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Brave New Art World
Arne Glimcher is the founder and chairman of the PaceWildenstein art gallery. He is also a published author, a film producer and a director, whose pictures include The Mambo Kings, Gorillas in the Mist, and Picasso & Braque Go to the Movies.
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Emmanuel Dunand, AFP / Getty images
Despite cooling sales, more art was produced in the last decade than at any other time in history.
Once upon a time there was an avant-garde art world in New York where artists created work unlike anything we had ever seen before. A few people loved it, but the general public was appalled. As a result of World War II, European artists migrated to America enlarging the scene and diminishing Paris as the center. America was beginning its dominance of the art world with the emergence of the Abstract Expressionists. Then in 1956, Life magazine published a piece on Pollock entitled “Jack the Dripper.” It was the first media interest in avant-garde art. Media interest waned until the ‘60s when Pop Art captured its attention as a celebration of the media itself. If Abstract Expression reached for the sublime, Pop turned ordinary imagery into icons. Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol illuminated the transformative power of context and the process of reproduction. Claes Oldenburg’s soft ice-cream cones and hamburgers changed sculpture from hard to soft, from stasis to transformation.
In crisis there is also opportunity. Serious collectors who couldn’t get near an object now have access. Prices that were once insane are readjusting and the auction system itself is in jeopardy.
Pop and fashion fused when the haute monde beat a path to Warhol’s Factory door. Society millionaires (yes, there was a time when being rich meant being a millionaire) had their portraits painted by Andy and mingled with artists at Halston’s parties. It was the courtship of art and fashion culminating in marriage and currently rumored to be filing for divorce. There were perhaps 100 collectors of contemporary art internationally back then, and every sale was a miracle. Being there was choosing a life in art. By the 1970s, the Minimalists challenged our perception of the nature of art. Dealers—currently known as “gallerists,” perhaps so as not to be confused with “drug dealers”—supported their artists with modest stipends and exhibitions in which hopefully something would sell.
So what happened to art and how did its commodification become so blatant? Eric Fischl told me that a woman once asked him the difference between the art world in the ‘80s and now. “I’ll tell you the difference”, he said “my generation was living in the art world. The current generation is living in the art market.” That is really the key to where we are now.
Being an artist has always been an imperative—art chooses the artist, but today artists seem to be choosing art. Chuck Close told me, “We thought we had a lifetime ahead, hellbent on purging our work of anything that had ever been done. Today, because of student loans, the cost of studios etc., some artists make ‘slacker art’ that projects the look of a mature vision without being mature. Innovation and personal vision became devalued.”
Historically, art has always had a market. When one medieval fiefdom defeated another they would drag back its jewels, gold, tapestries and art objects as the spoils of war. Art equaled power, riches and culture. It still does.
Flash forward. Another gilded age came to its apex in the 2000s. If there were 100 collectors in 1960, there were 10,000-plus by 2000, acquiring the new art and even buying work that had not yet been made. The waiting list, the “last chance to find the new Jasper Johns” mentality was exploited by the dealers, and some artists abused their talents and power in the service of celebrity and money. It was a craps game.
A new tribe of rich collectors was formed who all acquired the same “hot” art. Like medieval knights, these were their colors and their signs and they competed for whose colors were brighter and whose signs were bigger. The commodification of art became the subject of art itself. For example, Damien Hirst was prescient and responded to the changing value system 15 years in advance. In Warhol’s shadow, he manufactured his work in a factory. However, Warhol’s Factory wasn’t really a factory. It became the locus for the interaction of ideas in the disciplines of art and cinema. Its product was Warhol’s observations and responses. Unlike Hirst’s factory, where quality control is endemic to the art, Warhol’s Factory was a messy and inventive happening, which explains its continuing influence.
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Arne Glimcher is the founder and chairman of the PaceWildenstein art gallery. He is also a published author, a film producer and a director, whose pictures include The Mambo Kings, Gorillas in the Mist, and Picasso & Braque Go to the Movies.
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Arne Glimcher is the founder and chairman of the PaceWildenstein art gallery. He is also a published author, a film producer and a director, whose pictures include The Mambo Kings, Gorillas in the Mist, and Picasso & Braque Go to the Movies.
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Arne Glimcher is the founder and chairman of the PaceWildenstein art gallery. He is also a published author, a film producer and a director, whose pictures include The Mambo Kings, Gorillas in the Mist, and Picasso & Braque Go to the Movies.
ezparz
I couldn't agree more.
The Art World has basically been the Art Market since Warhol. Nothing "new" is being produced because artists are not evolving emotionally, psychologically, or spiritually. I agree that most art made today will end up in landfills- the masses don't get it and they don't care about it. If the Art World wants to shape human consciousness- as it used to- in parallel with science and philosophy, it's artists will have to grow up.
Once the artists of today get dollar signs out of their eyeballs, and start understanding what it means to lead meaningful lives, and have meaningful relationships with people, they can then figure out what and how art is supposed to be for future generations. Until then, 99.9% of all art objects made after Warhol will be useless and meaningless to humanity other than as commodities to trade. How sad.
The Art World (market) needs a financial and spiritual crash of unprecedented proportions in order to find itself again. I predict it will happen soon.
provolone
It's always disappointing when people talk about the Art World and Art Market strictly within the context of auction houses and millionaire collectors. Its my experience that the foundation of artistic innovations and successes begin w/ small investors and collectors on the local level. Look at the work of Dumas and Prince. They broke new ground and began to innovate way before any of their work went for over $100,000. And Close could probably reinvigorate his practice by cutting out 2/3 of his budget. This article seems to have only one measuring stick for the nature and function of art in today's society.
Why mention twice that 'More art was produced in the last decade than at any other time in history' without exploring where and how this art is being produced? The only characterization provided is that it will end up in a landfill. True, but that sounds to me like potential a much more relevant article.
nickels1
i am a 51 year old insurance agent. i have been making art since i was 21. just now, am i making things that i think are important and really need to become part of the vocabulary of contemporary art. maybe it is a midlife crisis (which coincidently is one of the working titles.) but it isnt. it has just come to this. i understand markets and making art because i have to. not until i made these pieces did i get that though. so i am believing that there is still an interest in understanding that will find this work or me, it. the good thing is, price won't be an object. just the common understanding. I have made it for myself mostly and not for a market. it think my art will bear witness to this for me and the truth of it will create its own market... i trust this art or i trust nothing.
look for it.
ClarkeBedford
I think that there is a good chance that art making will evolve into something more personal - that is, out in the world as a part of day to day living - rather than the controlled enviornment of the gallery and museum. That may involve personal fashion, art cars and art houses, anonymous placement of unexpected visual events, performancew, or any other compulsive creative experssions like the Watts towers. that is already the case with the web, and there is no reason that object-making can't go the same way. Collecting contemporary art is a contradiction in terms anyway - if you collect it, in five or ten years, it is no longer contemporary. Besides, the ephemeral nature of much of it in terms of materials and techniques means it won't last even a generation, and doesn't lend itself to collection in any meaningful use of the term.
Derida
Arne perhaps you should put down your Champagne glass and make an effort to check out women artists. You might find something worthwhile... You might even find a few hardworking, talented women out there who have been overlooked because they are not ....Warhol. Didn't like the landfill comment Arne but them again Arne Glimcher....sounds like a moody Seinfeld character.
OinkArtist
Arne Glimcher is more than glib, but he sure doesn't glimmer! He has been a major player in the same rotten system which he condemns for over 30 years. He lives and dies by hype- just like Hollywood and the fashion world. Perhaps he is feeling a little long in the tooth these days, with all of his Wall Street contacts/collectors falling into the ditch. Sniff! Sniff! Life is a wheel. What goes around comes around. The art market has been a tulip exchange since day one. Just like Bernie Madoff, art world moguls like Glimcher sucker the culture vulture yahoos into thinking the emperor is wearing clothes made of gold . The only difference is that Madoff admits he's been running a Ponzi scheme.
HTuttle
The art world and the finance world used to be two different things. Now they're one and the same, with all the negatives of the finance world greed and little of the art world grace.
apparently
Maybe this means that those of us who love art, love owning and love looking at it in our homes will once again be able to buy things. We were priced out of the market by 100K digital photographs.
finderj
To paraphrase an old saying, "I don't know what art is, but I know it when I see it". Much contemporary art is simply garbage. Amazing to see millions of dollars paid for garbage. Perhaps it is simply work not to my taste, but much of wnat the intelligensia and media portray as art fails to fill even the smallest criteria of the definition. While mass marketing reproductions of great art make the impact of much fine art available to everyone, regardless of income bracket, commerciality of new work does seem to have trivialiazed much of contemporary art.
dm10003
while reading the tulipmania part i was thinking about the dutch secular art boom; how artists promised portraits, landscapes, and still lifes before they were painted, how secular art sponsorship was a status symbol. i'd be interested in the parallels of that to today. i think most examples of today's art market are analogous to past art economies. btw, all contemporary art through history was considered trash compared its predecessors.
This comment has been removed by The Daily Beast's editors.
This comment has been removed by The Daily Beast's editors.
duckpond
There are so many kinds of art that have been and are currently happening. Innovation has never left. New forms have continued to be explored by those unafraid to branch out. Most artists don't have dollar signs in their eyes, but we all need to make a living, and the cost of living has become insurmountable in areas where art communities used to thrive (ex; New York). Since the government has not been a source of support in this country, the money came from a more direct, market-based line. Anyway, don't go blaming "art" itself for having lost its essence, or the artists, for the most part. The beauty of "art" is that the definition is in constant flux-these days you might discover much of it online, exploring meaning through digital routes, or becoming integrated with design and science in formerly unimagined ways.
finderj
I am aware of historical precedent regarding contemporary art. I am not comparing the majority of contemporary art to historical art. I am comparing it to garbage, children's work, and classic definitions of art. Definitions both ancient and contemporary, by the way.
I may like a created work, I may appreciate the effort and skill that went into the creation of it, but that doesn't make it art. Art is universally accessible. Accessibility does not mean a universal message, but that everyone who experiences this work gets something out of the experience besides boredom.
boredwell
I won't even try to classify the unclassifiable. Art, even as a toy for a rich person's vanity, is a racket. A collusive one at that. The artists, the galleries, the promoters, the buyers: the art "scene" as it were. John Water's PECKER puts this phenomenom into succinct perspective. I think, too, of the scene in Schnabel's BASQUIAT wherein Tatum O'Neil asks the artist to paint something in colors to match her decor. Art as an expression of personal vision can be as vital or as vain or as vapid as any other medium. But it is basically produced as a commodity to be sold to the highest bidder. In that respect, it feeds the creators, fuels the gallery and satiates whatever it is the buyers "feel" when forking over the cash. This process has turned "art" into a profitable consumer choice. It also makes art into a bread and circus farce. Thus, in this the last quarter century and now in the muddled new one, it has become mundane, mercurial and competitvely caustic.
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