Dave Hickey: The Good Ennui at SVA Part I
DAVE HICKEY: IT TAKES A VILLAGE TO MAKE BAD ART
In Defense of the Artist Statement, by Robin Grearson on May 3, 2013
The Anti-artist-statement Statement, by Iris Jaffe, March 29, 2013
*** How Capitalism Can Save Art, Camille Paglia, WSJ, 2012
*** Searching With Light : The Hope for the Next Thomas Kinkade, Drenavich, The Awl, 2012
1. Has Money Ruined Art? Jerry Saltz, New York magazine, 2007
2. Museums Solicit Dealers’Largesse, New York Times, 2007
3. Frivolity and Unction, Dave Hickey,Air Guitar: Essays on Art and Democracy, 1997.
4. Brother, Can You Spare a Painting, Plagens, 2009
5. Contrubutions to a Resistant Visual Culture, Nato Thompson, JOAAP, 2004
Optional additional readings on the topic:
1. What is Art Worth?, Paul Mattick, Art in America, 2006
2. Worshipping at the Church of Art, James Gardner, National Review, 1994.
3. In Search of Some Interesting Reading, Peter Plagens, 1996.
What I Learned from the Art World's Bad Object
TITLE: If your not endorsed by Jay-Z, then you’re not a real artist.
ReplyDelete(These are just some loose thoughts)
• All of us want to make money doing something we love to doubt reading the recent readings. Business men was to make money doing business-y things, farmers want to make money farming, and artist want to make money arting.
• What about the masses people that pay millions of dollars a year for football games; how is that different than paying to get into the Guggenheim?
I'm Toiling in Obscurity and Loving It!!!! WOO.
(How Capitalism Can Save Art, Camille Paglia, WSJ, 2012)
How many of the "great" artists lived and toiled in poverty and inconspicuousness because art was their life/religion?????
A LOT.
They pursued art it because it was who they are. If it was recognized or rewarded, it was not important to them; Just as it is not important to me. I know most of my peers will disagree with me on this, but I do not mind working 2 odd-jobs, going to art school, paying my bills and making whatever it is I make. I enjoy that people like looking at my work, and when someone wants to talk to me about it, take photos of it or just admire it, that’s enough of a payment for me.
Yea, I’ve sold a few works here and there, photographs, prints, little weird things, but at $20-$30 a pop, I am not going to be a millionaire, celebrity, Jay-Z endorsed artist anytime soon, and that’s fine with me. I don’t want that kind of adulation and adoration. I’m fine with jus toiling away in my private basement, only coming out to breath and
What I do know is that creativity, comes from inside. While it can be fostered, it cannot be learned. It is a gift. So, for me it took coming to art school to understand this fact. You could be confused as to why I came to art school then, I came here to understand what I wanted to do with my life. I came here to be around like-minded people and discuss my thoughts on the world and hear my peer’s thoughts.
Unknown comment on WSJ:
‘While subsidizing the arts may produce more treasures, it will also produce more trash. When you have a handful of people who determine what is worthy of support or not, it will be according to their tastes, not yours, and not mine. Art is subjective, not objective. As such, it is impossible for a few to determine who survives, and who does not.
Art is nebulous. There are no definite rules, as in science. What is in vogue today may be disregarded tomorrow. In the end only capitalism can save art. Subsidies may save artists, but they will never save art.’
Part1---
ReplyDeleteDid money destroy art?
I cannot answer this without making bold and sweeping comment. I will say, however, that the answer to this depends on your notions surrounding your own ideas of art.
Historically speaking: art has always come after "money", or rather... after division of labor. Art was something to be done after basic needs, after survival priorities. So to say that it was destroyed by it's own commodification. I don't know, that seems silly.
Is there a difference between making work for a patron and making work assuming a buyer? I would love to sell work, we all would. It is an ego boost and a meal ticket. I don't feel we should be ashamed of this.
When I say buyer I don't necessarily mean monetary buyer, this could be as simple as a re-poster. Fame is nearly as good as currency. I'd say much of what "post-internet" artists crave is the fame: the top of the heap... The Shit King. Yes this work still gets bought and sold--- Petra Cortright for example; but artist (and curators) have difficulties even showing a GIF in real space, let alone selling it. The alternative to this then is the visual reach of your image: can you make something that gets re-posted 54,923 times? Who are your followers? Who are your re-posters? Who's re-posting your re-posters? Etc., etc...
I sound incredibly apathetic.
But I'm not, I assure you!
The other side of the coin is that there is a separation between the image commodity and the utility commodity. What we consume digitally is very different from what we consume in our physical lives.
This could be super-fantastic!
(It also could be super-terrible, but I am an optimist today so I won't get into that.)
Part2---
ReplyDeleteFor example:
I have a grotesque habit of re-posting and liking images of ridiculously unhealthy foods. The separation: I would never touch the shit! But I love it, somehow I feel that it represents me and I identify with it enough to share it on my Facebook. I consume the image but not the object.
People do this all the time, each person a new feed theme: food... fashion... etc.
Could this lead to less object waste? If we love the intangible image enough, do we need the object... Do we even want it? Lacan would tell us that desire is just disappointment.
This is in-part what I am exploring in much of my current studio work. Can we be simultaneously seduced by and image and be repulsed by it's potential physicality?
Absolutely: Photography. Film. Porn. Duh.
I'm getting off topic.
Here is a wrap up:
Let's assume fame is money.
Let's assume internet fame is valid.
Great "post-internet", or "net-artists", or "Tumblr-artists" are thus: great image makers. They understand the image as a commodity and how it works. A mash-up of hyper-current tending visual language (Alex da Corte), generates a Pavlovian response for an image we have already been conditioned to love. So we repost it.
I am generally super disappointed in Alex da Corte's physical work--- but it looks good online. What I find so fascinating about his work is not so much the work itself but the seductiveness accumulated in its non-objectness. He uses the language already embedded in us as consumers and twists signs (eg: Jiff peanut butter, Ikea furniture) we all know as tangible into something completely intangible, and then back into a disappointment.
I see a picture of da Corte's work on Tumblr. I both recognize it and do not recognize it. I repost it. I see it in its physicality. I am disappointed.
This beautifully mirrors the consumer's experience.
The work is also self-aware about it's "artness" and it's non-utilitarian nature: it's futility. ...BTW: da Corte still calls himself "a sculptor": a maker of objects.
Oh the impotency of the artist!
If disappointment is everywhere and the image is always way more beautiful... why bother buying objects anymore? The gap between what we like and consume in our online feeds is ever-separating from what we use and interact with in our physical lives.
I do hope this will turn us all into minimal-localist.
This can disrupt the economy of art for a bit. ...but only for a bit. There is always money to be made.
"Do you have good images of your work?"
Has Money Ruined Art? Saltz
ReplyDeleteArt and money is a tricky thing. It is interesting that artists have such a booshie exclusive image when most artists are very broke but admittedly kind of exclusive. I think Saltz’s point about three good art things being combined together to become obnoxious is an important one. It seems like the money that does exist in the art world (which is really just one percent much like the money in the regular world) becomes somewhat boastful and full of itself. Of course that is the just voice that is being heard and the representational image of art because it is what’s covered in the media. Small underground art spaces do not get much coverage, not to mention that many of those big important places have a hand or even maybe stalk in the media anyway. I also liked his point about art movements.
We dont really have anything to worry about because their aren't really any dominant art figures or movements in the scene currently. We are all free to express ourselves and do what we want. We have to have some form of mainstream to criticize so we can be cool and live along the outskirts even amongst eachother but as long as we are not truly out of a voice or space to do our thing its not such a big deal. I am sad that the trend is for the art market to cater to the dealers because the dealers are not the creative ones. But artists who really have to worry about dealers can individually suppress the urge to sell out in their own personal battle.
By in large I think artists are not the group which will completely conform, but the Danien Hirst and Jeff Koons can exist for everyone else to get frustrated with. I am alittle annoyed at this recent merge of pop culture and artists. Although the artists who are collaborating with celebrities are not entirely impressive as artists anyway I do not want the art world to maintain an image of having mainstream conformist values. When Jeff Koons recently collaborated with lady GaGa it put them on a equal playing field. Although I do not greatly respect Koons as an artist I feel that he is misrepresenting the rest of us through this action and endorsing everything GaGa stands for which in my opinion is not in line with proper (conceptual) artist values. I suppose the 1 percent of the art world and the 1 percent of the rest of the world are really one in the same in the end.
Money and art. The question of the place of fanatical business in creative endeavors is a question as old as money itself. There is this idea that it is possible to have a pure artistic practice uninfluenced by anything else in the world and that this is the height of artistic expression. Now it’s true that having backers influences work and money influences work, but I think that that has always been the case. I think that no art is ever created in a void. So people getting all huffy about money having influence on art or money adjusting the content of a piece of art need to just accept that this is a thing and sometimes it’s shit.
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