Is business more powerful than Art ?

Art can exist without business, but it struggles to survive without some form of self‑determination. A painting can be made in total isolation — a private act of expression that needs no market, no gallery, no audience. But the moment an artist wants their work to travel beyond the studio wall, they enter a cultural ecosystem shaped by visibility, opportunity and resources. Historically, painters relied on patrons, salons, or collectives; today, they navigate galleries, social media, grants, and self‑promotion. None of this diminishes the art itself, but it does reveal a truth: creativity may be pure, yet its survival often depends on an artist’s ability to advocate for their work. Entrepreneurial skill doesn’t replace artistic talent, but it can protect it, sustain it, and ensure it reaches the people it was meant to move.

Damien Hirst once said he “still believes art is more powerful than money” — a provocative statement from someone who, for many, has come to symbolise the artist as global brand, entrepreneur, and market‑driven phenomenon. It’s a long way from the wild 1990s, when the YBAs were fuelled by the same chaotic energy as Britpop’s Gallagher‑era excess. Back then, the art world felt feral, improvised, and defiantly anti‑establishment.

But that tension — between art as raw expression and art as commodity — is exactly what makes this moment so relevant to movements like Cassette Culture.

Where Hirst’s trajectory embodies the rise of the art‑market superstar, cassette culture represents the opposite gravitational pull: a world where creativity thrives because it is unpolished, unmonetised, unfiltered, and often unseen by the mainstream.

In that sense, cassette culture is the living proof of Hirst’s claim. It shows that art can exist outside the gravitational field of money — and often becomes more interesting when it does.

Why this matters now

As digital archives grow and long‑lost tapes resurface, the underground is being re‑mapped. Sites like CassetteCulture.co.uk act as both museum and message‑in‑a‑bottle: preserving the fragile, hiss‑soaked artefacts of the DIY era while introducing them to new listeners who crave authenticity over polish.

Cassette culture isn’t nostalgia. It’s a reminder that creativity doesn’t need a market to matter.

Damien Hirst: 'I still believe art is more powerful than money'

'For all that, Damien Hirst has become for many the epitome of the artist as businessman, entrepreneur and global brand. It is quite a transformation, given that in the wild years of the 1990s, when the YBAs held their own in the drinking, tooting and necking pills stakes with Noel and Liam and the rest of the Britpop crew...' Read more and get exclusive poster downloads:

The article snippet above appeared on p10 of the The New Review section of the Observer on Sunday 11 March 2012.

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Jig-Saw Man

from Extractivism 2 by This Window

Originally released on the 2007 CD of the same name, Jig‑Saw Man is one of those brief, surgical fragments that distils the core of This Window’s cut‑and‑splice aesthetic. Just over a minute long, it behaves like an opening incision: a jagged, flickering sound‑collage built from a dripping tap, a distant distorted guitar, and a boxed‑in vocal that feels half‑buried.