The Blurring of Art and Design: The Gagosian Store’s Appropriation of Fashion
The Gagosian, perhaps one of the most famous and respected purveyors of contemporary art in New York City, has fully facilitated the wealthy fashionista by opening a boutique to sell wares distributed with dubious intentionality. Posted in gilt letters on the store front windows of the Gagosian shop, in Manhattan, are these adjectives: Popular, Transient, Expendable, Low Cost, Mass Produced, Young, Witty, Sexy, Gimmicky, Glamorous, Big Business. Granted these adjectives are posted under a title “Pop Art”, but as labels, they certainly are descriptors as to what lie inside: the sale of faux fine art trinkets.
In contemporary society, the difference between fine art and design has become increasingly difficult to discern. This boutique hides somewhere in the grey area between these two. It isn’t the objects inside, per se, which are so 
disingenuous. For there are several more traditional works of art for sale (i.e. paintings and prints) but also much more original works, such as Tom Sachs’s chess set; though utilitarian, are creative and unique. Not two feet from the chess set are t-shirts, not of reproductions of works art, (which pay homage as blatant facsimiles of specific works of art), but are pure designs intended as a type of promotional branding of the artists. Regardless of the few exceptions in which the artist put forth honest efforts, the environment and intention of the store in its entirety, is trendy and fashionable, borrowing the moniker of fine art from its corral of artists.
The interiors and products of high-end fashion stores consistently appropriates the aesthetic of the fine art gallery and museum; a pseudo-comodification of fine art itself. This mimicry lends their products a superficial sophistication, which validates the exorbitant retail prices of the items they promote. To have a prominent and respected monolith, such as the Gagosian, appropriate the fashion industry’s “cool” marketability demeans not only the wares inside the boutique but serves to discredit the pure function of fine art.
Some would claim, in a Hirst-ian manner, that art’s most important function is as a high priced commodity, and that art has no higher function within society. Those who subscribe to this view, would find no fault with the existence of such a shop, for it is merely the art market becoming aware of its own purpose: to sell coveted exalted objects to a public who craves them for fashionable purposes. This reductionist view of art is similar to those scientists who claim that the emotion of love, for example, is merely a series of chemical reactions. In truth, both the Hirst-ian and scientific reductionists are correct, but have missed the point entirely.
Perhaps the success of the Gagosian store is mere evidence of a cultural phenomenon that might excuse it from criticism, for as a business, it is filling a niche in the market. The recent Picasso auction, wherein his painting, “Nude, Green Leaves and Bust,” sold for $106.5 million dollars, is a marker of the market’s profitability as a luxury 
commodity. The Gagosian store’s sale of a series of pocketknifes, at just a trivial $7,000 each. Why shouldn’t the Gagosian operate a store which caters to such demands in the market by providing consumers with the prestigious commodities they demand?
Art may be partially defined by intentionality, inasmuch as it should be created with the intent to shape, move, or comment on a society and the people within it. In this vein, art is so much more than what the Gagosian store offers its customers. Perhaps the market niche, which the Gagosian is exploiting, exists because of a societal phenomenon, and if art as art should be created with the intentionality stated above, then perhaps the objects within the boutique fall within this definition. What more could shape or reflect a commodity and status obsessed society than art objects that fully embrace these attributes? However, these objects do not inspire one to ponder the existence of art-as-commodity, but are marketed, displayed, and designed to inspire purchase, not an existential query of the meaning of art.
Fine art is a cultural meme, which dons many roles and carries many responsibilities within society, as it, in some capacity, should elevate humanity. Perhaps what the Gagosian is contributing to this meme is among these responsibilities, but I find that it falls short by obfuscating the profound capacities which fine art can attain. Art is created to serve the ideas and mores of the society in which it is created. In my mind, art is a propeller, nudging the society forward visa-vis inspiration, introspection, and intellectual stimulation. It should not promote shallow and vapid behaviours. The Gagosian is doing just that, by peddling well-designed pseudo-art objects which fertilize the fashionization of art; the antithesis of Art.
