Every day, legions of art advisers are selling objects that they know well have no chance of surviving the test of the global art market, let alone art history, to financial advisers and their business clients.
These include a certain breed of private, online and traditional gallerists, content-providers-parading-as-critics, art flippers, interior designers and artists whom the art press loves to tout as “art experts” …
How do these characters manage to excel in the art world, you may wonder?
Remember the “Everything is art!” mantra?
Quite often this amusingly affected declaration is followed by “It’s just how you package it, man. It’s all b.s. anyway.” Art flippers, in particular, love this phrase since the sheer power of its stupidity serves as an effective conversation-stopper for anyone who is serious about art.
Of course when these flippers – artists, gallerists, etc. – make the claim they are only talking about their own products. As for the other guys’ art being “art,” too? Well, not so much.
Along with “Everything is art!” – a phrase that should alert any serious investor to run for their money – “Everyone knows that art appreciates with time!” is another astonishingly shameless lie in which far too many otherwise sound and sane people choose to believe.
“Everyone knows that art appreciates with time!” No, it doesn’t. In fact, the value of the majority of contemporary art depreciates with time – sometimes, the moment you leave an art gallery, an artist’s studio or an art fair. Much like buying a brand new car as opposed to investing in, say, a 1933 Maserati 8CM.
Honestly, if you believe in any of these statements, I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you that comes with flowcharts and algorithms that prove its solidity. Call me.
Back to my Defense of Wall Street: How do you think so much junk gets sold under the auspices of art for hundreds of thousands, and even millions of dollars per transaction? Every day? How is it that too many art historians, academics, critics and museum curators choose to look the other way when they clearly recognize poorly conceived and shoddily executed objects that are based on tired old traditions, whose ‘concepts’ are packaged as avant-garde or cutting-edge art?
Do these art buyers – I refrain from calling the poor fellows ‘collectors’ – even realize that they have been swindled out of not too small fortunes?
When I was an undergraduate in art history, I used to think that most of them do. This, of course, was my level of intellectual understanding, or lack thereof, of the complexities of cultural production and its interdependence with economics. As an academic-humanist, I sincerely believed that what I did was above money matters.
Two decades later, I have long shed my self-righteous attitude toward finance. However, I recognize the overwhelmingly toxic apathy toward anyone with, or access to, wealth that is prevalent in the art world. Don’t get me wrong, modern and contemporary art markets are over-populated with individuals who worship money but have absolutely no respect for what it stands. And, certainly no respect for those who possess (a lot of) it.
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Quite sadly, our financial elite have become victims of an art market whose formation, unwittingly or wittingly, has been facilitated by art historians, artists, art advisers, curators, museum directors, critics, publishers and other informed collectors. That is by those of us who know better but have chosen to remain silent in the face of this much cultural defilement. We see what is being done in the name of art, and our profession, yet choose to remain silent by allowing our society’s economic elite be defrauded, every day.
So, what does it matter if a notable majority of our affluent class is exploited by certain breed of scroundrels, you may ask?
First, speak with any number of authentic cultural disruptors – curators, scholars and artists who have dedicated their lives to their arts and craft, including those artists and administrators in the non-tangible heritage fields: indie filmmakers, dancers, choreographers, poets, playwrights and performers. Ask them how excruciatingly difficult it is for them to find patronage for their work. Ask them how hard it is for them to gain the trust of the members of the affluent cultural investors who have been burnt by others in the name of art.
Every dollar conned out of a potential arts patron is a dollar stolen from true and dedicated artists and cultural practitioners whose contributions form our cultural heritage – its past, present and future.
Second, some of these “Hey, man, everything is art” objects eventually find their into our public museums and thus enter the canon of our art, culture and history. At tax payers’ expense.
This is a travesty.
These are the wrongful results of deceiving our country’s financial elite, in the name of art.
But, what does it take to right these wrongs? We, art historians, curators, artists, art dealers, filmmakers and other experienced cultural workers need to authentically disrupt the (art) market systems.
No great body of art in any period in the history of humanity has ever been created, preserved and promoted without the patronage of a group of well-informed benefactors. This is why educating and Defending Wall Street should be on the top of every artmakers’ agenda.
NEXT STOP: Advice on Collecting (part iv): Algorithms and Cyberspace