Movie Review: Nathanial Kahn’s “The Price Of Everything” Examines The Difference Between Art’s Value And Its Price

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With unprecedented access to pivotal artists and the white-hot market surrounding them, this film dives deep into the contemporary art world, holding a fun-house mirror up to our values and our times — where everything can be bought and sold.

There’s no denying the power of great art. It moves us on a subliminal, intimate level; beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so a painting that one may deem life-changing, another may see as a bunch of colorful but meaningless squiggles on a canvas. Yet there is also a different kind of art appreciators: ones who see art pieces for their value, not in a cultural or historical context, but actual financial value, their price – “price” and “value” being the crucial difference here. To quote the painter Larry Poons, who frequently appears in the doc, those “people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.” They will sell the hell out of those squiggles if they “take off.”

“The Price of Everything,” Nathanial Kahn’s poignant and insightful documentary, questions what makes art great – mostly through the prism of contemporary paintings and sculptures – but its chief subject is the correlation between great art and commerce, and the inevitability of the two intertwining. Therein also lies a certain sadness, as Kahn seems to yearn for the days when art was made as a means of expression, of exorcism; when it functioned as a vehicle for change, a reflection of society, humans, us. Nowadays, commercial value is essential for art to survive, “money and art are like Siamese twins.” “The Price of Everything” celebrates the fact that the art scene is still flourishing, while also mourning its increasingly money-centric vapidness.

The running thread of the film is a preparation for a major auction at Sotheby’s in New York City by Amy Cappellazzo, its Executive Vice President. Passionate but pragmatic, stern but vulnerable, brimming with sophistication but also somewhat superficial, Amy herself would’ve made for a great documentary subject. She puts together collages, fretting over which piece goes with what sculpture, in anticipation of the hundreds of millions that are going to be made.

According to the artists Kahn interviews – and he gained access to Poons, Gerhard Richter, Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Jeff Koons, Marilyn Minter, among many others – “money is rarely a motivator for the artist.” When a dealer, or a critic, or an art collector lay their eyes on a piece, sees something in it and spreads the word, the piece becomes prohibitively pricey, and hence highly sought-after. “Contemporary art has become a luxury brand,” and the fault does not necessarily lie with the artists – although who doesn’t want to profit from their creation, to be heard and appreciated? “Artists have to make an enemy of envy,” one of the doc’s subjects says. “They must do this or it will eat them alive.”

This doc moves. The fact that it centers on so many beautiful pieces doesn’t hurt. It’s colorful, energetic, inspired. It contains fascinating analyses of art pieces from art dealers, auctioneers, historians, art collectors, and artists – who, of course, provide the best tidbits. There’s a treatise on Jeff Koons’ Diamond at about the halfway point that will take your breath away in its lyricism. The artists are intelligent, fervent, almost magical individuals with wisdom to share, particularly Poons, whose throwaway lines are more memorable than a dozen Hollywood screenwriters’: “There are no rules… Art doesn’t give a shit, it never has. […] My only defense against fate is color.” A brief but fantastic montage shows all the great contemporary masters at work, from Andy Warhol to Julian Schnabel. Kahn manages the near-impossible: his doc is both informative and entertaining.

You can’t put a price tag on true art and the way it makes you feel. In a perfect world, money shouldn’t be the top motivator for an artist. But we don’t live in a utopian society. With how wealth-driven and megalomaniac we’ve become, it’s getting increasingly difficult to focus on the creative, the beautiful, the spiritually cleansing. Kahn reminds us, in a few delicate brushstrokes, that great art still exists… it just may all be sold off to wealthy collectors, to never see the light of day again.

Now playing in select theaters nationwide