The Cheapening of Art (now with oxymorons!)
By TedRaskol on January 26th, 2010Posted In: Blog, Videos
The esteemed art critic Robert Hughes has covered developments in the art world since the early 1970s. He has been one of the loudest voices protesting the art-for-the-art-market’s-sake that has dominated museums and auction blocks in the last twenty years.
Personally, I find myself in utter agreement with Mr. Hughes:
-What is the message of this generation of artists? I would argue that they are intellectually and aesthetically bankrupt.
-If the ‘artist’ serves only as a conceptual genitor (ordering teams of interns to actually create the art), what is the point of creating it at all? Apparently, so that it can be sold.
The program “The Mona Lisa Curse,” for which I have created a youtube playlist and embedded it below, succinctly outlines the incestuous relationships between ‘artists’ such as Damian Hirst and Jeff Koons and their ignorant, super rich clientele. The real danger, Mr. Hughes shows, is that this fad for art as a collectible is pushing out the meager budgets of museums and leaving them at the whim of rich collectors. These wealthy collectors, now the main buyers of works available at auction, can lend their property to museums to increase its worth, and thus control the narrative of the art world.
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Don’t forget that the art these guys make sucks. Hirsts’s “For the Love of God”… well I was going to describe how bad it is, but it’s a skull covered in diamonds. So it’s that bad.
This is not something new. There have been rich and royal patrons for centuries, when has “fine” art not been the realm of the privileged few? Acting like this is something new and foreign to the haughty art industry, as if it is so far above the fashion industry, is laughable. There have been patrons and benefactors and aristocratic purveyors forever and if the artists/entrepreneurs are finally realizing that they can make a living from them… well, that too has been part of the culture. Find a few people who will finance you and regularly buy your work and you are set. Robert Hughes describes this as, “The largest unregulated market in the world,” while boohooing the costs. Would you want it to be regulated like a commodity? If someone wants to spend $100 million on a piece of work that no art critic or historian cares much for, more power to them, that’s what the democratization of art has produced. Let time tell whether they made a prudent purchase. If Americans want to be lead along by them… well, isn’t that America’s prerogative?
As for delegating your work out, how is that new or innately bad? I can see where sitting in a lounge chair while flippantly directing some peons to make their own judgments can be bad but where would Bernini be without his stonemasons?
Don’t blame the businessmen for buying what they like for whatever prices they want. Don’t blame the public for not investing in art institutions, they have a right to not invest, for better or worse. Don’t blame the artists. At the end of the day they have the pay their bills. Art is fashion. It is an aesthetic business, it changes with the tides and the times.
I’m playing devil’s advocate, btw.
Isn’t the monetized art of today perfectly descriptive of today’s world, doesn’t it do exactly what Hughes says it doesn’t, tells us about the world we live in? Or is that parallel too obvious and thus somehow trivial?
Turino,
I think you make some strong arguments. In some ways, lamenting the growth of the art market is like lamenting the death of newspapers in the face of new media. Opinions differ as to whether it’s good or bad, but it does appear to be an inevitable trend.
As to delegating work: I have no qualms with the use of assistants. Bernini could never accomplish the scope of his works without the help of many subordinates. A film director’s vision cannot be realized without the efforts of a large and skilled crew.
I would argue, however, that this is manifestly different than what Hirst and Koons fraudulently call their own work. On the dot paintings attributed to Hirst, he has said “… the best person who ever painted spots for me was Rachel [Howard]. She’s brilliant. Absolutely fucking brilliant. The best spot painting you can have by me is one painted by Rachel.”
Furthermore:
Source: http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/arts/article-23410356-inside-damien-hirsts-factory.do
Mr. Hirst seems to be entirely hands-off, valuing only the “concept.” Again, if the concept is the critical element, why not just erect a podium and communicate your ideas to the public in the same way you would to your army of underlings? Why dilute and distort your concept by forcing it into the physical by means of other artists? Why not let your audience experience it as purely as you do – conceptually?