Or is it not so new?
The alarms are sounding in the art world of the new millennium; didn’t it happen before? In the late 80’s right before everything crashed? Is the current situation of the art world-market an exception, or just a pattern on the cycle of explosion-destruction-renovation? Still too early to know, I’m gathering here some of those “symptoms” of what I see is going on.
We’re in what is commonly named a “bubble” in the art market. High optimism, large sales, new and wealthy collectors, auction records broken every other month. After the depression and weirdness of the 90’s (when a Gerhard Richter abstraction was offered at $50,000, Andreas Gurskys and Cindy Sherman’s at 25,000, and Jeff Koons’s vacuum cleaners had an estimate of 150,000) and the momentary confusion of 9-11, the market has risen big and brutal (and ruthless, too).
Word has it (the Times already spread the secret) that most or at least some of the explosion in prices at auction houses is driven by this new generation of Wall Street hedge fund managers that may not know a lot about art (even less contemporary art), but they surely have the money and the desire to enhance their status and their lofts with those things their advisers say look cool on them.
That is but one of the objections observers and insiders alike pose: this certain new generation of Wall Street young fast billionaires is buying for status and not for pleasure. One artist complained to Artforum’s Rhonda Lieberman, “it used to be a system of patronage”, “it used to be about the artist. Now it’s about them”. The collectors, the buyers, the dealers- they are what matters now.
Certainly and definitely, the utopian happy years of art-for-art’s-sake patronage of the late 60’s are gone. Except for an institution like Dia Foundation, there seems not to exist anymore a Virginia Dwan dealing in (and losing lots of money with) earthworks just for fun, or a Robert Scull commissioning Michael Heizer to dig holes in the Nevada desert just to be a patron of a young struggling artist.
Hence, too, (perhaps) the explanation of the lack of funds for projects like James Turrell’s Roden Crater or Michael Heizer’s City, but the massive trade of billions in art on any major night at Christie’s or Sotheby’s. Collectors like to collect and possess and show off, not funding a volcano in Arizona (the Riggios aside, I salute them). But, then again, this is not the 60’s (and the 60’s too ended abruptly with a huge profitable sale, the Sculls 1973).
Money talks, now and ever.
So there we have this art world more market-driven than ever, excessively and obsessively market-driven, many would say. There seems to be not a message like in those forgotten years of generous patronage (“changing the world with art”, or some grandiose postulate alike). Partying and socializing is now the goal (only after buying and trading).
Yesteryear we would discuss artists, their art and exhibitions. Nowadays, the tribe is most likely to pronounce “art fair” first, “auction” then, and “party at a young (of age and/or spirit) collector’s loft” to top the day.
There is an obsession with youth in the art world, and all things young are rapidly marketed and mainstreamed via supposedly-cool-but-boring-and-corporate fairs (The Armory Show, Scope), surveys in corporate museums (Greater New York at PS1), galleries (Chelsea, for Williamsburg seems not to be enough anymore), avid collectors and parties at Chelsea clubs and Tribeca lofts.
Once upon a time, a young artist had to struggle and wrestle with one too many factors to become an artist and making a living off of it. Now, they all get out of the school of art and design and are happily absorbed by galleries and dealers. Michael Kimmelman’s inflamed review of Greater New York in The New York Times makes it clear on the title: “Youth and the Market: Love at First Sight”. He did not like the show, which looked for him rather predictable and prepared for the market. He points out how the so-called “young art” (a darkly eugenic concept for art) seems crafty and hand-made. It is what I called here “the scissors and glue” syndrome. Young new art looks cheap and childish, amateurish and unprofessional; if this is what they teach in Yale, I’m amazed, but the art market loves it.
"A show that, like the burbling young art world now, seems gladly co-opted and almost too able to please". "I don't grasp why there's so much buzz about some of what's here". Neither do I, Mr. Kimmelman, I’d rather be in Garden Valley visiting Mike Heizer.
Writing on the Daniel Buren exhibition at the Guggenheim New York, Linda Yablonsky said on the Times: “It is hard to imagine the kind of argument that Mr. Buren set off then taking place today, in a market-driven art world characterized not so much by impassioned manifestos as exclusive dinners with collectors”.
Daniel Buren observes: “Today everything is nice, everything is accepted". "And nothing makes any sense".
And I say, not everything. The “no rules” and “free for all, everybody's an artist” traditionally associated with postmodernism and contemporary art has been and is a fallacy. There has always existed a canon, whether artistic or commercial; curators, directors, dealers, collectors establish --with their tastes, directions and acquisitions-- what is and what is not. It’s an almost embarrassing obviousness to remark.
Right now, It ought to be young, handcrafted and marketable, or big-star-name and expensive to be taken in consideration. While certainly the whole thing seems to make no sense, definitely not everything is either nice or accepted.
