Episode #1034 of Thinking With Mitch Joel is now live.

In this conversation with Douglas Woodham we get into something much bigger than the art world. It is really about how value gets created, protected, inflated, performed… and believed. Because whether we are talking about a Basquiat painting, a rare comic book, a luxury handbag, a sneaker drop, a vintage bass, or a limited-edition KAWS cereal box, the deeper question is the same: why do humans want to own things so badly? Doug is a rare guide for this kind of conversation. He is the former President of the Americas at Christie’s, the founder of Art Fiduciary Advisors, a former McKinsey partner, and someone with a PhD in economics who also happens to be deeply consumed by art. That combination matters. He understands the romance of visual culture, but he also understands supply, demand, pricing, scarcity, market structure, and the very human desire to turn objects into identity.

His latest book, Jean-Michel Basquiat – The Making of an Icon, is not just a biography of one of the most culturally visible artists of the modern era.

It is a study in how an artist becomes a symbol. Basquiat was known during his lifetime, but nowhere near the global force he became after his death. Today, his work sells for extraordinary sums, his imagery appears on clothing and accessories around the world, and his name sits somewhere between fine art, pop culture, branding, mythology and market engineering. That is where this conversation gets especially interesting. Doug and I talk about why fine art may be losing some of its cultural centrality at the very same time that collectibles are exploding everywhere else. We get into scarcity, status, secondary markets, NFTs, fractional ownership, artist compensation, licensing and why owning something has become increasingly performative in the age of social media.

Mostly, this is a conversation about belief.

Not belief in the spiritual sense, but belief as an economic engine. The belief that something is rare. The belief that something is culturally important. The belief that owning it says something about who we are.

Listen to my conversation with Doug Woodham here: The Business Of Culture And Art With Douglas Woodham – TWMJ #1034.

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