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.
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