By Matthew Blackman

Plato wished to banish the artist’s from his ideal republic. His argument was that art is merely a representation of a representation and that in the search for truth art was of no use. Some have suggested that art has value in that it expresses the inexpressible and that this allows at least some kind of balance between the rational and the irrational. This is what Plato denied - that there was a place for irrational expression and that the rational side of our minds would always be able to explain it.
If this notion that art is the expression of the inexpressible how then are art fairs, which largely focused on money making, of any use to man or artist. If this is true then perhaps it should be argued that art fairs be should be banished from our not so ideal republic. This argument has, to a certain extent, been the elephant in the Joburg Fair that has but spoken its name only once. Simon Njami made a rather weak attempt to say that art fairs are by their nature inclusive. He suggested that they allowed the general public the time and space to contemplate art without gallerists breathing down their necks demanding and expressing faux ‘insightful’ ‘interpretative’ discourse. The question is how do art fairs allow this time and space considering that the gallerists are even more on the prowl at them than they are in their galleries.
The simple fact is that art fairs are about making money, there is really no getting around this. Inclusivity at a R100 a pop seems slightly ridiculous. If art is, in Plato’s words, two stages away from the throne of truth then art fairs seem at least several stages away form throne of inclusivity (if thrones can in fact be inclusive). So what can the value of art fairs be? Well, there value is that they do produce money not only for the gallerists but also for the people two stages from the throne of art fairs, the artists themselves. Not all artists shown at art fairs are the Kentridges of the world. There is some filter down effect for the poorer artists by showing them with the Kentridges. There is even filter down for the artists who are not even shown. As Justin Rhodes of Whatiftheworld was saying to me, he needs to sell Andrzej Nowicki’s work in order to fund some the more conceptual artists in their stable.
So art fairs are about making money. Is this a great capitalist evil? The fact that art fairs are directed at collectors and that collectors can be as uninsightful as to buy Brett Murray’s Gorilla because ‘no human can could really be as pure’ (Miranda Friedman M&G 24 March) is of really little concern, at least to my mind. The reality is that artists need collectors and art fairs. If it is worth keeping artists going who sell to people whose poverty in interpretive skills is well below the poverty of people who earn R100 a day are in pecuniary terms is another question entirely. However, if gallerists like Rhodes sustain other, less saleable, artists through the money they earn at art fairs then one can in fact find some value in art fairs.