Thursday May 3, 2012
The Scream sold yesterday for the most ever paid for a work of art at auction.
This is a true socionomic moment. High prices in art coincide with tops in the stock market. Optimsim about continued prices brings ever higher prices. It was expected that Scream would bring $80 M, it did much better! Now, exactly what is being depicted in this work. This is from the article.
The work depicts a bald, skeletal figure in a blue shirt standing at a popular suicide spot on Oslo's horseshoe-shaped bay where people could often hear screams from a nearby insane asylum, according to art historians. Munch's sister, who had been diagnosed with schizophrenia, was housed in that asylum.(There is still debate over whether Munch's character is actually screaming or using his hands to muffle the sound of surrounding screams.)
And so the art world joins television and cinema. Hunger Games is the number one movie.
This figure seems to form the basis for the mask in Wes Craven's Scream Horror films.
Tv vieweres cannot get enough of vampires.
in bookstores tales of vampires and werewolves and zombies continue to sell well.
This is all reflective of the fascination with the occult and the dead and dying one expeccts in an extended 18 year period of economic stagnation.
As an individual stock BID Sootheby's displays a high correlation to the overall stock market. This is the perfect example of why that is so. BID is the mood in action expression of human social mood. Or as the article observes
The sale reflects the trophy-hunting atmosphere buoying the global art market, as billionaires vie for the few masterpieces that come up for sale any given season. Bragging rights are at stake, but their collective bidding has also helped recalibrate price levels for dozens of top artists.
One cannot use socionomics as an exact timing tool but then what is? However this is a pretty good indication of the frothy nature of social mood. Facebook buying Instagram for $1 B, Microsoft buying into Barnes spin off for $300 M, yep, altogether now, market tops exhibit inclusionary tendencies leading to mergers. Such deals invariably fall aprt in the ensuing market pullback. Remember Mercedes buying Chrysler only to pay a hedge fund to take it off their hands?
Interesting article! - Social mood at times seems to create what might appear to be anomalies with simultaneous hightened fervor in the direction of optimistic valuations and also pessimistic interest in darker subjects. Does this represent a peaking of emotional imbalance, I wonder? If so, it would represent an unhealthy situation in society as you seem to point out.
I have also noted that recently the 'Google\trends' report (last 12 months) did hit the lower channel on the item 'stock market top' indicating a recent complacency extreme, so the decline we are now seeing could have been expected. Since the reports seem to be on a slightly delayed time frame, I might expect this market decline to effect that reading.
The item 'economic downturn' remains elevated so this may temper the decline. I also noted that the majority of market EW and TA bloggers are going negative and since they are more often a contrarian indicator (not always, just more often), this might also support the notion that the decline may be more temporary than expected. The market will decide- just an observation.
Posted by: StuartD | May 06, 2012 at 08:21 AM
Stuart
well said, check out the emotional imbalance via Robin Wong's photos of the protest in Malaysia, link at end of today's post
Posted by: Dennis Elam | May 06, 2012 at 10:09 AM