“When you see a man casting pearls without getting even a pork chop in return – it is not against the swine that you feel indignation. It is against the man who valued his pearls so little that he was willing to fling them into the muck and let them become the occasion for a whole concert of grunting….”

These are the words of Dominique Francon. Dominique is a fictional character from Ayn Rand’s epic novel, “The Fountainhead”. They come to mind when wandering around in Sven Harry Karlsson’s newly erected yet curiously un-finished art museum situated in Vasaparken, a cosy part central Stockholm. One is amazed at how the chap truly must despise art, in spite his every media driven effort to prove the contrary.

Sven Harry Karlsson is a self made man. A mason by trade, he has managed to scrape together a sizeable fortune over the years, quite likely funds earned through his private construction company, Folkhem. A small venture operating in the Stockholm area – in the business of producing family-sized wooden houses, almost totally devoid of  creative feel and innovation. Nothing new there, Swedish architecture has never truly recovered its creative nerve or status since the 70′s – and for that Mr. Karlsson certainly is not to blame. At least not in as much as you can blame a passenger on the train from Inhabitable to Mediocre. In any case, Mr. Karlsson has decided to build his very own art museum.

Or is it? Because on entering, the visitor is told that over half the space in this new building is in fact set aside for domestic applications. Flats, studios and the like.

An unsuspecting party might not react to such a statement – but perhaps experience a trifle fear for art housed in residential areas. A fear that might escalate upon hearing that the architect of the site is one Gert Wingårdh. And that the top floor of the building is a private penthouse the plans of which precisely follow Mr. Karlsson’s 16th century mansion, Ekholmsnäs – with the motivation that he has never “seen the plan of that house improved upon”.

On reflection, that should be frightful news for anyone considering to buy a house built by Mr. Karlsson. Mental note to prospective buyers, then: The man disapproves of site plans newer than the 16th century. One does wonder where the bathroom facilities might be located…

For those unfamiliar with the name, Gert Wingårdh is one of precious few living Swedish architects with a decent enough brand value for investors to use his fame in order to be able to add another story or level to whatever building they’re planning. Greatly overrated, Wingårdh’s the sort of fellow you’d pitch to the Council, knowing full well that the politically appointed imbeciles in it know next to nothing about architecture or city planning. But they do know Gert Wingårdh, and as far as competence goes, that’s enough.

The description of the actual building, the bastard child of Mr. Karlsson’s 16th century estate and some copper brutalist outbreak is perhaps best omitted. Much like the rest of Folkhem’s mediocre production, it has not much to boast.

However, the fact that the museum is much more a block of flats than a celebration of art, the prime location – and not forgetting that Wingårdh’s name is smeared right across it like so much jam on the chin of a five year old, should raise some serious questions about the true nature of the venture: A bet made on a late night of fat-cat poker perhaps? Something to do with boasting about being able to trick the City of Stockholm into building private luxury apartments on prime real estate?

Because about art, it is not.

Yet Sven Harry proclaims himself to be an art lover. A collector and patron of the arts. Should such a bold statement not be reflected on site? Why then, was there at the public reception just one single piece of art in place? (An installation piece by Lars Kleen). Well, perhaps that was a bit harsh. There was in fact one other major piece, but since the fire doors had swung shut (trapping Mr. Karlsson’s visitors inside it) – in effect, only one piece could be viewed. Not counting the eye sore invoking, badly lit sculptures next to the cloak room, of course.

And why was Mr. Karlsson, whose lofty statements of bringing art to the people could be heard in the papers for weeks prior, not there for the public inauguration? Admittedly, he there was for the press.

Perhaps there was no time – or perhaps, Mr. Karlsson should have waited to inaugurate the whole project. As things stood at the time, the building was not finished. The elevators boasted spongy railings, a makeshift building light as only illumination, various parts of the interior clearly not in place, the sign system was a deplorable homage to amateurish efforts in Microsoft Word and nothing, nothing in the whole building seemed to actually work.

As any decent collector (say Christian Boros, for instance) with a stroke of healthy egoism will tell you, what is needed in a vanity project (apart from impeccable taste in art – and yes, there are better and worse tastes in art) – is perfection. If one is opening an art museum in one’s own name, should one not then wish it to be perfect – or as perfect as can be? Who in their right mind will let visitors into a hazardous criss cross of wires, untrained personnel, drying paint and malfunctioning doors? What myopia must have ruled at Mr. Karlsson’s office the day he decided to open a half-finished venture? Or perhaps his tenants were so anxious to move in that the whole “art thing” was forgotten in the process? (Dorothy! Where’s that damned sculpture? The press is coming!) Whatever took place, it was a bad choice, and it reflects poorly on Mr. Karlssons junior efforts at art patronage.

Almost as badly as he manages to put it himself, in fact. Stating that he wished to take the “drama out of art”, meaning to make it accessible to “everyone”, he in one interview finished the sentence by saying that he has no regard for international art. For Mr. Karlsson, Swedish art will suffice.

Truly, a novel way of disguising the obvious. Namely that he has no idea on how to value and appraise art. International or domestic. Moreover, it’s hard to claim something as ridiculously art-hating as wanting art to be simple and understandable. Without chastising junior art admirerers, clearly, the more references stacked in the eye of the beholder, the more the art will speak to him, or her. And references take time and effort. Mr. Karlsson’s statement might be the most silly thing said about art in public for many years and it suggests either a rampant hatred of the subject or just genuine incompetence.

Let’s hope for the latter, for the man’s own sake.

As the visitor leaves the “museum”, another line from the same novel by Mrs. Ayn Rand that opened this article comes to mind:

“A house can have integrity, just like a person; and just as seldom.”

Quite.

Following the auction, voices were raised either in artful indignation at the street artist Mr. Brainwash, who’s work not only met the estimate price, but so surpassed it that some even speculated that well known scandalous media personality and former street artist, popularly known by the moniker “Banksy”, was the one to raise the prices in anticipation of his own contribution to coming auctions.

And while that perhaps might well be true,  it is dangerous, however, to speculate in advance of facts. In reality, even if he did, it is of no real importance.

For a discussion about art is best not intermingled with that of its value. Value, as such, has no real consequence in the art world. The art market follows much the same rules as the stock market does, even if the arenas of exchange are quite different: One speculates, one invests and one usually has rather poor taste. And since taste has always been for either the relatively poor middle classes (back in the days where individuality still hadn’t destroyed the concept of social classes) – or the ridiculously wealthy – again, it is of no consequence for the investment that art can be.

No. This will not be a discourse price of art or its monetary value. Something else entirely is the objective.

The dangerous threshold that street art has long been on the verge of passing – the complete and total loss of integrity – has been crossed. Street art has been quite the phenomenon in the past ten to five years. And in the last two, it has exploded to the point of near annihilation. Street art suffers from over exposure from blogs, digital documentation and media time. Its innate vale has been drained in a massive onslaught of zealous, ever-present, real-time coverage. Street art has been crushed under the weight of too much reality, shattering its double standard of illusory intent, sending it back to the fine art galleries, where canvas and rebellion hang, neatly lighted, side by side.

Conventional art has, as always, lurked in the shadows, playing the symbiotic part of the hidden accomplice, waiting for its baby sister to come of age, the corner of its mouth presumably suspended in mockery. No art truly comes from no where, no matter what credo or manifest street artists have desperately clung to. The parasitic relationship between conventional (contemporary, even if contemporary is only that with it self) and street art has evolved into an auto immune disease where the one vessel has thoroughly, and beyond recall, poisoned the other.

Curiously, on the Phillips de Pury & Company auction of October 14th, two other works were sold. A tapestry and a screen print by Andy Warhol.

In many ways, it is a fitting eulogy to the defiant spirit of street art. Andy Warhol was the perfect post modern artist. He perfected the principle of Illusion, making it the most egalitarian and democratic principle there is: Everyone could be an artist, and as walk-ons in his studio, often were. It was the complete effacing of the artist, everyone being the perfect accomplice to art – the work being instantly successful by way of the walk-on. If you were there, you counted, you did art. Whatever fame arose from it was not from the work of a genius but from the mechanics of transfer, the media that helped the “artist” channel an image. The media that today is perpetual, enough for everyone that cares to be a part of it. Indeed, it is so plentiful that it is best described as a joyous, hysterical, rampant machine.

When the work of Mr B sells for a speculative amount, street art has come full circle where illusion and machinery are concerned. It has copied the democratic principle of anyone, the walk-on, as deterministic artist – and rendered the actual art work obsolete. The light is once more centered on the artist. No one cares for the actual work – the value lies in its transfer – that machine that has made it possible. The artists.

It is by way of this mechanism that street art is legitimized, and as such, obliterated. Street art cannot exist outside the streets. Its value lies in anonymity of the artist and aesthetic transfer of the work. When attention limelights the author, the work dies, and the movement loses its integral, street, value.

In this death, street art shares much with the cultural fad of urban exploration. Both cultural inclinations are best practiced out of the eye of the public. Both rely on the transmission of media. Both degenerate and retrograde when illuminated from within, displaying appalling lack of integrity, vision, consistency, ingenuity.

Art has, and has always had, an involuntary pact with value. And while conventional art has learned to co-exist with value, some would claim in spite of value, street art, that particular brand of creativity – imprinted and burdened with the whiff of urban sewer – is still but a unprepared sibling, caught unaware in an excess of real time exposure – at the mercy and feet of art dealers and audience alike.

For all intents and purposes, Street art is, in fact and deed – dead.

There is something profoundly modern in this. Perhaps Jeff Koons was the first Web designer.