Cult of Personality 2.0 | Open Thread

We were talking in the gallery the other day (over Kyrgyz brandy, if I recall correctly) about the state of the art world, as we're wont to do, and noted how the top artists of our day seem to be lacking in what used to be a central requirement in the cult of personality department: i.e., an interesting personality. Try as they might, the big money makers in contemporary art don't generate as near as much interest in their personal lives as they do their bank accounts, and, on the other hand, the artists we see grabbing all the head-lines on the gossip pages don't generate as near as much interest in the secondary market as they do, if at all, in the primary market. Something has shifted, we concluded over cocktails, since the days when Warhol was both raking it in and still the most interesting person to sit next to at a party.

Was it just that the top money makers have become too burdened with the CEO obligations of their studio factories to continue to the devote time to sating our hunger for bad boy antics or sexy girl photo sessions? Or was something else afoot here?

I didn't give it too much thought at the time (there was Kyrgyz brandy to attend to), but in reading the latest edition of one of my all-time favorite guilty pleasures (ARTNews' monthly Retrospective column), I thought about the cult of personality issue again:

75 Years Ago

The widespread popularity of Lust for Life, Irving Stone's ­recent fictionalized biography of Van Gogh renders it almost inevitable that the Museum should be crowded to capacity by a public whose interest and curiosity has been heated to fever pitch. Rarely is there an exhibition which can be approached by so many persons thoroughly acquainted with the dramatic details of an artist's life and career, as in the case of Van Gogh. All the lurid ups and downs, and mostly downs, of his profession . . . are nearly as familiar to the reading public as was the progress of the Hauptman trial.

—"The Van Gogh Exhibition," November 9, 1935

And then it hit me. The cult of personality in contemporary art isn't (and perhaps has never been) about worshiping a hero. It's entertainment, akin to watching a rodeo or NASCAR race. Despite protests to the contrary if questioned, a good chunk of the audience is secretly hoping to be witness to a tragedy....in real time. The more fine artists flirt with the mass media channels usually reserved for celebrities, the more our expectations/hopes become that they, like celebrities, will fabulously self-destruct while we're all watching. All the "lurid ups and downs, and [God willing] mostly downs," are the attraction.

Now, of course, when we talk about cult of personality within the art world in the classic sense, we mean how people will pay big money for a napkin doodle by a famous artist just because they did it. It's a projection of value onto all of their output, based on the assessment that it's them, and not only their work, we want to take home a part of. It explains why inferior works by famous artists will sell for more than masterpieces by lesser known artists. It also explains the entirety of Damien Hirst's market.

Now back in 2008 (oh, the memories), in an excellent article, Linda Yablonsky argued that the success of both Hirst and Koons could be attributed to the cult of personality:

Moments after a press conference for “Jeff Koons on the Roof,” this year’s outdoor sculpture exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York, a clutch of reporters made a tight circle around the artist. Clean-shaven, dressed in a metallic gray business suit and gracious to a fault, Koons hardly batted an eye as he linked the three bright and shiny chromium works on the roof—monumental replications of a child’s drawing, a wrapped candy and a balloon toy from his 1994–2000 “Celebration” series—to contemporary, early Christian, and Greek and Roman sculptures inside the museum. The reporters didn’t just hang on every word. They clamored for autographs. And they got them. “This is going right next to my Mickey Mantle,” announced a lumbering photographer, holding his prize aloft.

Only one other artist today excites this kind of hero worship: Damien Hirst. Koons and he both create provocative work. But that alone can’t explain their star power.

Maybe it's just the economic bruises the world is still recovering from since then, but somehow, today, only two years later, neither of those artists' stars seems so bright. Was it really their personality that garnered all that attention? Or their (now somewhat less stunning) markets? In 2008, Yablonsky attributed the attraction to their charisma. But charisma is fueled by confidence. If the Hirstian and Koonsian brand of confidence came from the number of 0's at the bottom of their bank statements, it's not surprising that they seem a bit lackluster in comparison today.

My central question here, and please consider this on open thread on the topic, is whether what makes for hero worship has fundamentally changed. Have commercialism and ultra individualism shifted the focus away from "interesting personality" as defined by the quirky or inspiring way one views the world to "interesting personality" as defined by power and money?