New Wealth and the Visual Language of Luxury

This study explores how the neoliberal age mutates the symbolic character of wealth, luxury and aspirations embodied in globally proliferating cultural signifiers. The luxury industries follow the changing landscape of the HNWIs, the global rich. They have expanded into China and India and continue to open sumptuous shops wherever new wealth can be traced in the footsteps of neoliberal globalisation. These new tribes of customers present a demanding challenge - the luxury industry must simultaneously attract the ostentatious ‘nouveaux riches’ and the traditional, class-conscious European elite. FAIRY TALES OF WEALTH explores in the format of a lecture how the shifting distribution of the global super-rich progressively shapes the visual language associated with luxury and highlights commonalities between luxury goods and the world of contemporary art. IMAGINING WEALTH tackles the subject by using artistic methodologies to explore subjective responses to aspiration, wealth and luxury. A photo series ‘Service World’ and a film ‘After Gertrude Stein Trilogy’ staging theatre groups in Johannesburg, Brussels and Berlin capture local singularities fleetingly expressing globalisation.