I know, no one likes a know-it-all, but when i read a recent article in the NY Times (15th Feb. 2009) entitled "The Boom is Over – Long Live Art" it did make me laugh (to my self, ever so slightly). I’ve been forecasting the collapse of the arts market for a while now, most recently I’d mentioned it in my post "Down With The Oligarchy" and wondered how long it would take for the mainstream to catch up,. Well it’s finally happening, at last, and in a strange way it comes as something of a relief for me personally. At last all artists, new and old, known and unknown can begin again, in a level playing field without having to worry about competing with the over-glorification and excessive hype of the "art stars" and get on with the business of what they do best. Creating images and objects to inspire, enquire and aspire to, reality can be a rather dull and at times insidious realm of existence. If we left it to the media and public hearsay it makes it rather difficult for the individual to traverse a path through their own experiential world be it via their own time-line, passage of experience, acquisition of knowledge or accumulative understanding of their fellow beings in the human race.
Art is being stripped of its commodifiable allegiances, the Chelsea galleries, the corporate investment trusts, the artrepreneurs of the world are retreating back to their billionaire luxury homes and yachts in wait for the next stock market battle between the bull and the bear. For when the world is once again ready for luxury, they will be back (no doubt about it) with metaphorical price guns in hand, firing off ridiculous figures wherever they see fit. In the meantime something rather miraculous may just happen, if we are very lucky, and that is this.
Art for the sake of art. Even in our most primitive beginnings, man has followed his urge to create. The prototypical "Tharg" may have painted animals on the walls of his cave dwelling to communicate or even brag about his exploits as a hunter, perhaps it was a way of initiating a history of his clan, or simply to attract a fellow mate. Who knows? Who cares? All that matters is that Tharg crushed soft rocks into coloured paste and made his mark, the world would never be the same again.
In the last 30,000 years or so little has changed, except for two predominant factors. Now there are far more artists, and what’s more not everyone wants to daub on their cave walls, they’d rather secure the skills of those with a passion for the undertaking, and thus the arts market was born. Of course there are many who daub the streets, the graffiti movement is most definitely secured its place in the annals of art history (no matter the reservations of the public, critics and art historians), but for the main part art is produced and then bought and sold in the world arts market (if it qualifies as art), and if not it can still be sold as craft, interior design, architecture, fashion, and a whole heap of derivatives of the visual arts. Yes I am sure I have just about offended everyone there, but, and here’s a very big but, people don’t repaint over a Degas or a Picasso, but they do tear down 1960′s modernist edifices for the chance of a new hotshot from the world of architecture, and as for fashion, well, anything that has to reinvent itself every six months already has enough of a self-confidence complex without me throwing my own proverbial spanner in the works.
The fact is that art and the arts market will generation by generation sift the chaff from the wheat, what passes the mark will continue to be referenced, and even sold to the public Zeitgeist, and what doesn’t, won’t.The whole argument of what constitutes art has once again been snatched from the hands of the plutocracy and their legion of simpering underlings hell bent on balancing intellectual respect of their peers with an undeniable zest for greed and self-aggrandisement (art has enough egotism in the ranks without the critics taking a share of the glory). Instead a phenomenon both very new and very old should, if I am not mistaken, take hold of the hearts and minds of art lovers around the world. The idea of patronage.
Patronage, at least in this current era of history, as always been viewed as the remit of the extremely wealthy and influential, those with the power and the financial clout to back up their opinion, can with the help of an army of at the very least, as influential friends and colleagues, see a return on their "investment", namely their investment in a human being, an artist, a creative mind housed in the body of a proliferate and prodigious body capable of manufacturing images and/or objects that the "right circles" will one day regard as momentous, socially viable, financially worthy.
Hopefully, if my seer-like powers aren’t failing me today, the art of patronage, the patronage of the arts, will seep through the cracks of the ruins of the financial behemoths of the past century, and pour into the hands of the people, they themselves will make the choices, steer the direction, enable the enablers of the visual imperative, the people will in effect become "shareholders" in artists from all vicinities, backgrounds, genres, cultures, political, conceptual and emotional camps. As a student I found myself in argument, time after time with the head of course, Roy Grayson. On one of these numerous occasions I defended my work with the profundity of positive commentary in that particular exhibition’s visitors book. He sneered and told me, as he pointed out of the window, that "those people out there, the public, do not matter, they don’t know anything about art". It rather shocked me at the time, I didn’t understand how or why Roy could say such a thing, it would take another year or two of arts college for me to fully comprehend the meaning of that particular statement, although I never did "learn" to agree with him.
Since my time at college a lot of things have happened, both to me personally and to the world, and I can truly say that within the arts market I have seen genre after genre, market after market, contradict everything Roy said to me that day. The difference is this, the richest of the rich, those who wish to invest in art on a grand scale, merely for the acquisition of profit, will for the most part avoid almost all of the past century. They deal in antiques, they pay for history, they do not buy art. Those who do pay less, far less, but there are today far far more of them. For instance, over the past decade a tradition has grown within the street arts and graffiti market for selling limited edition prints of work, the more successful the name the higher the price tag, collectors of Faile, Banksy, Fairey and others has increased the value of these prints many times over. But none of these collectors will be found at Christies, or Cork Street, or exclusive London, Paris or NYC galleries, they buy these works direct or from other collectors.
It’s the same with movie memorabilia, or rare records, or antiques, or anything that can be considered collectible, if an artist connects with his audience, piece by piece, print by print, he or she can increase the value of their work without ever entering the gallery system.
What I can predict now is that many more grand gestured siblings of the arts will retract from the limelight, withdraw their succubine tentacles from the cold and calculating hearts of the elite and reduce their grand visions to little more than the perfunctory. "High art" or elitist art will in fact attempt on many levels to emulate "low art", this readdressing of each genre, sub-genre and the arts economy as a whole, this reassembling, this present re-filtration of the arts is both natural and essential. It has happened time and time again throughout history, the only difference is that the public have changed. The mass is more informed than ever before, the idea that their is a particular elite with both wealth and taste is a modern day myth, money cannot buy intellect or wisdom or cultural or historical awareness. Those who advise the uneducated elite have seen their clients fingers burned in the past few years, they are no longer in a position to dictate the direction of the future of the arts.
A new alliance is being formed as we speak, the world of the arts and the world of the art aficionados no longer need the expertise of the elite to place value within the arts market, this will come naturally, as a ground swell, as it always should have been.
What an interesting post. What especially caught my attention is the quote from your instructor, saying that the public does not matter because they know nothing about art. Do some artists really think like this? I thought art was meant to be something for each person to interpret and enjoy. I’ve never considered that some artists think of the general public as some sort of lowlifes who can’t enjoy art because they know nothing about it.
Liza’s last blog post..Daily Bits:Fav Icons,Indestructible Laptops,New Invention,Slime War