A Question About the Conversation

So I had drinks with two people recently.

The first is an artist, working largely in drawing as a medium. Although he's young, he's doing a great job of establishing himself in the local art scene. He's had some shows.  He's part of an artists' collective of some note. He's having to make some hard choices about what it means to be an artist.  Because it's not easy to support yourself by art alone.  He's got what it takes -- wonderful technique, an art school education, and plenty of DIY spirit. But selling his work doesn't pay his bills and it's unlikely to in the near future. He's weighing his options.  Almost all of them involve having a day job of one kind or another.

The second was also with an artist, who has been experimenting with a number of media including drawing. He's not so young, and has come to the pursuit of art as a new endeavor, one that he is very passionate about.  He has been honing his technique, largely through trial and error, and is getting really quite good in terms of raw execution.  But without an understanding of artistic practice, of how the use of his technique might contribute to the greater conversation in which contemporary art occurs, his art is really only so many pretty images.  It's not his fault really.  He's never received much education in art.  But he's already demonstrated an enormous amount of tenacity just to get this far with his technique.  I am confident that if he takes it upon himself to learn, he could develop an artistic practice into a formidable contribution to the DC art scene. He too, is an emerging artist, though his challenges are very different from the first artist.

And not everyone he's encountered has been kind about his being an artist.  He told me the story of one woman, a more established DC artist, who expressed a frank jealousy upon learning his workplace had decided to give him an exhibition at his office. She made it very clear to him that she felt it was somehow unfair that someone like him, who wasn't as well versed in artistic practice, should get an opportunity to show when she was working so hard with so much less success. Her presumption was that her obviously better understanding of contemporary artistic practice somehow entitled her to shows, and was her automatic proof that she was an artist, and he was not.

More and more I grow convinced that any art ecosystem is really a conversation.  Everyone contributes to this conversation -- artists, collectors, gallerists, professors, critics, and curators. Everyone is trying to figure out what they ar trying to say. And just like in any conversation, some people contribute commentary that is pithy, and substantive.  Others spew cliches, but somehow everyone applauds their words anyway. Some stand on the sidelines of the conversation, nodding and smiling.  While others leap into the fray and argue that everything (including the fact we're conversing at all) is really so much bullshit.  Some speak eloquently, their words perfect articulation of their ideas. Others stutter, barely making themselves understood.

We're all just finding our voice.  Some of us come to the conversation with a whole lot of knowledge about the subject matter. Some of us only have a lot of enthusiasm and haven't figured out yet what we're talking about. The vast majority of us are somwhere in between.

The first artist is making great contributions to the DC art scene, and his voice in this community is starting to get some weight. His right to speak in this world isn't even questioned. He is what we come to expect when we think about an emerging artist.

It's the second artist that poses the bigger challenge to us. There is an instinct among the congnoscenti to be dismissive of him, to declare him somehow deficient and unfit.  His enthusiasm is both annoying and endearing, and he is viewed with disdain because he pretends to the title of artist, as if such a noble pursuit shouldn't be available to someone who has no understanding of the finer points of artistic practice.   It's the same sort of disdain that is leveled at collectors who buy work because a gallerist has assured him that his investment in the piece will appreciate. These people don't understand.  They aren't educated. Their participation in our high-minded art ecosystem is tolerated, but not encouraged.  If he gets a show, an accolade, it's considered unfair somehow to other artists, as if he's a monkey that managed somehow to type Romeo and Juliet and has therefore insulted Shakespeare with his sheer infathomable and dumb luck.

Art is a conversation. And the same pitfalls that happen at your garden variety cocktail party (or gallery opening) conversation can happen in art. Not everything everyone says is worth listening to. Sure, people say dumb, uneducated, ignorant things. But it's considered poor form to deride a fellow party guest's statements over hors d'ouvres. The art "conversation" however, is expected to be critical, and therefore less forgiving. We accept this in the art world, even though the assumption leaves many with loads of enthusiasm (but perhaps less education) outside of the conversation entirely.

I'll admit it. I've always had a thing for outsiders. I've been an outsider, and I've been left out of conversations many times before.  A lot of folks in the art world have had that experience.  Some build entire careers around it, making the fact of their exclusion from other conversations the source of their voice in the art world. Their dismissal of others from the art "conversation" always strikes me as the height of irony.

I'll be very honest here: I'm still learning what it is I have to say that might constitute a unique and worthwhile contribution to the "conversation," and people have been very patient with me as take this journey, and I appreciate that. More so than in other places, I've found DC artists to be very gracious about making sure that people who want to participate in the DC art "conversation" have a means to do so.  But is my experience the norm, or have I just been lucky?

I Swear I Never Meant to Do It

One of the most beautiful things that comes of an education in the law is that you spend three years of your life devoting yourself to learning analytic thinking processes. If you're doing it right, you hone your mind to a sharp edge that can slice apart convoluted arguments like knives in those old Ginsu commercials going through the tin can.  And like any good knife freak, you get an ever-so-subtle thrill whenever you unsheath that blade and use it, and before you know it, you have forgotten yourself and done something a little embarassing.

Like writing a comment to someone else's blog post that really, by all rights, needed to be your own friggin' blog post.....

So Hyperallergic (one of my favorite blogs) had an interesting post about the "middle" of the art market and how it is vanishing in the face of the giants like Gagosian, and given that I'd been recently contemplating something a little similar, I was intrigued.

Intrigued enough that I had my own ideas about the matter, which I intended to be a brief, pithy comment.  And then I had my knife freak moment, here with additional commentary [interspersed within the text to make it a real blog post]:

Kyle Chayka does a really good job of aggregating the content with respect to the most current discussions about the effect the high-end buyers and the top tier galleries might be having on those further down the food chain.  It's good to know what the art elites are thinking about with respect to this, because as I've said before, I really don't give a flying fig about big name galleries and uber-wealthy collectors. I am much more concerned with the emerging contemporary artist, the local art scene, and majority of people who try to eek out a living in the art world.

There are two things in play I think with the "middle" of the market at least with respect to the contemporary market -- lack of supply and lack of demand. The lack of supply is really a function of two things. the first is correctly noted above, that galleries, the traditional purveyors of art to the buying public, are finding it difficult to operate in the middle of the market because the business model that sustains that position posits that more successful artists will function as "cash cows" to allow the less notable artists in the gallery's talent pool to build an audience until they can sustain themselves.

The second problem in the "lack of supply" category is simply a dearth of artists who are capable of sustaining a livelihood at the mid-range level. To build the kind of reputation it takes to command the kinds of prices that sustain the "mid range," an artist has to have devoted a lot of time investment in things like an MFA, high-profile residencies, a resume filled with high-profile shows. That takes time. And time is money. In order for an artist to be able to afford that kind of time, he or she needs to be able to forego the dayjob. And unfortunately, in this economic climate, the artist who can sustain herself or himself with just the income of his or her work is dwindling.

Now, for the "lack of demand" issue -- I do think the article correctly notes that some of this is a part of larger economic forces. The affluent art collector who doesn't spend millions but is capable of spending thousands is simply dying in an economy where being a "millionaire" is considered a quaint form of middle class, and to be truly rich, you'd better be able to measure your balance sheet using something more like "b" for "billion." If you have the bucks to buy from Gagosian, you're not going to waste your time as a collector on "cheap" work. Unless....

And here's the other half of the "lack of demand" equation: [lack of] educated collectors. Fewer and fewer people are educated enough about art to undertake the role of collector, [or believe themselves to be]. Indeed, even the role of collector these days is so maligned that even people who can legitimately claim the title in terms of education and finance are loath to accept it. (Interview a collector of mid-range work sometime and see how fast they run from the sobriquet "collector"...) There are collectors out there who take the time and effort to get to know the artists' work, and understand artistic practice, and put thought into how they acquire work and why. But they too are dwindling in number. Chalk it up to any number of culprits -- the lack of art education in schools, which means [those who in previous times would aspire to become] collectors have to take a lot more initiative to even develop a nascent taste for art, or the fact that the contemporary art world often unfairly maligns anyone who doesn't wear their dedication to critical theory and general "art-i-ness" on their sleeve as being a "dilettante." Either way, it's harder than ever to cultivate the truly educated collector that is going to take an interest in work as something other than a pure investment, and honestly, those are the kinds of investors that support the middle portion of the market. The ones with more money want the bigger names, and the ones with less education will not venture far from the lower end of the market for fear of wasting their money.

I take issue with the notion, however, that one can "blame" any one constituency for all this, in whole or in part. It is tempting to blame the rich for wanting to flaunt their status and "good taste" with an elaborate and high-priced art collection. It is tempting to blame high-end gallerists like Gagosian for being greedy and wanting to sell art to people who are all too willing to pay exorbitant prices, or even to blame the artists themselves, for seeking fame and wealth at the expense of artistic integrity.  It's easy to decry the idea that the masses "just don't get it" and the arts don't get nearly the support they deserve from a world that seems increasingly more inclined to celebrate the Philistine over the philosopher.

But it has ever been thus.  Human greed and the resulting economic inequality have been a feature of human civilizations since the advent of humankind, and for centuries the artist and his or her art has always stood as both a commentator and a bellweather of the ebbs and flows of human nature.  And artists and their supporters have been both celebrated and vilified for their ability to move between the worlds of the very poor and the very rich with ease, by virtue of their status as artists.

The fact is, to quote that most underrated of all rock bands, The Jam, "The public gets what the public wants." And that goes for the art-engaged public as much as those ignorant of our rarified little art world. Sure, the world has ever been thus.  And maybe this most recent incarnation of the divide between the haves and the have-nots in the art world is really just "save as it ever was" (Thank you David Byrne) and analyzing it seems like so much hand-wringing.  But the ugly truth no one seems to want to address is that we all contribute to this merry-go-round in big and small ways - by where we place our effort and where we place our attention. By what we will accept as well as what we will decry. 

Maybe it's time to stop worrying so much about Gagosian and Hirst and Koons and the billionaires they feed off of.  Maybe our public discussions of mid-range and emerging artists will have more impact if we stop trying to make them relevant to the overpriced top of the market and start dealing with the issues and problems of these artists and markets on their own terms. 

My 2 farthings, your mileage may vary.

Oh, and Hyperalleric, I'm sorry for hijacking your comment section. I can't help that I'm a knife freak, and I just got carried away.

When Giants Roam the Earth

So Damien Hirst has left the Gagosian gallery empire, and Jeff Koons and Yayoi Kusama are also on their way out the door as well. Major press are all aflutter over it – speculating as to whether this is some new trend for the mega-famous artist, or the demise of a powerful gallerist, or the byproduct of some art market bubble. 

It’s no surprise that people should be interested. When the guy who can sell a $100 million work of art and owns nearly a dozen galleries around the globe loses three of his most famous artists in less than a month, that is the kind of thing that people consider to be news. The comeuppance of someone wealthy and powerful is the kind of thing that appeals to the media and to the madding crowds who love a good spectacle laced with shadenfreude.  Why do you think people still watch “Gossip Girl?”

Carol Vogel in the New York Times, in writing about the Gagosian defections, seemed to suggest that Hirst’s departure represented a new development in the relationship between artists and gallerists – that artists like Hirst have moved beyond the gallery. She quoted Tobias Myers of Sotheby’s, who called artists like Hirst “self-propelled.” (Really? What were they before? Were they being shot out of a cannon?) He likened it to the demise of the Hollywood studio system, when actors became “stars” and no longer needed the shepherding of movie moguls to reach fame and fortune.

Felix Simon, a financial blogger for Reuters, suggests that this is a market correction, and that the real question is whether the other artists and other galleries in the marketplace can “fill the void” left by Gagosian’s unexpected losses.

Me, I’m not all that interested in Larry Gagosian, Damien Hirst, or Jeff Koons.  I honestly couldn’t care less what all the gallery defections mean for the Gagosian Gallery empire, or whether Damien Hirst left because he felt he was being held back by Gagosian personally, or because he was simply so famous he didn’t need gallery representation anymore.  When giants choose to stomp around, I am less concerned with them than with the ants that might be trammeled underfoot.

Because despite the press’s obsession with $100 million art sales, gallerists with nearly a dozen galleries around the globe, and artists who are so rich and famous they can “write their own ticket” in the art world without representation, that is not the world in which the majority of artists (or even gallerists) live. The majority of artists, even those with a modicum of success, are never going to reach the “self-propelled” status of a Damien Hirst.  The majority of gallerists will never reach the point where the sale of a $1 million work will be a disappointment because she is more accustomed to selling works for ten times that price. 

In the world in which most artists live, a profitable relationship with a gallery, once acquired, is not something you throw away lightly.  Not if you ever want to get to the point where you are not holding down a day job and living off of ramen noodles. Most gallerists do not scoff at even the $100 sale, because the rent will always come due and someone’s got to pay for the toner for the printer otherwise there won’t be a price list for next week’s opening.

On the one hand, the fact that Hirst may be inaugurating an era where artists have more power and opportunity outside the gallery system isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The problem is that Hirst’s level of success as an artist isn’t anywhere near the norm, and the idea that his relationship to gallerists is instructive at all in the relationships between artists and gallerists on a more general level is specious.

In fact, the focus the media places on guys like Hirst as fabulously wealthy powerful players who no longer need the gallery system is misleading.  The top level artists are perhaps enjoying a level of success that is unprecedented.  But a little further down the ladder, things have never been harder.  Artists now more than ever seem to have some form of alternate income, whether it’s a day job or a highly supportive partner – because the number of working artists who are supporting themselves entirely on their own is on the decline. The rise of the MFA as necessary credential delays career advancement and in many cases puts artists in debt. The focus on Hirst belies the truth, that artists need better career support and more financial models to sustain their livelihood than ever before.

And what of the gallerists? The line between artist and gallerist has never been more blurry. The artist-run gallery space as a category has never been more vibrant, especially here in the DC art scene, and this is a good thing for artists, and perhaps even for gallerists.  Artists come to their relationship with gallerists more cognizant of the issues that come with running an art space, and therefore more savvy about what they are bargaining for when they allow themselves to be represented.

True, the relationship between artist and gallerist has always been a little fraught with difficulty. But most of the gallerists I know, the ones who will never have the profile of a Gagosian, who sweat it out in the trenches every day because they believe in the artists they represent, their hard work allows the artists they represent to spend more time creating and less time worrying about marketing themselves, which is the classic bargain upon which the relationship was first based. While the classic gallery representation model may not be for everyone, and certainly Gagosian’s recent losses call into question the viability of the model at the upper echelons of the art world, that doesn’t mean that gallerists are irrelevant just yet.

Indeed, the sands are shifting under the feet of both artists and gallerists.  But it’s not because of the giants like Hirst and Gagosian stomping around. All the media hype and discussion of what it all means for the art world is actually a lot of blather.  The changing dynamic between aritsts and gallerists is actually playing out in the corners of the art world that are rarely featured in the pages of the New York Times, and which do not inspire financial bloggers concerned with the art marketplace. Guys like Gagosian and Hirst, by providing cheap drama in rare air with no more worth than a bad episode of “Gossip Girl,” allow people to be distracted from the real story about artists and gallerists today.  And that’s sad, because in this case, the ants are much more interesting and important than the giants.

Garbage In, Garbage Out: Why "Sex and the City" was an EVIL TV show

Of course, I blame Canada.

Well, maybe not Canada, but the fact that back when rocks were soft and I was in college in North Carolina my apartment's basic cable package inexplicably got CBC . For some strange reason, I found that putting curling on in the background on a Sunday afternoon when I was trying to finish up a term paper was a very effective study technique.  Thus was born a lifetime of using the television as a background element when I was trying to Get Shit Done.

And thus I found myself on the couch, finishing a quarterly report for a volunteer position I hold, while the Style Channel executed a "Sex and the City" marathon in the background. I chose this deliberately -- the show is fast-paced, comedic, and is easy for me to ignore because I have seen most of the episodes before. Perfect Get Shit Done television. Or so I thought.

Until my mood started to change.

I should preface this by saying that since I started wielding the Wrecking Ball in my life, I have re-entered the world of relationships and dating, a circumstance that a couple years ago I would not have believed necessary or possible, but that is another story for another time. Since the Wrecking Ball, I can say with some honesty that my default attitude setting towards relationships and dating has been "laissez-faire optimism." I am certainly open to seeing the best in people and in relationships, but am in no hurry to turn anything into "a thing" before its time.

One of the benefits of having been married (and watching that marriage unravel) is you do not view marriage as a magical state of being.  You have the pragmatism necessary to understand that something will either work or it won't. It will happen or it won't. All on it's own time, and not before. And it's not personal.  You can be two perfectly decent people working at it like hell and doing your absolute level best, and it can still go to shit, if you even get that far in the first place. So while I would love to be in a relationship again at some point, and certainly do meet and find men attractive, when I am myself I am okay with letting what might come of such things happen on its own schedule.

That is not the attitude about relationships that you see on "Sex and the City."

This show reeks of desperation. These women, these highly successful, very intelligent, extremely attractive women, contort themselves into positions worthy of a Cirque du Soleil act all for the benefit of achieving a relationship status, whether it's getting a man into bed, being able to call him a "boyfriend" or get him to the altar (a thing which is given a near grail-like level of reverence).  It's all about second-guessing oneself and giving in to neurotic thinking patterns and accepting all of that as the norm of what should be if you are single woman dating in modern America.  The show attempts to genuflect at the notion that friendship is the true stability and love of our lives, a noble idea to be sure.  But to be really fair, everyone's energy in the show is spent talking about men, bedding men, worrying about relationships with men, and occasionally making clever conversation over fancy drinks with gay men friends.

Neurotica, it turns out, is contagious.

My optimism devolved into anxiety.  My usually solid sense of self-worth began to fog over in a haze of questioning and doubt.  After all, if these beautiful, perfectly dressed, witty women are so angst-ridden and plagued with such horrible experiences with dating, what hope is there for a mere mortal like me?  And the stream of commercials running in between -- dating sites, age-defying makeup, tips on how to look better in your clothes, and weight-loss products -- didn't help with the budding self-esteem crisis. By the time I was done with my work, I'd been exposed to nearly 3 hours of this crap and it had done the trick.  I was now a seething mess of warped thinking, feeling insecure and lonely and unattractive and wondering about my future.

I knew this wasn't my best look. So I switched off the TV and meditated a little to remind myself of who I am, what I am, and what I want to do with my life.  Because honestly, if I become Carrie Bradshaw I really hope that one of my dear friends who loves me like a sister will take me into a field and shoot me.

When it first aired, Sex and the City was lauded as "edgy" and "revolutionary" and "feminist" in its thinking, largely because it showed women having sex and enjoying it.  Before Carrie Bradshaw and her friends showed up on HBO, it was unthinkable for a television program to show a woman interacting with a vibrator with anything other than shock and pity. These women were frank about sex, the way that me and my friends are frank about sex when we talk about it (which contrary to what the producers of the show would think, is not EVERY time we have brunch).  That much is healthy. Women have waited far too long in this society to assume the full mantle of ownership of their sexuality, and have suffered because of it.  You can't enjoy sex to its fullest if you're always wondering what other people will think of you if you do.  Pleasure comes with confidence and abandon, not from self-consciousness.

It's not the sex in Sex and the City that is so damned evil.  It's the fact that it's wrapped in anxiety and unrealistic expectations that play to our worst fears about love and relationships and sabotage our belief in our own desirability as women. I'm not sure how I missed this the first time I watched it all those years ago.  Maybe it was because I was single then and didn't have the perspective that comes from having ridden the marriage-go-round already.  Maybe I was just younger then and didn't know better.

And speaking of young and not knowing better, apparently they are bringing out a "prequel" series to introduce this bullshit to a new generation of girls who obviously need to be made miserable about themselves. One of the networks is planning the "Carrie Bradshaw Diaries" -- a series aimed at teens that follows a young Carrie Bradshaw in the 1980's in New York.  "Sex and the City" gets to warp a whole new generation of women.

Next time, I will keep the TV off when I need to Get Shit Done. Or maybe watch National Geographic.