Objects beyond price

I am fed up with people griping that the art world is obsessed with money. I suppose you can understand them thinking that owning a work of art is closer to the realms of preposterous fantasy than extreme optimism. After all, everyday objects that most people wouldn't even think of as art are auctioned for millions. But as much as there are well-heeled collectors falling over themselves for top-end gallery stock, there are still artists trying to hold on to the idea of the work of art as a democratic thing, as something available to all.

One example is the 32-year-old Warrington-born artist Phil Collins. A photographer of growing international repute, he'll usually make an edition of four or five prints for an image, each of which might sell for something like £2,000. Last Friday night he went several stages further: at the opening night of his exhibition at the London Print Studio, he held a jumble sale of his work.

The idea was make to something available for anyone who turned up, to be sold strictly at cost. Photocopies were going for five to 10 pence, inkjets for a fiver, and top-of-the-range photographic prints were a heady £20. "One part of the project is about a critique of the market and the value of things," Collins says. "The other part, of course, is about argy-bargy and getting an elbow in your ribs."

He is perfectly aware that the freeforall is going to complicate the market value of all his work, and thus cause a few sleepless nights for his dealers. Take the precedent of Michael Landy's extreme act of resistance to the commodification of art last year. Having worked up an inventory of every single object in his possession - not just his own art - Landy systematically set about pulping it all. I watched it happen, and found the experience painfully moving. If it hurt me to see it all go, it must have traumatised Landy himself. The former C&A store in Oxford Street was full of workers and machinery whittling away Landy's life, an activity that included destroying artworks by his famous friends. He was left without even the shirt on his back.

Although he ground to smithereens every one of his own pieces still in his possession, others that he had already sold are still floating around the art market. They might be worth a pretty penny. And he began to accumulate the odd possession soon after his high-profile shedding of wealth. At one time there was thought of making the shredded stuff available as an edition of filled plastic bags, but Landy resisted the possibility of making something out of nothing. The edition became landfill.

Landy's project was, of course, an artwork in itself, taking its cue from the conceptual artists of the Sixties. In the revolutionary whirl of that decade, there were many attempts to "dematerialise" artwork. Artists often worked with text - words that suggested objects and situations - rather than presenting the things themselves. They saw this as a critique of capital.

Art as idea, they thought, surely can't succumb to the market. But the market has a way of trading on futures and hypotheticals - ideas are easy fodder for the gallery to market.

A more effective way to undermine the market might, therefore, be to play it at its own game. The idea of producing identical copies of your work, and thus reducing the price, again originates in the Sixties. The German iconoclast Joseph Beuys, who was trying to find art everywhere and in everything, thought the "multiple" (a limited edition by any other name) was the best way to get his complicated ideas across: it put art directly in people's hands and debunked the notion of a precious, untouchable artefact.

I remember as a teenager seeing a multiple of his - a signed wooden postcard - that cost a mere $20. It was so cheap I thought it had to be a fake. I didn't realise the cheapness was part of the deal so, to my regret, I didn't buy it. Beuys multiples are less "for the people" these days - the same thing today would set you back about £500.

The limited edition is, anyway, something of a minefield. If you have to advertise that the edition is limited, it's clearly not limited enough. There's a great image of Damien Hirst on the phone, signing 500 copies of his latest print, while balancing his baby on one knee. Nice work if you can get it; a couple of hours with a sharpened HB might gross a million dollars for artist and publisher. But Eyestorm, the muchpublicised producer of that and many other contemporary editions, went into receivership last month.