Abstract Value

Exhibiting such a broad, thorough, and representative set of works is the fulfillment of a long-standing personal wish.— Bernard Arnault

Something happens to artists at a certain point — when their work starts selling above an unearthly, somewhat ephemeral line. The individual works themselves cease to be genius (or middling, experimental, or fully realized). They become instead the products of a genius, all equally brilliant and — at least according to the dealers and brokers and art‑world hype teams that write catalogues and appreciations — equally valuable.

I was thinking about just that this past spring, while walking through the Fondation Louis Vuitton on the outskirts of Paris. The art museum and cultural centre, the personal legacy project of Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy’s founder and CEO, Bernard Arnault, looks a little like a spaceship docked in a public garden; it’s all insectoid folds and...