The online debate and art exhibition Brand Art Sensation was launched in 2015 in the United Kingdom, in London’s Fitzrovia, alongside a number of advertising billboards that questioned the connections between luxury branding, artist-celebrities’ self-endorsement, and the fine art market. At the heart of the debate, and of the project that culminated in the exhibition, is a critical study of the increasing similarities and consequently blurred lines between luxury product management and high art.
The global art market has seen phenomenal growth in the last few decades. Auction houses sell art at record prices that would have been difficult to imagine just a few years ago. A growing worldwide crowd of the “super-rich” has joined the world’s leading art museums and institutions in the race to collect limited-edition colossal sculptures. “Acquiring art” today, argues Georgina Adam (2014: 134), “tends to stand at the top of the pyramid of needs....
