Philosophy, art, and a glass of red wine: Review of: Curating Capitalism: How Art Impacts Business, Management, and Economy by Pierre Guillet de Monthoux. Sternberg Press 2023.

Abstract

As I read his latest book, I hear Pierre’s voice in my head, and I can feel – even smell – a glass of red wine in my hand. I imagine I am sitting in a comfortable living room, in the very chair where Bruno Latour was sitting the night before and I eagerly absorb what Pierre has to tell me about last night’s conversation with Bruno. And the night before that Adorno was in the living room, and the night before that, Pierre was at Andy Warhol’s factory in New York, and before that and before that, and the stories, and the ideas wash over me, even more intoxicating than the wine.

The thread that weaves throughout the book is the idea that artists these days, through their art, can curate much of our modern world. There are chapters that argue for an illustrate how art can curate knowledge, ethics, the middle class, luxury, prices, poetics, and even business education. This isn’t to say that art actually curates all of this, but rather that some art curates some of it in our world. And in that premise is the hope that artists, through their art, through their art practices, through their curation of our world, can find a better path to a better future. In short, art might be able to show us how to get from the problems that are seemingly endemic to late stage capitalism to a version of capitalism that finally uses the vast resources generated by capitalism to fully enable human flourishing.