Long before the market went into overdrive and painters like Guogu made it their subject, American artist Danica Phelps, whose work was in the Whitney show, was examining notions of value. Her most trenchant commentaries on this topic are the “generations” of drawings she has been making for the past 10 years. Each time she sold an original drawing of the same image–there were several subjects—she added a strip detailing the other owners and prices paid. “Just the fact that they were endlessly available really subverted what drives the market,” says Phelps. She is now at work on a series called “The Stripe Factory,” another unlimited line of drawings. “My dealers might be concerned that the prices won’t go up as they do with my unique works,” she says.

If dealers are leery, savvy collectors appreciate art that looks at the art world and the market through a sociological lens. Earlier this year, New York collectors Melva Bucksbaum and Raymond Learsy spent $16,500 on Jennifer Dalton’s sculpture The Collector-ibles, 2006; they are also depicted in it. The piece is a large vitrine whose shelves are stocked with thimble-size figurines of collectors from ArtNews magazine’s Top 200, clutching shopping bags labeled for the type of art they collect and perched atop tiny plinths that bear their names and sources of income. “There was an element of flattery, but that wasn’t the focus,” says Learsy. “It’s a wonderfully humorous, elegant, insightful piece that comments on an aspect of the art world that is integral to its pulse.”

According to curator Jens Hoffman, it is a sign of the times that works of institutional critique—a genre of which market art is a subset—are themselves highly marketable. The collectors of this genre seem to have a sense of humor, and artists have taken note. Last year Pablo Helguera put out a tongue-in-cheek book called The Pablo Helguera Manual of Contemporary Art, which portrayed collectors as ignorant snobs and dealers as ruthless capitalists. His sales have gone through the roof. “Perhaps in part due to the mixed legacy of institutional critique,” Helguera says, “my belief is that the art market, like an endlessly adaptable virus, will now absorb any true critical material produced within the art world.”

Dalton and Helguera are not unique in their awareness that collectors represent a crucial cog in the complex art world engine. In 1998 John Baldessari addressed them directly when he made, in an edition of 250, a wallet emblazoned with the instruction “I will not buy any more boring art.” But like many artists today, Dalton is actively questioning what the roiling market means for her as a practitioner. “When I was in art school, it was considered more respectable to be poor and outside mainstream appreciation,” she recalls. “There was disdain for artists who sold a lot of work, because it meant they appealed to too many people to really be good. In the current climate, there seems to be one model of success: making money hand over fist and being in Vanity Fair. I did a project where I made 500 bracelets that say loser and 500 that say pig. The question is, Would you rather be a loser or a pig?”

"Show Me the Money" originally appeared in the November 2007 issue of Art+Auction. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Art+Auction's November 2007 Table of Contents.