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.

Episode #3: In Which I Host a Quiz Show

Apparently my intractable case of helium hand has resulted in another opportunity for mayhem.....

Join me tomorrow night as I host the Arlington Arts Center's Pub {Art} Quiz -- an art quiz extravaganza at Stetson's Famous Bar & Grill, 1610 U Street in downtown DC @7pm.  Brinig your posse of artists, art historians, collectors, trivia buffs and other masters of the arcane and see if you've got what it takes to win!  All the cool kids will be there....well, only if you show up that is!

Between 7 and 9pm, 50% of the proceeds from the bar and grill go to AAC.  So you're not just getting your quiz on, you're supporting the arts.

Hey, even if it's only to heckle me while I do my best Alex Trebeck imitation, you should come.

See you tomorrow!

Money Changes Everything

Artist Chajana denHarder performs "Singularity" during the opening night at (e)merge.
Photo by Tony Wilson

It didn’t take long after the first (e)merge art fair ended before the organizers announced they would be back for a second year in 2012, which automatically made (e)merge a success as compared to DC’s last attempt at an art fair.

The uneasy relationship that artists have with art fairs is really part and parcel of the larger and much more ambivalent relationship between art and money. It’s actually no surprise that art and money rub up against each other in uncomfortable ways.  Most of us have an awkward and stilted relationship with the stuff.

Money is a lot of things.  But at its most basic level it is a tool, a device that we use to facilitate our economy. It is symbolic – the bits of paper and metal that we carry in our wallets and change purses on their own are worthless.  It is the value we place upon it that renders it important. Money performs a function in our lives, much in the same way that a hammer or a stove does. 

And yet, we do not have such a complicated relationship with a hammer or a stove as we do with money. We reach adulthood with an astounding array of assumptions and prejudices centered around the stuff.  Most we really don’t consciously acknowledge, either, because we acquired them by osmosis, absorbing the unspoken lessons bestowed upon us by our elders, who are no more cognizant of their tacit assumptions than we are of ours.

Imagine for a moment – you see a woman at an art fair, looking at a piece from a New York gallery. She is wearing a very stylish dress and a pair of high heels. Her hair and makeup are impeccable. After a short conversation with the gallery assistant, she nods, smiles, and pulls a credit card out of her purse and hands it to the gallery assistant. Now, imagine you see another woman at the same art fair.  She is wearing a pair of faded jeans, flip-flops, a faded t-shirt, and carries an old army knapsack over her shoulder.  She is in the booth of the same New York gallery. She is looking at another piece by the same artist. She has a short conversation with the gallery assistant, takes the gallery assistant’s card, and walks away. Both women, you later learn, bought the work they looked at.  One woman purchased the work outright, paying full price, and the other made arrangements to purchase the work on layaway, paying a small amount monthly for about six months until she had paid it off.

You very likely made certain assumptions about both women with respect to their financial status as you read the descriptions of their appearance. You probably presume to know which woman had to buy her work on layaway, even though if you read the paragraph closely, it is never explicitly stated. And if you are really honest about it, you have to admit that in the process of thinking about all this, you had certain feelings about each of the women I described, and those sentiments were based in no small part on your opinions of people who have money or do not have money, and on what you think of people based on how they spend their money.

The point of the exercise isn’t to tell you you’re right or wrong in your assumptions. The point is to acknowledge that you HAD them in the first place, and they most likely derive from lessons you learned by watching how your parents dealt with money.  They may have had a lot or a little. They may have saved it or spent it. And whether or not we shared our parents’ opinions, we learned our lessons about how to think about money from these experiences.  And they color our perception in surprising and unacknowledged ways.

All of that baggage is carried with us into the art world, which, like so many things, is facilitated by money.  Art costs.  It costs the artist time and materials and effort.  And if an artist intends to do things like pay his bills, he must recoup that cost, and then some. And those that seek to do so by selling the work must either enter into the apparatus that has been created for that purpose, or create an alternative (which costs time and materials and effort, just like making art). Like it or not, art fairs have become a key component in that apparatus.

And with respect to (e)merge, it seems as if the apparatus may be moving in the right direction.  Although the fair is only just over, and there seems to have been fewer exhibitors, many of the ones that did show up appeared to have “cracked the code” with respect to making the format work.  Exhibitors made better use of the spaces, and artists that created site-specific installations also seemed more confident in their efforts (though many of these ended up in the bathrooms, which tends to lend a certain tone to the endeavor that I find intriguing). Some of the exhibitors had better sales than last year. I’m sure that all the numbers are being crunched by all parties and soon we should hear something about whether (e)merge will be back again.

But standing around the pool at the opening night party, there were some complaints.  The $45 entry fee kept the crowds down, limiting the poolside affair to those who were willing to pay for the privilege of being there (drinking cost extra, an addition of insult to injury when you realize the drinks averaged about $10 a pop) or to those who were lucky enough to scam a free pass, or even better, one of the coveted VIP passes. This turned the party into a wan affair, especially when compared to last year.  It was another gathering of “cool kids club” of the DC art scene, not terribly different from the crowd you’d find at any popular gallery opening on a Friday or Saturday night, albeit more genial. When people threw themselves in the pool, the general opinion of those who looked on seemed to be that it was something of a cliché, and hardly warranted given the sparse and sober crowd.

What this says to me is that the marketing efforts for (e)merge this year were largely geared towards drawing out the well-heeled collectors, as opposed to drawing in the city to see what the DC art scene has been up to. From a business perspective, this makes a lot of sense.  While guys like Larry Gagosian are opening up cavernous gallery spaces around the globe, even he admits that his ability to sell $100 million works isn’t what it used to be.  And ultimately, the economy of an art fair is better served if costs are recouped up front via booth sales, as opposed to relying overmuch on individual ticket sales.   Exhibitors also have this persnickety habit of wanting to make sure that the money they put down on the front end for booth fees will be recovered in sales during the fair. Focusing on drawing in the people who provide those sales is only smart business.

Parsing through the scant number of articles about the fair found via a cursory Google search, a lot of the commentators were focused on the artists who weren’t represented by a gallery, and on the performance artists. Both of these constituencies, who often do not get exposure in a commercial art fair, are rapidly becoming the calling card of (e)merge, the thing that people see as the distinguishing factor from other fairs.  For those of us who grouse about $45 ticket sales or network fiercely to score a VIP pass from a friend, this should placate mutterings about the influence of “filthy lucre” at the fair.

I am happy about the obvious olive branch to the local DC art scene. I’m worried, however, that there’s not enough emphasis on building the profile of the fair outside the cozy little coterie of collectors that are either afforded VIP passes, or are willing to pay $45 to attend an opening night party.  (e)merge is never going to be able to create the kind of sales that will make it a credible rival to its cousins in Miami or New York economically. If it is going to be notable (and therefore commercially sustainable), (e)merge is going to have to capitalize on its popular appeal and its ability to draw in new collectors that are not currently part of DC’s small, committed, and very welcoming art scene. An awesome poolside party, while something of an annoyance to serious art types, hotel owners, and fancy collectors, is what’s going to draw in these new people, who will on the way discover that they like art and supporting artists. So while the decision to pare down the poolside opening night party and focus on the “big fish” certainly made sense in the short run, in the long run, it’s bad business.

There are signs of hope, however. This is a marathon, not a sprint, and this is, after all, only the second year of the fair.  The organizers need to be permitted to try things, some of which will work, and some of which will not. Art prizes experimentation, while commerce is entirely unforgiving of it.  Inserting a little bit more artistic experimentation into the commercial side of running an art fair should be allowed, and in the case of (e)merge, encouraged.

The other sign of hope came in the form of a young woman I met during the opening party.  She was beautifully dressed, wearing lovely shoes and her hair was impeccably done.  And she was ebullient at the prospect of having bought her very first work of art.  She was so excited to have discovered this artist, and was thrilled about the prospect of collecting more of her work. When I told her that I knew the artist, and that she was living in the area, she grew even more excited.  The idea that the artist is accessible made her joy even greater.  As a new collector, she was a little shy about her purchase, but was quickly reassured upon learning that every new collector has her moments of insecurity and self-consciousness, and her participation was what mattered.  It’s attracting people like her that is going to make (e)merge a success, both for the organizers and the artists.  And I’m not sure yet that (e)merge is doing enough to make that happen.

I should probably mention, in the interest of full disclosure, that my young collector friend bought her piece on layaway.

*P.S. I'll have more to say about Chajana's performance in a future blog post....

Show Me Your Teeth

For most people, the headlines about the trial of three women who are members of the Russian punk rock collective called Pussy Riot were a source of sniggering, mostly because people thought hearing their favorite news anchor say the word “pussy” was kind of hilarious. 

For artists, free speech nuts, and intellectuals around the globe, the trial, its defendants and the subsequent verdict, have become a cause celebre. The trial seems to be a throwback to the Soviet-era tactics in which dissidents, particularly artists, were to be silenced at all costs, and made an example of to deter others from following suit. Political wonks among us fret that this signals that Vladimir Putin is drifting back to his KGB roots and tightening his grip on the fledgling democracy that is Russia.

Everyone is busy being indignant and horrified at the injustice.

These women are objects of an absurd inquiry that constituted a hugely disproportionate response to the purported crime committed.  But to focus too much on the pathos of the situation is to miss a very important question:  why isn’t this happening more?

Members of the Guerilla Girls, in many ways the art world’s precursor to Pussy Riot, in discussing the whole issue with the New York Times, said that “We live in a very different culture where art is not as dangerous, and we can pretty much do what we want.”

The statement rings false for me on a number of levels.

The first thing that stands out to me is the assertion that “we can pretty much do what we want.”  

Imagine for a moment if a band of masked women burst into a fundamentalist Baptist church in Texas and broke out into a 40 second performance of a song whose words were essentially “Jesus, please help us get rid of Governor Rick Perry.” They would most certainly be arrested (provided, of course, one of the congregation bearing a concealed firearm didn’t shoot them first.) They would be charged with trespassing, and political pundits on every news station of every stripe would engage in endless fretting over the incident.  

Most likely the artists involved would not get jail time, but they would get fined.  There is a very small chance that the pastor of the church, in a fit of actual Christian sentiment, would forgive them and refuse to press charges.  That would not stop the media frenzy, however.  Many of the same accusations that were levied against Pussy Riot would likely get trotted out against these women as well – that they were mentally unbalanced, anti-Christian, hysterical, and if they had children, they would be accused of being bad mothers. They would be accused of being anti-American and quite possibly of being terrorists.

Is this really being able to “do what we want?”  Aside from the jail time, which granted, is not insignificant, there’s no substantive difference between the hypothetical (yet very likely) scenario I just described and what happened to Pussy Riot.

But what I find so insidious about what the Guerilla Girls had to say about the trial and verdict is not so much about Pussy Riot, but the comparison to current American culture saying that art is “less dangerous” here, and the tacit assumption that is a good thing.

Comfortable in urban centers like New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles, many artists in this country openly worry about the conservative and provincial outlook of “red-state” America. There is much hand-wringing about how those perspectives are affecting the arts – censorship and defunding of arts institutions being the primary sources of concern.  These concerns are not illusory. It was only 2 years ago that the Smithsonian bowed to pressure from religious groups and removed David Wojnarowicz’s Fire in My Belly from the National Portrait Gallery.  Mitt Romney has already stated on the campaign trail that arts funding will go on the chopping block in a Romney White House budget proposal.

But the battle never seems to be really joined in any meaningful way that challenges the presumptions of the enemies of artistic expression and free speech. Sure, there are plenty of artists whose practice focuses on political statements. But with the contemporary art world so enamored of the prospect of cold, hard cash, musing over the latest auction results from Sotheby’s, and who’s going to Miami or Basel for the obligatory merry-go-round of art fairs, finding a way to challenge the status quo in a way that has any teeth seems impossible.  Success and attention come from gallery shows and being featured in biennials and doing fancy residencies.  Certainly artists with political imagery and messaging can participate in these events and gain fame and an audience for their cause, but it can hardly constitute agitation.  Using art world venues to espouse political views widely held in the art world is really a version of preaching to the choir.

Certainly not all art has to be dangerous to be relevant.  But in the case of art that intends to make a political statement, if that statement actually never reaches the eyes and ears and consciousness of an audience that disagrees with it, has the artist really done anything of import? That was the special genius of the “Occupy” movement – by placing themselves in the space where they were not wanted, and requiring those they opposed to confront their existence on a daily basis, the protestors achieved a momentum and level of attention that better funded, and better organized protest events (the “Million Man March” and the various copycat marches, for instance) simply failed to get. Whatever else one may think of the “Occupy” protests and what the movement leaders have since done with the attention and resources they amassed, the protests themselves produced a conversation about wealth and privilege and the economic future of our country that was unparalleled in modern history. 

Taking on the status quo has never been an easy road. The Silent Sentinels were the first non-violent civil disobedients in the United States – standing outside the gates to the White House protesting the fact that women had no right to vote. When the U.S. entered World War I, Alice Paul, Rose Winslow and other suffragettes were arrested and sent to the Occoquan workhouse. When Alice Paul commenced a hunger strike, she was moved to the psychiatric ward and three times a day for three weeks straight, a tube was jammed into her esophagus, and used to force feed her. At one point, the superintendent of the Occoquan workhouse sent 40 armed guards on a rampage, brutalizing the 33 jailed suffragettes.  The work of women like Alice Paul and the others ultimately resulted in the passage of the 19^th Amendment to the Constitution, granting women the right to vote.  They are but one example of the simple truth that when a person stands up for an idea, the world can change.

Ideas are inherently dangerous. An idea is a weapon of mass instruction. An idea is a sword of truth, honed to razor sharpness, as like to cut the hand that wields it as it is to injure a foe. An idea is a predator, sharp of tooth and claw.  An idea cannot be trusted to lie still.  It is mobile, agile and hostile. There is no empire that has ever withstood the onslaught of a powerful idea. A work of art, when it’s doing its job, is a vessel for an idea.  It is an armed warhead. To assert that art is even capable of being “less dangerous” is to render it toothless, perhaps even to nullify it in its entirety.  

What makes women like the Silent Sentinels and Pussy Riot so inspiring is their willingness to embrace the risk that comes from insisting upon the validity of their ideas when so many would see them silenced.  This is the province of the artist, her natural state, in many respects.  Yes, that the artists from Pussy Riot will serve a two-year jail sentence for expressing unpopular and dangerous ideas is a tragedy. The only greater tragedy would be to give in to the notion that as American artists, the ideas available to us for artistic exploration must be somehow “less dangerous.”  An idea is a weapon of mass instruction.  It is never, nor should it ever be, without teeth.