Let's buy it! Kunst und Einkauf

Art and buying are two things that are quite interrelated, but nonetheless seem to lie far apart from one another. Over the centuries, fashions in the art market have been manifest in diverse forms. The art and financial markets are linked by big speculative bubbles—such as, for instance, the tulip mania in the Netherlands in the 17th century. The 20th century turned all traditions upside down: Marcel Duchamp declared industrial goods to be art; Andy Warhol took up supermarket products in his pictures. In his painting Mutter und Tochter, the most expensive painter on the current market, Gerhard Richter, shows Brigitte Bardot shopping with her mother.

The catalogue, which accompanies the wide-ranging exhibition at the LUDWIGGALERIE Schloss Oberhausen, brings together works from the 16th century until today and sheds light for the first time on the broad field that interconnects art and buying.