Tag Archives: capitalism

Commodifying Art -Damien Hirst

August 26, 2024 The Silo 2 Comments

All of modern life is a spectacle. Much of what contemporary man experiences in Western society is a false social construct mediated by images.

These mediated images create desires that can never be fulfilled; they create false needs that can never be met. “Many of our daily decisions are governed by motivations over which we have no control and of which we are quite unaware” (Berger 41). The constant spector of the mediated image creates an endless cycle of desire, consumption, and disinterest, fueling a banality in life that feeds the commodification of life.

Increasingly life itself becomes a commodity and the image more important than the reality it represents. This commodification infiltrates every aspect of human production, including the arts, and finds its pinnacle expression in the work of Damien Hirst. Hirst has carefully crafted a brand identity that has far surpassed the value of his art work in importance and worth. Working in tandem with former advertising executive turned art dealer Charles Saatchi, the spectacle of the Hirst image becomes the commodity. “Reality unfolds in a new generality as a pseudo-world apart, solely as an object of contemplation. The tendency towards the specialization of images-of-the-world finds its highest expression in the world of the autonomous image, where deceit deceives itself” (Debord
143).

No longer is the work of art itself a commodity, but rather the image of the artist (his/her/cis brand) that becomes the commodity.

It is this spectacle that drives the consumer to identify with a particular artist or brand. “The astronomical growth in the wealth and cultural influence of multi-national corporations over the last fifteen years can arguably be
traced back to a single, seemingly innocuous idea developed by management theorists in the mid-1980s: that successful corporations must primarily produce brands, as opposed to products” (Klein 4). The image has increasingly infiltrated and dominated the culture and the whole of society and has become “an immense accumulation of spectacles” (Debord 142).

Butterfly by Damien Hirst

Where once the products of labor were the commodity, now it is the spectacle that has become the commodity.

A prime example of this spectacle is Damien Hirst’s sculpture, “For the Love of God.” The sculpture consists of a platinum skull covered with 8,601 diamonds. The sculpture valued at over $100 million usd/ $129.361,000 cad [exchange rate at time of publication] is clearly out of the reach of almost any collector. The sculpture itself is not the art product, rather it is the spectacle that is the product. “Mr. Hirst is a shining symbol of our times, a man who perhaps more than any artist since Andy Warhol has used marketing to turn his fertile imagination into an extraordinary business” (Riding, nytimes.com). Acknowledging that the sculpture is out of reach for the majority of collectors, Hirst offered screen prints costing $2000 usd/ $2,587 cad to $20,000 usd/ $25,870 cad ; the most expensive prints were sold with a sprinkling of diamond dust.

Karl Marx argued that the value of the commodity arose from its relationship with other commodities; its ability to be exchanged for other commodities. Marx used the the production of a table to illustrate his thesis:
“…by his activity, man changes the materials of nature in such a way as to make them useful to him. The form of wood, for instance, is altered if a table is made out of it. Nevertheless the table continues to be wood, an ordinary, sensuous thing. But as soon as it emerges as a commodity, it changes into a thing which transcends sensuousness.” (Marx 122)

Hirst’s diamond encrusted skull remains mere diamonds, valuable yes, but still diamonds. However, when coupled with the spectacle of Damien Hirst’s identity, the skull becomes a fetishized commodity capable of selling screen-prints valued in the thousands. The argument can be made that diamonds on their own carry value, and could be commodities themselves, however that doesn’t account for the fact the Hirst was able to sell prints of the skull for over $2000 usd/ $2,587 cad. Nor do the diamonds alone account for the spectacle surrounding the art work; it is Hirst’s brand, his image that creates the spectacle.

“The mystical character of the commodity does not therefore arise from its use-value. Just as little does it proceed from the nature of the determinants of value” (Marx 123). The value of a commodity arises from its spectacle, its ability to be desired. In Marx’s day that desire was its ability to be traded for other commodities; today that value is derived from its association to a brand, an identity, a spectacle. “Art reflects the illusory way in which society sees itself, it reflects the bourgeoisie’s aesthetic ideas as if they were universal” (Osborne 79).

The spectacle feeds itself through the mediating of the image to create desire for status and recognition, through associations.

“The ends are nothing and development is all – though the only thing into which the spectacle plans to develop is itself” (Debord 144). The spectacle’s main objective is self perpetuation. Its aim is totality. It must be noted that Hirst himself did not even create the work of art, but rather employed a studio full of jewelers to execute the sculpture, and printers to produce the prints.

Hirst exemplifies the bourgeoisie capitalist employer who retains ownership over the fruit of the employees’ labor. He is in many ways more akin to a captain of industry than he is to the romantic notion of an artist. “In the early twenties, the legendary adman Bruce Barton turned General Motors into a metaphor for the American family, something personal, warm and human” (Klein 7). Hirst has also turned himself into a metaphor, however, metaphors aren’t always true. This falsehod is at the heart of the issue. The spectacle isn’t concerned with what is true, rather it is concerned with what can be made to appear true. It is this appearance of truth that makes a commodity valuable. This fetishism of the commodity is why gold and silver have value, it is because people gave them value. It is the reason Damien Hirst, or any other brand, has value, because people gave it value.

Damien Hirst cannot be blamed for commodifying art, he is simply following a long tradition of turning objects and products into commodities. The fact that his commodity is his own image doesn’t seem to matter. “Hirst is just playing the game. It is a game played by collectors and dealers at art fairs throughout the year; it is a game finessed as never before by Sotheby’s and Christie’s; it is a game in which, in the words of Nick Cohen, a rare British journalist to trash Mr. Hirst’s publicity coup, ‘the price tag is the art’ ” (Riding .nytimes.com).

That final statement beautifully summarizes the commodification of art, ‘the price tag is the art.’ The fact that the art is obscenely priced, and out of the reach for the majority of collectors, the fact that it is made of diamonds, a precious stone known as the blood stone because of its association with brutal and oppressive regimes, merely adds to its allure, to its spectacle. Damien Hirst is merely playing the game, like many before him. He is a part of the growing culture
industry that sells image. Images are the new commodity fetish. Images are the new mysterious commodities exchanged for more the more durable and enduring commodities. The bourgiousie sell their images, which have no real value, to the public which consumes them, in exchange for goods of real value.

“The $200 billion usd/ $270 billion cad culture industry – now North America’s biggest export – needs an every-changing, uninterrupted supply of street styles, edgy music videos and rainbows of colors. And the radical critics of the media clamoring to be ‘represented’ in the early nineties virtually handed over their colorful identities to the brand masters to be shrink-wrapped.” (Klein 115)

Nick Cohen said of Hirst, “[he] isn’t criticizing the excess, not even ironically … but rolling in it and loving it. The sooner he goes out of fashion, the better.” What Cohen fails to realize is that the spectacle is a fashion. And when one image goes out of fashion, another takes its place. Hirst may indeed go out of fashion, but another art brand will take his place, perpetuating the commodification of the arts in increasingly bombastic ways.

Perhaps art has always been a commodity?

In the past patrons would hire artists to paint them into scenes from the gospels. Patrons could be seen on the outskirts of paintings piously praying, thus creating an image of themselves as good and pious Christians. By association with the sacred art, the patron was creating a mediated image. Rulers did this all the time. The Equestrian Statue of Marcus Aurelius is a perfect example. Its a mediating image that communicates power and authority.

But none of these examples reach the level of spectacle and fetishism that is Damien Hirst. While art may have been a commodity in the past, it was never commodified. In other words, while the art itself may have been exchanged for other goods, the artist himself was not treated as a commodity. The art of the past may have served a purpose, it may have contained a mediated message, but it was still a product, and it was the product that was valued, not its brand identity.

The commodification of art creates a unique problem in history. If it is the spectacle that matters, and the artist’s identity that has value, then what value is left in the art itself?

What then separates art from ordinary objects? Is there any aesthetic emotion that remains in the work of art itself, or does the aesthetic emotion dwell completely within the spectacle? These are questions that cannot easily be answered, and ultimately will require the lens of history to answer completely. But they are a pressing concern, for when art is commodified, it may cease to be art and instead become celebrity, product, or worse, advertising. For the Silo, Vasilios Avramidis

Works Cited
Berger, Arthur Asa. Seeing is Believing: An Introduction to Visual
Communication. New York, NY: McGraw Hill, 2008. Print.
Debor, Guy. “Showing Seeing: A Critique of Visual Culture.” The Visual Culture
Reader. Ed.Nicholas Mirzoeff. New York, NY: Routelage, 1998. 142-144. Print.
Klein, Naomi. No Logo, No Space, No Choice, No Jobs. New York, NY: Picador, 2000.
Print.
Marx, Karl. “Showing Seeing: A Critique of Visual Culture.” The Visual Culture
Reader. Ed.Nicholas Mirzoeff. New York, NY: Routelage, 1998. 122-123. Print.
Riding, Alan. Alas, Poor Art Market: ‘A Multimillion Dollar Headcase.’ The New York
Times. June 2007, Damien Hirst and the Commodification of Art http://www.visual-studies.com/interviews/moxey.htm

Art

Museum Celebrates Banksy- An Artist Who Hates Museums

May 8, 2024 The Silo Leave a comment

(NEW YORK) – The presence of The Banksy Museum in New York City has been confirmed. SoHo is now the home to the world’s largest collection of Banksy’s life-sized murals and artwork. Located at 227 Canal Street (at Broadway), NYC The Banksy Museum is now open, in preview, to the public. The official press opening is Wednesday, May 15. Tickets are now available online at MuseumBanksy.com and on site at the museum. Advance reservations are strongly encouraged.
Displaying over 160 works by the world’s most famous-yet-anonymous street artist, The Banksy Museum recreates the revolutionary and often ephemeral art that Banksy has painted on surfaces in London, Bristol, Paris, Venice, Bethlehem, New York, Los Angeles, and beyond. Visitors to the museum will immerse themselves in an environmental experience, giving viewers access to Banksy creations, much of which has long since been whitewashed or dismantled. Beyond the iconic street art, the exhibition also features some of the artist’s studio work, as well as animated visual and video elements.
The New York Banksy Museum experience, an American premiere, follows successful exhibitions in Paris, Barcelona, Kraków and Brussels. The new exhibition, a New York premiere, is expanded to over 160 recreations, making it the largest display of Banksy work ever seen in a single setting.

In Wall and Piece, one of his four books containing photographs of his work complemented with his own thoughts, Banksy says “copyright is for losers” and encourages non-commercial use of his work for activism and the public’s personal enjoyment.
Banksy’s art has been further amplified by worldwide media coverage of his rebellious pranks. Between 2003 – 2005, Banksy made headlines by covertly placing his artwork beside masterpieces at The Tate and The British Museums in London; The Louvre in París; and The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Brooklyn Museum and The American Museum of Natural History in New York. In 2018, Banksy shook the art establishment when he orchestrated the self-destruction of his canvas, “Girl with Balloon,“ having it drop through a shredder built into the bottom of its gilt frame just moments after it sold for $1.4 million usd / $1.92 million cad at Sotheby’s. The first artwork in history to have been created live during an auction, the work was renamed “Love Is In The Bin” and resold for $25.4 million usd/ $34.9 million cad just three years later.
The art world has coined the phrase “the Banksy effect” to illustrate the increased interest in other street artists, largely due to Banksy’s overwhelming international success.

For the Silo, Brett Oberman.

Reviews

Air- The Film About Jordan’s Nike Shoes

April 10, 2023 The Silo Leave a comment

Note this review contains adult language and suggested themes.

AIR (2023): In 1984, shoe company Nike was barely keeping its head above water (they were third behind Converse and Adidas), when their talent scout Sonny Vaccaro got a wild hair up his ass about this up-and-coming b-ball phenom named Michael Jordan. He believed that he would be the key to Nike surviving *and* beating the competition. Hold on to your fuckin’ hats when I spoil this by telling you, yes, Jordan signed with Nike and the resulting shoe line known as “Air Jordan” went on to gross billions for everyone involved.

As to why I would be interested in watching some rich mofos get richer over some fuckin’ shoes that are most famous to me as being the kind of shoes people would shoot each other over, well, I wasn’t, not really anyway.

Sure, it’s directed by Ben Affleck, who I think is actually a good director (I still haven’t seen LIVE BY NIGHT, though), and it stars Matt Damon and a bunch of other people I didn’t know were in this. But still, why would I care to watch a movie about how a shoe that people would pay money hand-over-fist while neglecting their rent or child support payments — while goofing on the cheaper footwear worn by those who own a house and take care of their kids — came to be?

I wouldn’t.

But I had a very nice steak dinner that I washed down with an entire bottle of Cabernet (I buy my sneakers at Big 5), and I certainly couldn’t drive in my condition. So I took a Lyft to a nearby movie theater where I sure as fuck wasn’t going to watch the fuckin’ plumber cartoon, so AIR it was.

It’s really good!

I think Tom Cruise really did something to Hollywood with his Xenu magic; from TOP GUN: MAVERICK onwards, I’ve been surprised by the increased frequency of old-school popcorn good times that have been hitting the big screen, like DUNGEONS & DRAGONS: HONOR AMONG THIEVES. This is the latest; a JERRY MAGUIRE for those who ain’t got time for the lovey-dovey bullshit or that weirdo kid with the head-weight obsession.

You will have to get any potential chips off your shoulder about the worshipping of athletes, as well as let go of any issues with the capitalist system of these great United States, if you intend to find any enjoyment from this. Because I don’t know what fantasy version of this film you are hoping for that would shit on both those things as some kind of cynical treatise, but this ain’t it.

Instead you have an audience-pleaser starring Matt Damon as Vaccaro; I’m looking at him and thinking “Hey, I might be OK because Jason Bourne and I are both in the same shape” and then everybody else in the movie proceeds to call him fat. He’s obsessed with signing Jordan, and tries to convince Nike co-founder Phil Knight (Affleck) to pony up all the endorsement budget on him only, and it’s all very entertaining and even funny at times, for what amounts to people talking in offices of various sizes.

I was surprised by some of the actors who popped up in this, but you won’t be, because either you saw the trailer or because you’re about to read the following: Viola Davis, Jason Bateman, Marlon Wayans, Jay Mohr, Chris Tucker (who seems to have a good thing going for him by only showing up every ten years or so to play a supporting role in critically acclaimed films), and Chris Messina, who by virtue of having co-starred with The Adorable Amy Adams *twice*, makes him A-OK with me.

The movie worships Michael Jordan, which makes sense considering the context.

Here’s a man who is arguably the greatest basketball player of all time, who took a struggling shoe company with him to the stratosphere, grossing billions upon billions. Shit, why *wouldn’t* this film suck him off and portray him as some kind of religious entity, even going as far as to not show his face, as if he were the Prophet Muhammad?

I’m fine with all that. What I’m not fine with is that at no point did I get to hear him say “Fuck them kids”, and that’s how a movie *doesn’t* get five stars on Letterboxd. For the Silo, E.F. Contentment.

Have you seen this movie? Are you planning on watching it? Leave us your comments below.

Culture

Christmas Gift Made In China? Historical Long Distance Trade Lead To Modern Global Lives Of Things

December 23, 2022 The Silo Leave a comment

Until quite recently, the field of early modern history largely focused on Europe.

The overarching narrative of the early modern world began with the European “discoveries,” proceeded to European expansion overseas, and ended with an exploration of the fac-tors that led to the “triumph of Europe.” When the Journal of Early Modern History was established in 1997, the centrality of Europe in the emergence of early modern forms of capitalism continued to be a widely held assumption. Much has changed in the last twenty years, including the recognition of the significance of consumption in different parts of the early modern world, the spatial turn, the emergence of global history, and the shift from the study of trade to the commodities themselves.

Sometimes conferences disappear from view as soon as the delegates disperse.

Other times, when the papers are published in an edited volume, conferences come to be seen as important milestones in the historiography. The two volumes edited by James Tracy, entitled The Rise of Merchant Empires and The Political Economy of Merchant Empires published in 1990 and 1991, respectively, move through their various stages of production, ownership, transmission and transformation .

Moreover, those stages are overlapping, circulatory and contradictory; objects move in and out of collections, as they move in and out of fashion, and meanings are never stable. When a feathered crown is produced in Spanish America, for example, it has a very different meaning from when it enters into a cabinet of curiosity, and when it is taken out of the cabinet to appear in a spectacular performance in the street or in the theatre, it once again takes on a different meaning.

Objects gain biographies; earlier meanings of objects are never erased but reshaped and translated to new circumstances, as Leah Clark showed in her study of the circulations of gems and jewels through the hands of a variety of owners in quattrocento Italy. Have we lost this meaning connection with mass produced items from China?

Such insights have benefitted not only from the global turn but also from developments in the fields of anthropology and art history, making the field more interdisciplinary than it was when the study of the trade in goods focused more on their trade than on the goods themselves.

The Founding of a New Journal

Despite Tracy’s efforts, European actors continued to hold central stage in the field. When the Journal of Early Modern History (JEMH) was established in 1997, a decade after the Minnesota conference, the centrality of Europe in the emergence of early modern forms of capitalism, for example, continued (and still continues) to be a widely held assumption. In part, this can be explained by the powerful legacy of giants in the field like Fernand Braudel and Immanuel Wallerstein.

1 James Tracy, ed.,The Rise of Merchant Empires: Long-Distance Trade in the Early Modern World, 1350-1750, Studies in Comparative Early Modern History (Cambridge, 1990); James Tracy, ed., The Political Economy of Merchant Empires, Studies in Comparative Early Modern History (Cambridge, 1991).

2 Herman Van der Wee, “Structural Changes in European Long-Distance Trade, and Particularly in the Reexport Trade from South to North, 1350-1750,” in The Rise of Merchant Empires, 14-33; Niels Steensgaard, “The Growth and Composition of the Long-Distance Trade of England and the Dutch Republic before 1750,” in The Rise of Merchant Empires, 102-52; The importance of comparative methodologies is also spelled out in the short editorial that accompanies the first part of the first volume of the JEMH. See James D. Tracy, “From the Editors,” Journal of Early Modern History 1 (1 January 1997):3

Braudel’s concern was entirely with European history over the longue durée; Wallerstein’s 1976 study identified Europe as one of the core regions in the modern capitalist economy as it emerged in the sixteenth century. Regions like Central Africa, India and China were designated as peripheries, meaning that their natural resources and low-skill, labor-intensive production sustained the economic growth of the core region. Wallerstein’s framing of the relationship between the early modern European core and its peripheries formed the base for much of the scholarship of the past decades, including numerous studies of the long-distance or intercontinental trade between core and periphery.

Much that was written also continued to identify long-distance trade as the preserve of either the various East India Companies associated with individual nations, or of the specifically named merchant communities such as the Armenians, the Jews, Wang Gungwu’s Hokkien merchants, or the Bajaras and Banyas merchant communities.

Such groups appear in the literature as having a clear identity that separates them from other groups and an often marginal status that makes them especially suited to the life of the itinerant merchant who covers vast distances.

And for much of the 1990s and beyond, the emphasis continued to be on commodities traded over long distances, from Asia to Europe via land or sea routes, including luxury items that justified the high cost associated with their transport. Precious metals were sent from the Americas to Asia, silks and spices arrived in the Levant via overland trade routes, and once the Europeans had rounded the Cape of Good Hope, luxury goods like porcelains, precious stones, and exotic hardwoods were shipped across the oceans along with silks and spices. Long-distance trade as it appears in Tracy’s two volumes on merchant empires was undoubtedly seen as important, but as essentially different from the bulk trade in grains, timber and salt that, for example, underpinned the growth of the early modern Dutch economy.

3 Fernand Braudel,Civilization and Capitalism, 15th-18th Century, trans. Siân Reynolds, 3 vols. (Berkeley, 1992); Immanuel Maurice Wallerstein, The Modern World-System: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century (New York, 1976). At least 23 research articles published between 1997 and the present in JEMHquote Braudel’s work, and a further five quote Wallerstein.

4 Gungwu Wang, “Merchants without Empire: The Hokkien Sojourning Communities,” in The Rise of Merchant Empires, 400-422; Irfan Habib, “Merchant Communities in Precolonial India,” in The Rise of Merchant Empires, 371-99.

In other words, when the JEMH was founded, the centrality of Europe in shaping global trade relations, the separation of agents into distinct nation-based groups, and the classification of goods over long distances as luxuries of less importance all still had a very strong presence.

One major change did occur, however, more or less between the appearance of The Rise of Merchant Empires in 1990, and the establishment of the JEMH in 1997.

John Brewer and Roy Porter’s 1993 Consumption and the World of Goods was one of those transformative collections of articles that inaugurated a whole new way of doing history.6 Brewer and Porter were not the first to use the title; Mary Douglas and Baron Isherwood had already published a book with a very similar title in 1979. But Brewer and Porter, and many others who went on to publish in the field of what we might call consumption studies, took the study of the consumer in a new direction, away from the eighteenth-century European debates over whether the consumption of luxury goods was morally justifiable, and towards sophisticated studies of the complex contexts in which people desired goods and in which that desire and demand for goods went on to transform society, culture and the ………… to continue reading click here for full document in PDF format.

For the Silo by Anne Gerritsen, University of Warwick. Paper courtesy of academia.edu

Culture

Interesting Book On Trade And Civilization Prehistory To Early Modern Era

May 24, 2018 The Silo Leave a comment

This book provides the first global analysis of the relationship between trade and civilization from the beginning of civilization around 3000 BC including the Silk Road, the Indian Ocean trade, Near Eastern family traders of the Bronze Age, and the Medieval Hanseatic League, it examines the role of the individual merchant, the products of trade, the role of the state, and the technical conditions for the land and sea transport that created diverging systems of trade and developed global trade networks.

Trade networks, however, were not durable. The contributors discuss the establishment and decline of great trading network systems, and how they related to the expansion of civilization, and to different forms of social and economic exploitation. Case studies focus on local conditions as well as global networks until sixteenth century when the whole globe was finally connected by trade.

Trade and Civilization results from a three-step academic venture. The idea for this book originated in two Swedish interdisciplinary conferences on Global Histories held in 2011 and 2012, where a number of central research themes were identified and discussed. It inspired three editors to propose a carefully prepared international follow-up conference on the theme of trade and civilization that should lead to (this) a book.

Click here to continue reading full book text in PDF. For the Silo, Christian Christiansen.

Fashion

Q And A With Self Made Millionaire And Luxury Sommelier Noel Shu

April 6, 2017 The Silo Leave a comment

For the high end market, there are often many different brands of similar products and services vying for attention. What are some effective ways luxury consumers can stay abreast of the newest, highest quality products and services?

This can actually be the done the good ol’ fashioned way and that’s simply to read a lot. Everything that you can possibly be looking for, think you might be looking for or not even know you’re looking for is on the Internet. Every day when I wake up, I spend a good 30 minutes and go through literally everything while I’m drinking my coffee—from international news to gossip to anything I can find that’s different from what I read before. People are out there doing everything they can to appease the people.

You are a member of a network called, “The Billionaires Club.” What are some of the luxury brands you and your inner circle are paying attention to and what draws these brands apart?

I would say these days quite a few people have moved away from just so called “big purchases.” Everything is now more about personal touches. For instance, many people own a Rolex, Audemars Piguet or Hublot. More often than not, some of these are one out of however many but how many people really have something that’s one of kind? Not too many. The other point is that the watch may suit you but it doesn’t reflect your own personality, likes and dislikes. So what’s actually becoming quite popular is engraving one’s watches. I’ve seen some crazy designs that really add some character to a person’s wrist such as koi fish, skull heads and zodiac signs.

So back to the main question and one particular brand that has stood out is Golden Concept. Again, it’s all about personal touches these days and being unique. Golden Concept specializes in luxury cases for your phone. They have gold, snakeskin and gator cases just to name a few. All done to the highest of quality and many are customizable. So if you’re looking to stand out, make sure to check them out.

Another brand which has seen quite a bit of press and accolades is JetSmarter, one of the more successful private aviation companies. For many entrepreneurs, meetings take place in different cities, different continents and in different time zones. JetSmarter offers these services in an easy-to-maneuver application that makes flying private relatively affordable and easy.

World’s most expensive ‘whatever’: click me

What are the top three luxury items or brands that have captivated your own attention right now?

Right now there are three top brands that are top-of-mind for me right now. These are Emperada Cigar Humidor by Imperiali Geneve; Astonomia Tourbillion by Jacob & Co; and Bentley EXP 10 Speed 6 Concept car.

Not everyone can afford luxury brands. What would you suggest for those who have the desire to appear high end but not necessarily the means?

There’s actually been a lot of hype surrounding brands that cater specifically to people who enjoy the “finer things” but are limited by what’s in their wallet. Many bloggers, for instance, are always writing about the newest gadget, accessory or clothing. I would recommend finding a few that fit your style and follow them on Instagram to see what it is that they’re rocking on a day to day basis. Many people have to understand that your average blogger is there to inform the public on some of the newest fashion do’s and don’ts, and these are all done with new brands or affordable pre-existing brands.

Second, which I have seen quite a bit, is on Kickstarter or similar sites that are always offering “perks” for those who invest early in their brands. Without naming names, a few brands offered a discounted handmade Italian leather, skeleton movement watches for a fraction of the cost to the first “so many” number of investors.

Just keep in mind for everything high-end there is always a cheaper counterpart. Don’t worry just about name brand or high end. All that matters is that it looks good and makes you feel great.

For those who focus on products that are affordable luxury, who are some of the brands doing the best and what are the keys to success?

One of the biggest and most successful brands that I have seen that caters more towards the everyday luxury is Tory Burch. Although TB is for women, I have on many occasions bought it for family, friends and clients so I can safely say I have quite a bit of exposure to this brand and can thus speak with some confidence. Obviously, price point for TB is well within the means of many. Besides that, what is it that has led TB to such success? I would say three main factors: relate-ability, professionalism and seamlessness. Relate-ability in that walking through the concrete jungle that is New York, TB products have always caught my eye in their simplicity but also how stylish it is, whether on a working woman running into Starbucks or that beautiful lady going to brunch. Second, professionalism – although many brands always stress the attentiveness of the staff, it pales in comparison to TB. People have to understand that often times upper tier luxury items are for a certain group and employees are naturally prejudiced to people who they perceive not to be at that level. There have been times where I would walk into a Rolex store unattended for 15 minutes and the instant my AP peaks out from under my shirt, someone is there to help. This just doesn’t happen at TB and for that I am quite appreciative. Seamlessness in TB’s product, in that it offers just the right amount “je ne sais quoi.” Most of their products can be matched with a variety of other brands. This has all led to the tremendous success that TB has experienced over these past few years.

What are the top three factors that truly set an ultra-premium wine, champagne or spirit brand apart from less costly luxury beverage counterparts, wine and otherwise?

Marketing wine for the luxury market is a really tough job to do. Quite frankly it’s because you’re trying to appease a group of people who have seen it all. People always say when you do something for long enough, whether you want to or not you will become a bit of a connoisseur. That’s especially true for those in the wine industry. Most are well educated, well informed and have a true passion towards exploring the finer points of what’s in a wine bottle. If we were to say that all wines in the luxury market were of the same caliber, there would still be so many factors in play, the first being accessibility and quantity. Many luxury wines are such because there is a limited supply. You can’t expect a brand to sell at the same price point when there are only 10,000 bottles as compared to 100,000 bottles. However, although there are still 10,000 bottles that were produced, that doesn’t mean your everyday Joe would be able to get his hands on them even if he’s willing to dish out the necessary cash. Thus, there’s another added premium to an already sky high price.

Another example is time and care. For those who are only there to turn a quick profit, the longer time they spend on making a wine, the more money that needs to be invested. That in itself increases cost and decreases profit. This is why sometimes you have wineries that will actually keep the wine in their cellars for years after bottling to ensure that the wine has at least matured to a passable level. By care, I mean winemakers are very passionate about their craft and thus hate having their name associated with sub-par wine. Thus, you have some years where there is little to no wine produced by a certain grower because only a small amount of the grapes harvested passed the standard or none at all.

Never one to rest on his laurels and even amid a diversity of endeavors, Shu continues to raise the bar for himself professionally and personally. Whether it be as an active investor looking for the latest innovation in the luxury and tech space or, despite his jam-packed schedule, his current pursuit of an Ivy League Master’s degree at Columbia University. Clearly this good life connoisseur turned luxe market mogul will continue making an impact on the numerous high-end industries for many years to come. For the Silo, Merilee Kern. Merilee is an influential media voice and lauded communications strategist.

Politics

Economic Aspects Of Globalization In The Past Material World

January 12, 2017 The Silo Leave a comment

Questions and deliberations concerning globalization are more than a hot topic of extended cross-disciplinary focus in academia; they are also central to the long-simmering debates regarding policies and their implications that today often enter the public arena. For example, a quick perusal of broadly accessible media outlets from late 2013 and early 2014 reflects a suite of still unresolved but vibrant civic pondering: “When did globalization start” (The Economist 2013), “The dark side of globalization: why Seattle’s 1999 protesters were right” (Smith 2014), and “Have we reached the end of globalization?: (CNN 2014).

Yet can such issues really be evaluated judiciously without defining the critical elements of globalization, and then dissecting and assessing its historical scope? Given the broad temporal and spatial elements implied by the concept of “globalization”, it is not most likely that the outcomes and effects of this multifaceted process would be highly variable across time and space?

But through a diachromic and comparative examination of human connections over time, might we see some commonalities and learn relevant lessons?

Continue reading this essay by Gary Feinman by clicking here.

*Banner image of Ronald McDonald -McDonalds China courtesy of image.minyanville.com

Fashion

Healing From Capitalism With Prints On PAOM Pieces

September 28, 2016 The Silo Leave a comment

paom.comhttp://www.paom.com

PAOM, 230 5th Ave Suite 1107, NYC 10001

Vintage

Chinese Newspaper Baskets

June 29, 2016 The Silo Leave a comment

2chinese_paper_baskets1 — Surprisingly sturdy and functional wastebaskets

Okay I admit it, newspapers are dead. But maybe in China they aren’t. Or are. Because in a local bargain shop I discovered a cache of wastebaskets in three different sizes made entirely out of newspapers: Chinese newspapers to be exact. And that started me thinking.

It seems probable that in China, or somewhere near there, an active recycling program is taking place. Instead of shredding or burning them for landfill, some sort of manufacturing facility is turning clean, bright and seemingly unread newspapers into functional everyday objects. Does this mean that the newspaper industry is suffering in China? Is there a surplus of printed newspapers? Are more Chinese people getting their news from digital media than print? Who can say. My phone calls to the Chinese embassy consulate in Toronto about these pressing issues were not returned.

The irony of wastebaskets made out of, well, waste, is not (ahem) wasted on me.

These products are powerful “green” metaphors produced in one of the most polluting nations on the planet. The industrialization of China is full steam ahead and damn the torpedoes. Consumer goods? They want everything we have, so it’s hard to claim any moral high ground. Anyway, there is an environmental statement here, intended or not. I’m just not sure what it is.

On the other hand, they are just really fun and handy wastebaskets that feel great when you pick them up by their long, soft handles. I kind of want one.

Supplemental:

In Jennifer Baichwal’s film Manufacturing Landscapes, about Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky, we learn there are whole towns in China dedicated to breaking down and “smelting” the useable metals out of discarded electronics. When you choose to buy a new DVD player because it’s cheaper than repairing your old one, this is likely where your old one goes. Apparently you can smell these towns a mile off. The Chinese government sure knows a thing or two about recycling. But what would it cost to do this kind of metal recovery safely? What would it cost to make baskets out of the millions of unread, discarded and obsolete print newspapers in Canada?

Politics

Letter To The Silo- Ways To Catch Wild Pigs Is How To Create Socialism

March 14, 2015 The Silo Leave a comment

Dear Silo, a thought to remember- Marx said,”Remove one freedom per generation and soon you will have no freedom and no one would have noticed.” These are words to the wise, if you can understand what’s going on around you…. *

There was a chemistry professor in a large college that had some exchange students in the class. One day, the professor noticed one young man, an exchange student, who kept rubbing his back and stretching as if his back hurt. The professor asked the young man what was the matter. The student told him he had a bullet lodged in his back. He had been shot while fighting communists in his native country who were trying to overthrow his country’s government and install a new communist regime. In the midst of his story, he looked at the professor and asked a strange question.

He asked: “Do you know how to catch wild pigs?” The professor thought it was a joke and asked for the punch line. The young man said that it was no joke. “You catch wild pigs by finding a suitable place
in the woods and putting corn on the ground. The pigs find it and begin to come every day to eat the free corn. “When they are used to coming every day, you put a fence down one side of the place where they are used to coming. When they get used to the fence, they begin to eat the corn again and you put up another side of the fence.

“They get used to that and start to eat again. You continue until you have all four sides of the fence up with a gate in the last side. “The pigs, which are used to the free corn, start to come through the gate to eat that free corn again. You then slam the gate on them and catch the whole herd. “Suddenly the wild pigs have lost their freedom. They run around and around inside the fence, but they are caught. Soon they go back to eating the free corn. They are so used to it that they have forgotten how to forage in the woods for themselves, so they accept their captivity.”

The young man then told the professor that is exactly what he sees happening in Canada .

The government keeps pushing us toward Communism/Socialism and keeps spreading the free corn out in the form of programs such as supplemental income, tax credit for unearned income, tax exemptions, tobacco subsidies, welfare entitlements, medicine, drugs, etc., while we continually lose our freedoms, just a little at a time.

One should always remember two truths: There is no such thing as a free lunch, and you can never hire someone to provide a service for you cheaper than you can do it yourself. Name withheld by request. Originally post Fall 2014.

Culture

CNBC’s “Secret Lives of the Super Rich”

June 6, 2014 The Silo 3 Comments

CNBC’s half-hour primetime series “Secret Lives of the Super Rich,” premiered Tuesday, June 10th at 10PM & hour episodes began airing each Tuesday for four consecutive weeks.

Reported by CNBC’s Robert Frank and featuring New York City super broker Dolly Lenz, “Secret Lives of the Super Rich” unlocks the mansion gates and gives you rare access to a world inhabited by the wealthiest people on the planet. Here’s a sneak peek courtesy of The Silo:
http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000236913.

In the first episode, we met a man who’s taken his lifelong Lamborghini obsession from land to water. Also, “Secret Lives of the Super Rich” gets a rare invite on a luxury safari where there’s no shortage of wild life, or champagne. And, an exclusive look inside a Star Trek mega-mansion that may have you wondering if it’s actually the Starship Enterprise (video: http://www.cnbc.com/id/101735785 also see Star Trek Home Theater profiled here at the Silo: https://www.thesilo.ca/beam-me-up-35000000-usd-home-theater-for-sale-in-boca-raton/)

Culture

How To Start Blogging With Plastic Deerheads And Ironic Moustaches

June 21, 2013 The Silo 1 Comment

The trendy and kitschy Owl. images/photos: Charity Blaine

Blog writers are like Indie music that’s about to become “cool”, or rather, they are the people that enjoy the Indie music before it’s “cool”, in fact, they are most likely part of the reason it eventually becomes popular. Only it’s not just music. It’s everything. Lifestyle bloggers like EVERYTHING before it’s cool. Therefore, I, as a blog reader, know about everything cool before it is cool. I, am a blog world hipster, and I’m only partly ashamed to admit it.

To clarify, it’s not just the blogs themselves that set the trends; it’s also the only shops where bloggers sell their handmade goods, such as etsy.com. Years ago, I remember searching for kitschy little polymer clay earrings shaped like foods at etsy, today, when I no longer want them, they are available for a fraction of the price at popular stores such as Clare’s and Arden’s, although truthfully, they do look cheaper. The handmade versions look more like real food than the store bought versions. You should never believe anything that doesn’t come with proof, so here are three substantial examples of bloggers, not retailers, setting the trends.

1) Owls. I really hate owls. I don’t think they’re cute. I don’t understand the obsession at all, but so many places these days sell things adorned with owls. Don’t get me wrong, I realize that owls were popular years ago, but this is a reference to the current owl obsession. Forever21.com and http://verified.codes/Forever-21 sells more than a dozen owl accessories so does Clare’s. Where did I first see an obsession with owls? In the blog world, for example, blogger Elycia Watson (loveelycia.com) from Hamilton, Ontario posted regularly about owls more than three years ago. All the blogs I initially read as a blogger were full of owls.

2) Geometric Shapes. Bloggers love chevrons, triangles, lines, squares, any simple shape that can be coloured pink or gold. This isn’t the best example, but two years ago, the Sidney Crosby of blogs, A Beautiful Mess, did a ‘do- it –yourself’ project “making a geometric mobile”. It’s a clothes hanger with dangling wire triangles wrapped in yarn, basic and geometric. Most of the bedding at Urban Outfitters these days is adorned with chevrons and triangles. This also points to the ‘do- it- yourself’ trend. These crafty women have been doing it yourself way before pinterest made it popular. To sound even more hipster, I remember when pinterest first started, in those days, there were no weight loss schemes or a surplus of one direction photos, it really was mostly crafts and home décor, and bloggers used it to find inspiration for new blog posts. I love pinterest, so thanks again bloggers for being cool before it was cool.

3) Since I’ve already given four substantial examples I don’t really need a number 3, but just in case you still doubt, take a look at Faux Deer Head for your wall. Flipping through a home décor magazine lately, I found a photo of a plaster deer head, in the style of the mounted, taxidermy deer head that hunters would have on their walls. Currently, even Home Hardware sells them. Bloggers have been doing this for years. They even use old piñata heads. They give the deer head hats and jewelery. The Dainty Squid was one of the first places I really remember seeing this phenomenon. Kayla found a plastic deer head more than 3 years ago, plopped a wig on its head and called it beautiful.

So the conclusion is- if you really want to be ahead of the wave, read blogs, small, crafty, lifestyle blogs. By the time any of that stuff hits the mainstream, you’ll be really sick of it and you can officially embrace your inner hipster and tell everyone, while sporting an ironic moustache, that you liked all those things, including ironic moustaches, before they were cool. For the Silo, Charity Blaine.

Supplemental- Street Trends: How Today’s Alternate Youth Cultures Are Creating Tomorrow’s Mainstream http://www.amazon.com/books/dp/0887308759

A 3D printer Photo Booth prints miniature versions of you http://tinyurl.com/mkw924

All of modern life is a spectacle. Much of what contemporary man experiences in Western society is a false social construct mediated by images.

No longer is the work of art itself a commodity, but rather the image of the artist (his/her/cis brand) that becomes the commodity.

Where once the products of labor were the commodity, now it is the spectacle that has become the commodity.

The spectacle feeds itself through the mediating of the image to create desire for status and recognition, through associations.

Perhaps art has always been a commodity?

The commodification of art creates a unique problem in history. If it is the spectacle that matters, and the artist’s identity that has value, then what value is left in the art itself?

I wouldn’t.

It’s really good!

The movie worships Michael Jordan, which makes sense considering the context.

Until quite recently, the field of early modern history largely focused on Europe.

Sometimes conferences disappear from view as soon as the delegates disperse.

The Founding of a New Journal

One major change did occur, however, more or less between the appearance of The Rise of Merchant Empires in 1990, and the establishment of the JEMH in 1997.

Canada's 'biggest little blogspace'