The Basquiat exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum of Art and the East Village U.S.A. survey at the New Museum of Contemporary Art have prompted some to review what from the 80’s has survived, in spirit and work. The results are surprising: despite the bigger-than-the-Everest consume of cocaine or the famous Wall Street frenzy of wild market, a protagonist of those boom years like Eric Fischl says in Time Magazine: "What's going on now in the art world makes the '80s seem positively spiritual".
The lack of values other than financial in the present bubbled-and-partying art market infuriates many observers and worries professionals inside it alike. The shocking auction record achieved by a Marlene Dumas painting in London this last February has made not critics but auctioneers to stand up and say “enough is enough”. The evolution of Dumas’s prices is a pitiless example of the current patterns: in 2002, the record for a painting of her was $50,000; in June 2003, a piece soared to 307,663; May 2004 saw a $993,600 number; November 2004 broke the million-dollar-frontier with $1.24. Last month, a Marlene Dumas artwork fetched $3.34, and (almost) the whole world was stunned and scared, at a point where I’m expecting the first “oh my god what have we done” laments. It looks like the calm before the storm- if it comes, it will probably be bad and ugly.
Michael McGinnis, Phillip's director of contemporary art: "I think there should be a very conscious effort on the part of auction houses not to price her paintings above the million-dollar mark". "It's a scary thing".
Carol Vogel of the Times: "The contemporary art market is so pumped up right now that even auction house experts are occasionally amazes, as when an artist suddenly fetches a dizzying price, without any obvious reason".
One lesson that interests me of this auction-created monstrosity is how a single bidder can create a wave in the art market that moves much more than the sole piece he longs. On the bidding madness war, and with a little help from the auction house estimates and marketing, a work may go beyond any expectations up until bringing absurd prices. This destabilizes not only the artist and his or her market but the expectations and possibilities of other potential buyers and the general situation of the market as well. All forced to rethink, reframe and refocus their strategy and direction (and the artist trying to concentrate on the canvas while thinking “millions, millions I made”). The power of one is dangerously almighty.
The $100 million Picasso last year, this Dumas record, world biggest art collector Sheikh Saud Al-Thani of Qatar’s arrest (and the subsequent preoccupation of the auction houses) or the famously infamous Charles Saatchi are but widely known examples of this pattern. Saatchi, you know who he works: buying a lot with top dollar, typically in bulk, benefiting an artist or group of artists; but also harming when dumping en masse at the auction house and plummeting the prices for excessive product.
The artist is who gets affected by these financial movements. Despite they don't get a penny from those way too high prices or even from the resale of their work by dealers, the whole art world watches them, ready to criticize, like if they had a conspiracy plan to be rich. Reality is, artists overwhelmingly abhor this kind of publicity laid upon them (remember Jasper Johns in the 70’s and 80’s, Bruce Nauman in the 90’s) by greedy-but-spendthrift buyers and dealers and auction houses or market.
Nevertheless, this schizophrenic ride the art market is has a bit of everything: high prices sure, but critiques and complaints for low prices, too. Laurence Miller, photograph dealer, recently sold a Walker Evans for $195,000 and said: “The picture sold too fast". "It must have been priced too low". At the same time, Janet Borden, another photo dealer, raised the prices of the Tina Barneys she sells to $15,000 because, “at $12,000, they were selling too fast". "If they're all sold out too quickly, then they are undervalued".
That “fast selling means undervalue” equation is a rather simplistic one coming from a dealer. The sale of the Lambert Photo Collection last Fall at Philip's New York was fast and furious, but with a Cindy Sherman's at $478,400 and a Barbara Kruger estimated at $80,000-$120,000 knocked at $601,600 hardly can we say "undervalue"; on the contrary, fast and ridiculously expensive.
But I guess the art market diverts in having recklessly wasteful buyers and cheap dealers, whose minds narrowly and exclusively conceive either absurdly high prices or too low prices. Fair tags don’t exist and never and nothing is enough. After all, it’s time to party and socialize while it lasts, not to meditate upon the justness of the market.
We’re just bubbling.
