building value into commodities. “Brand name” artists such as Jeff Koons, Damien Hirst, and Takashi Murakami utilize marketing strategies to create brand recognition, simultaneously benefiting from and criticizing the system of commodification.

In this paper, I will present six artists who have co-opted and subverted consumerist desires through six distinct methods. Combined together, these methods can be utilized in the creation of relational aesthetics in a gift shop full of edible artwork.


Designing Desire

Jeff Koons conflates the high with the low, the “craft” with the “high art.” In his “The New” series in the 1980s, Koons critiques what Eric Gibson highlights as “society’s habit of turning anything and everything into salable commodity.”[4] Koons places pristine, new vacuum cleaners in Lucite cases and lights the cases from below with commercial fluorescent lights. The vitrines lit with “holy light” suggest that these vacuum cleaners are objects consumers adore and worship—participating in a religion of commodity.

Koons takes his critique of commodity to the next level with his “Balloon Animal” series, where he recontextualizes the kitsch, often found in gift shops, by co-opting the values of “high art.” He uses high art techniques such as casting to exponentially expand the commonplace items into exquisite, large scale sculptures, the quality of craft and scale of which allude to monumental sculptures such as Michaelangelo’s David. Koons then coats these objects with the shininess and gloss of luxury and places them within a gallery or museum context. Cultural critic Eleanor Heartney points out that when it comes to Koons’s work, “Taste becomes a matter of context, not content.”[5] By creating value in the kitsch, Koons demonstrates that anything can be re-commodified into something of greater value and “class.”

                                                 Jeff Koons standing with his artwork. Photography by Luigi Costantini/AP


By creating and promoting his art according to the rules of consumerism, Koons has worked his way to a position in which he can now dictate value of his art. Koons has often been called an entrepreneur or businessman by the art world, and he does indeed operate as if he is the CEO of a brand name company, promoting his product through tactics designed to yield high returns. Koons plays into his public persona, “(embodying) the figure of the New York golden boy who has done Wall Street and is wonderfully at home with globalized society.”[6] When a billionaire purchases a Koon sculpture, he is buying into Koons’s business-savvy image and definition of value—what French art critic and historian Philippe Dagen describes as “[objects] that [are] a direct homage to that collector's capacity to make money.”[7] 

However, even while Koons bends consumerist values to his own bidding, he unabashedly benefits from and celebrates consumerism, as if to say, enjoy consumerism, but recognize it for what it is. Dagen notes, in regards to Koon’s show at the Palace of Versailles, that Koon’s “sumptuousness can be an antidote to the clinical oft-sanctimonious austerity of modernism's more fundamentalist strains.”[8] Koon’s brightly reflective balloon animals are seductive in form, texture, and nostalgia to a wide range of audiences in both optic and haptic aspects. 


Appropriating the Language of Fashion

The art world has also drooled over and been repelled by Takashi Murakami’s dual identity as entrepreneur and artist, but Murakami comes from the distinct cultural and historical background of Japan. In an interview with Magdalene Perez, he noted, “Both by the culture and by the postwar economic situation, Japanese people accept that art and commerce will be blended; and in fact, they are surprised by the rigid and pretentious Western hierarchy of ‘high art.’”[9] Murakami has argued that the line between commerce and art has always been more blurred in Japan. Murakami builds his work on the blurred line between commerce and art, creating art as a response “to what he perceived as a flattening of  (high and low) culture in an emotional restricted society,”[10] one obsessed with consumption. 

It is no wonder then, that Murakami chose to participate in a well-publicized collaboration with Louis Vuitton in 2003. In this crossover of fashion and art, Murakami redesigned the Louis Vuitton logo and included a slew of his own cartoonish symbols, such as eyes with exaggerated eyelashes and cherry blossoms, in bright colors on leather. His pattern was and still is printed on Louis Vuitton’s designer products: luxury bags, wallets, and luggage. Instead of critiquing commodity from the outside, Murakami works from within an advanced system of consumerism: the fashion world. 

Under the guise of fashion and with the blessing of the fashion world, Murakami’s “edible artwork” makes its way out of the art exhibition and into everyday life. When a consumer of the Murakami-Louis Vuitton handbag meets with friends at a cocktail event, the handbag sparks discussions about who Murakami is, what does he do, and why is he important? 

                                                        Handbag from Takashi Murakami’s collaboration with Louis Vuitton.
                                                                       Photography from Louis Vuitton’s official website.


Andrew Nairne, director of Modern Art Oxford, suggests that Murakami has tapped into “the possibility of an artist making new work using fashion as a medium.”[11] And indeed, by utilizing the collectible status of Louis Vuitton products, and he efficiently hijacks the fashion brand name as a vehicle for disseminating his own language of commodity into a “shallow consumer culture.”[12] By injecting a new visual language into the pre-existing visual language of fashion commodities, Murakami inserts himself and his art into everyday conversation.

Unfortunately, despite gallery owner Marianne Boeskey’s claim that there are democratic implications in this collaboration, and that “For Murakami, everyone should have access to art, especially those who are not necessarily cultured,”[13] brand name designer handbags are simply not affordable for everyone. These products are far less expensive than Murakami paintings are, but these products are “edible artwork” for the rich, built on exclusivity and hype around the brand name. 


Edible Artwork

Damien Hirst, on the other hand, provides access to the average consumer through Other Criteria, his online gift shop. In this online shop, Hirst churns out signed prints, mugs, t-shirts—edible artwork for the average consumer. 

As with Koons and Murakami, Hirst is no stranger to creating and monetizing a brand name. In fact, Hirst’s work is so well known that Majorie May Haight wrote an article for the “American Economist” highlighting how Hirst’s work functions in the art market: Do “scarcer, unique works exhibit higher rates of return than repeated series works”? Is there value in “producing enough similar work so that a style becomes recognized as iconic of an artist, in other words, a brand”?[14] The fact that an economist selects Damien Hirst as her case study is evidence of Hirst’s marketing strategies to commodify and monetize art. 

                                  Screenshot from Damien Hirst’s online store, Other Criteria, on December 1st, 2014
                                                                           (https://othercriteria.com/browse/hirst)

Hirst takes production work into the realm of the gift shop, where images of “high art” are plastered on mass produced items, items that are “reassuring to an art audience that knows the chain stores and the suburban malls far better than the galleries and the museums.”[15] In Other Criteria, Hirst exhausts various marketing strategies: categorizing items as “New” or “Unique” in red letters, creating box sets, selling both signed and plain prints, selling prints as “prints” instead of “posters,” using free shipping to tempt buyers, offering t-shirts in four colors, and more.

                                       Screenshot from Damien Hirst’s online store, Other Criteria, on December 1st, 2014
                                                                               (https://othercriteria.com/browse/hirst)


By selling posters of “For the Love of God,” a diamond studded platinum human skull, in two different colors, some with one skulls, some with four images of the skull from different angles, Hirst questions the value of authenticity. If authenticity is a handwritten signature on a print, then you can purchase a signed print for a couple thousand more dollars. If authenticity does not matter, simply purchase the plain print. Both are options on Other Criteria. Either way, the print will be packaged carefully and sent to your house.
 

 Manifestation of Desire

What Hirst fails to do with Other Criteria, however, is to manifest desire within a physical space, where consumers can witness one another consuming. In 2004, Amsterdam based jewelry designer and conceptual artist Ted Noten exhibited a funfair machine, Mr Claw, at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. Visitors were allowed to operate the funfair machine via a joystick to grab plastic bubbles with jewelry inside. A 1 kg silver bar, calibrated to be too heavy for the grabber, was also placed within the machine as a special attraction. 

While the funfair machine and the jewelry within the plastic bubbles plays into Hal Foster’s “political economy of design”[16] nicely, creating desire even in an oversaturated market, the placement of these objects within a museum creates a sense of jarring unfamiliarity and cognitive dissonance. The visitor simultaneously experiences the happy calling from the funfair machine to interact with the joystick and the unsettling feeling for closing the physical distance between viewer and “art” within the museum context. More importantly, the audience of Mr Claw plays two roles: that of a product consumer, and that of an art viewer. The consumer desires to have the jewelry within the plastic bubbles and inserts a coin to utilize the funfair joystick to obtain the jewelry. The viewer sees the consumer in a haze of desire in the museum context, unconsciously participating in a political economy of design, and hopefully recognizes the manifestation of mindless desire cultivated by design.

                                                                                  Ted Noten inserting a coin into “Mr Claw.”
                                                                                                    Photography by Icon.

Furthermore, Noten disrupts the pricing system of art within the gallery context in two aspects. He brings in the funfair machine, an object typically found in arcades or at the country fair, into the gallery and allows people to purchase “art” with only a few coins. The coins contrast not only with gallery prices, but also with the jewelry, which are symbols of luxury and status.

                                                                              Viewers surrounding Ted Noten’s “Mr Claw.” 
                                                                          Photography from Ted Noten’s official website.


Inedible Edibles

Stephanie Syjuco combines Hirst’s virtual gift shop with Noten’s physical location in the form of a gift shop where consumers cannot consume. In 2012, as part of the International Orange event at Fort Port, San Francisco, on the occasion of the Golden Gate Bridge's 75 Year Anniversary, Syjuco put together a “commemorative store” full of typical gift shop souvenirs: notebooks, tote bags, key chains, mugs, and more. Each item contained the same exact color—a shade of red specific to the Golden Gate Bridge. However, not a single thing could be purchased.

To complicate perception of these commodities, every single item in the store was manufactured locally, and Syjuco even made some items herself. Syjuco subverted consumer expectations of mass production by hiring local studios and artists to make limited editions. According to Syjuco’s official website, this “installation both mimics and questions the notions of the notion of the souvenir store, where merchandise is meant to evoke, or even replace, the experience of visiting a place.”[17] This concept can be applied to edible artwork, which serve as reminders of consumerism and highlight the tension between the different forms of consumption within the art exhibition and the art exhibition gift shop.

In Syjuco’s store, a visitor can walk in and pick up and examine a gift shop item that has distilled the experience of the Golden Gate Bridge to one shade of red. Being in the space of the gift shop elicits desire to purchase, and the visitor expects a reasonable price for a notebook or a tote bag. However, Syjuco renders these “edible artworks” inedible by refusing to sell, disrupting the consumerist behavior people unconsciously exhibit and follow. In this set up, visitors wander around the store, witnessing each others in a state of desire but stripped of the ability to consume— and begin to question their unquestioning loyalty to consumerism and their conditioned reaction to the gift shop context. 

                                                           Image of products from Stephanie Syjuco’s “The International Orange
                                                                 Commemorative Store (A Proposition)” in San Francisco in 2012.
                                                                          Photography from Stephanie Syjuco’s official website.


In comparison with Noten’s Mr Claw, Syjuco’s commemorative store disrupts the cycle of consumerism by injecting a sharper jolt of consumer consciousness. With Noten’s funfair machine, visitors are purchasing the opportunity of winning a prize. The fact that the prizes include jewelry and a 1 kg bar of silver increases consumer desire, but the visitors are still purchasing an opportunity, a probability, instead of the objects themselves. Noten does not mislead his visitors in what to expect. When visitors fail to win prizes, they accept the outcome. Syjuco, on the other hand, sets up a situation in which visitors are encouraged to consume and visitors look forward to consuming in. The visitors feel as if they have the right to consume, and the beginnings of indignation arise from their inability to purchase anything. What can be more frustrating that having money in one’s wallet, a commodity designed for easy consumption within reach, but the lack of means to consume?

Libby Black, a sculptor and painter, also produces “inedible edibles,” but within the context of the gallery, outfitted to look like the store of fashion brand names. Black reproduces brand name products by gluing together paper and painstakingly painting the paper constructions with brand name logos and patterns. Black goes as far as to recreate whole Louis Vuitton and Kate Spade stores, complete with shelves and display cases. Black has sold out several of her shows.

Although Black, unlike Syjuco, allows viewers to consume her artwork, consumers cannot consume the artwork as fashion accessories. Black’s paper handbags reveal the absurd amount of control consumers surrender to desires designed by others; in Black’s store-like exhibitions, consumers instantly recognize and succumb to the value of designer logos, and collectors purchase not the object itself, but for what it stands for: the perverted superstructure of consumerism. 

                                Exterior and interior images of Libby Black’s Louis Vuitton store at Manolo Garcia Gallery, San Francisco.                 
                                                                              Photography from Libby Black’s official website


Conclusion: To Build a Gift Shop

For the “gift shop” to function as a form of relational aesthetics, it must contain “edible artworks” that can be purchased but that are “inedible” in the sense that the objects themselves subvert the values of consumerism under the guise of commodification; in other words, these objects should utilize elements of commodification to draw in consumers but simultaneously subvert and reveal mindless consumerism.

First, the edible artwork. These subverted objects should be plastered with the visual language of commodity, such as the succulent colors, high-polish finishes, and pleasing forms found in Jeff Koon’s “Balloon Animals.” These objects, like Takashi Murakami’s Louis Vuitton handbags, can also adopt the language of fashion in the form of luxury brands, but these objects will only be accessible to a certain socioeconomic class. The more democratic choice would be to create a range in prices, as Damien Hirst does with his t-shirts, mugs, plain prints, and signed prints in his online store Other Criteria. In addition, the familiarity of items that can be readily mass-produced lulls the consumer into a false sense of purchasing confidence. 

Next, these objects should be placed within a gift shop. As shown by Ted Noten, utilize the gift shop as a space for relational aesthetics is to manifest desire—the gift shop should be outfitted as a familiar space of commerce, where people readily exhibit desire to possess and consumer. Follow Stephanie Syjuco’s lead and include items within the gift shop that cannot be purchased but elicit consumerist desires. These items can be items belonging to the museum or an anonymous collector—items intentionally placed above smaller versions of the real thing to cultivate desire. These items can also be showcase samples (that cannot be sold for reasons of quality control) of items that have sold out. Finally, create dissonance between appearances and content, as Libby Black does with her painted paper luxury items. 

To illustrate a point, think of Jeff Koon’s immaculate vacuum cleaners in his “The New” series. Shrink a vacuum cleaner to the edible size of a necklace pendant. Etch Jeff Koon’s signature onto the back of the pendant. Plate with a glossy 14 karat gold finish. Showcase the necklace in a jewelry display case, complete with a necklace display, a pricey price tag, and other pieces of high-end jewelry with expensive-looking gemstones. What does it mean for a person to buy this vacuum cleaner necklace? How will other people view this necklace outside the context of the art exhibition gift shop? When a consumer wears this “inedible edible artwork” to a Sunday brunch, people begin to talk and question value. The gift shop object is not only a “statement piece” about consumerism, but also a meaningful conversation starter about conscious consumption.

The point of the gift shop, after all, has never been to dissuade people from consumption. The language of commodities is entrenched in capitalist societies, shows no signs of receding, and people are actively cultivating self-expression and fluency in the language of commodity. As virtual reality bleeds into physical reality, consumption becomes easier and easier. One-click purchases, two-day deliveries, enhanced user experiences, and every other tech start-up works toward creating the ultimate, frictionless consumer experience. Edible artworks, with the outward appearance of commodity and subverted inner content, remind people of the inter-human interactions that can take place within the art exhibition—these gift shop souvenirs are reminders of the choice to not buy, or more realistically, the choice to buy consciously. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[1] Karl Marx and others, Capital, a critique of political economy: the process of capitalist production (New York: Modern Library, 1906)

[2] Nicholas Bourriaud , “Relational Form” from Relational Aesthetics (Les Presses du Reel, 1998), 16.

[3] Nicholas Bourriaud , “Relational Form” from Relational Aesthetics (Les Presses du Reel, 1998), 14

[4] Eric Gibson, “What Jeff Koons has wrought,” New Criterion 33, no 1., September 2014, 43-46.

[5] Eleanor Heartney, “Further Notes on the Art/Craft Debate,” American Craft 70, no. 1, February 2010, 80-83 

[6] Philippe Dagen, “Jeff Koons,” trans. Charles Penwarden, Art Press no. 350, 2008, 20-24

[7] Ibid

[8] Philippe Dagen, “Jeff Koons,” trans. Charles Penwarden, Art Press no. 350, 2008, 20-24

[9] Eleanor Heartney, “Further Notes on the Art/Craft Debate,” American Craft 70, no. 1, February 2010, 80-83

[10] Ibid

[11] Fiona McKenzie, “Artists vying for a spot on the fashion runway,” Art Newspaper 17, February 2008, 28

[12] Ibid

[13] Paul Mattick, “Takashi Murakami at Marianne Boesky,” Art in America I 92, no. 1, January 2004, 107-108

[14] Majorie May Haight, “Value in outsourcing labor and creating a brand in the art market: the Damien Hirst businesss plan,” American Economist 56, no.1, April 2011, 78-88.

[15] Jed Pearl, “The Artisanal Urge,” American Craft 68, no. 3, June 2008, 78-81

[16] Hal Foster, “Design and Crime” in Design and Crime (Verson, 2002), 22.

[17] Stephanie Syjuco, “The International Orange Commemorative Store (A Proposition),” http://www.stephaniesyjuco.com/p_theinternationalorange.html

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bibliography

Bourriaud Nicholas, “Relational Form,” Relational Aesthetics (Les Presses du Reel, 1998): 11-24.

Dagen, Philippe, and Charles, tr Penwarden. 2008. "Jeff Koons." Art-Press no. 350: 20-24. 

Foster, Hal, “Design and Crime,” Design and Crime (Venson, 2002): 13-26

Gibson, Eric. 2014. "What Jeff Koons has wrought." New Criterion 33, no. 1: 43-46. 

Haight, Marjorie May. "Value in outsourcing labor and creating a brand in the art market: the Damien Hirst business plan." American Economist 56, no. 1 (April 15, 2011): 78-88. 

Heartney, Eleanor. "Further Notes on the Art/Craft Debate." American Craft 70, no. 1 (February 2010): 80-83. 

Johnston, Fiona McKenzie. "Artists vying for a spot on the fashion runway." Art Newspaper 17, (February 2008): 28. 

Marx, Karl, Edward B. Aveling, Friedrich Engels, Ernest Untermann, and Samuel Moore. Capital, a critique of political economy: the process of capitalist production (New York: Modern Library, 1906)

Mattick, Paul. "Takashi Murakami at Marianne Boesky." Art In America 92, no. 1 (January 2004): 107-108. 

Perl, Jed. "The Artisanal Urge." American Craft 68, no. 3 (June 2008): 78-81. 

Syjuco, Stephanie, The International Orange Commemorative Store (A Proposition), 2012, http://www.stephaniesyjuco.com/p_theinternationalorange.html