The Blur Cuts Both Ways

I've been thinking a lot lately about the success of efforts to blur the lines between high and low art. I remember when this notion was first articulated in a way that I grasped its potential (and yet, entirely missed the full meaning of it).

This was long after Warhol, who people often will say had completely blurred the lines, and yet the context of his fine art as he presented it was still firmly rooted in a fine art history even he couldn't quite shake himself loose from (and didn't want to from what I can tell). 

No, this epiphany for me was much later, when so many intelligent art world insiders I knew were excited about this ongoing breaking down of context barriers and the artists leading the charge. The thinking at the time, as I recall, was that it would be all one way. That fine artists would break through and into low culture, cherry picking from whatever struck their fancy and resonated with their MFA-informed sensibilities, and yet somehow not only open up a wider audience for themselves, showering the common people with their smart and yet accessible insights like manna from heaven, but also entirely control the situation from their lofty position, jerking back their creations from lowly contexts to plop them on plinths in museums whenever the urge so hit them.

This fantasy of control wasn't something I gave much thought to 20 years ago. I was, as I remain, more interested in broadening the reach of contemporary art, in finding ways to help others around me become as obsessed with it as I am (and this blurring between low and high seemed one feasible way to do that). Had I stopped to think about it though, as I have more recently, I would have recognized that the blurring of lines cuts both ways. Fine artists dipping into low culture can't control shit (to put it in the terms the central concept has earned). Once those doors are open, there's nothing to stop low culture from walking through and staking as much claim to the fine art context as the fine art world assumed it alone could stake claim to in low culture.

As if on queue, the perfect example of what I mean by that was on display at the MTV Video Music Awards in Brooklyn this past weekend. In Artinfo, Craig Hubert wrote of the ceremony under the title "The Day Pop Culture Took a Nosedive," and noted a few of the ways the pop performers co-opted fine art for their generally inane numbers. But I'm less interested in the way any of this impacts pop culture. Indeed, I'll confess to having next to no interest in the MTV Video Music Awards. But Sunday night I was reading something on my iPad, while receiving reports from Murat who was watching Lady Gaga's opening number, and he kept saying things like "Now she'd doing Warhol"  and "Now she's doing Koons," so I went over to have a look. Indeed, there Lady Gaga was cherry picking from the canon of contemporary art whatever struck her fancy and (one assumes) whatever she felt would resonate with her fans' MTV-informed sensibilities.

Brenna Ehrlich offers a great summary of this love affair between pop music and fine art over on MTV's site, including interviews with New York Times critic Jon Caramanica and Art in America's Brian Boucher. In addition to discussing Lady Gaga, they both reference the Jay-Z video Picasso Baby, which in case you missed it, includes a cast of New York art world insiders watching/participating in a performance the music mogul held at Pace Gallery a while back.

Of course, the interest of wealthy pop icons in fine art seems sensible to most art world insiders:

"I think for Jay Z art is a real marker of class status," Caramanica told MTV News. "He's grown up, he's wealthier, he's taking interest in different things, so enjoying art and buying art and therefore rapping about art is sort of part of the logical progression of what he's always been doing. He's in a much wealthier class now, so his concerns are the concerns of wealthier people and art is one of those things."

Brian Boucher, Art in America online editor, pretty much agreed, telling us, "You get rich, you demonstrate your refinement by buying Matisses in addition to Maybachs and mansions," he said. "It's an old story. The Fricks and the Mellons did the same in the early 20th century."

Boucher also adds that this mounting interest in art germinating in the pop music world happens to coincide with what he calls "an insane climb" in the value of art on the market. For example, a recent sale of contemporary art by Christie's scored the highest total in auction history at $495 million, with records set by one of Jay's favorites, Basquiat.

"While I'm sure Jay Z and Gaga are genuinely interested in art, it's probably not a coincidence that their interest comes at a time when artists are more and more famous and blue-chip," Boucher said.

But where does this bi-directional access lead? Will the next Nicki Minaj performance channel Louise Bourgeois (or, wait, has Miley Cyrus already beat her to it)? Will the Jonas Brothers work with Jasper Johns?

Don't get me wrong. I'm all for art world insiders and artists in particular taking themselves a bit less seriously, but I also like to think some of the accomplishments of contemporary art are perhaps better experienced with a minimum of twerking involved.

i.e., via art fairs

Destination shopping. That's the buzz phrase you need to know to discuss the contemporary art market in an informed way today. What's it really mean? Well, essentially, if you want to sell art, you must bring it to the collector (i.e., via art fairs), because the collectors are no longer seeking out the art the way they used to.

In an excellent summary (in today's New York Times) of the themes we've been talking about with regard to how the market is shifting in the recent Conversations series, Graham Bowley highlights how this change has come rather quickly, even for dealers who live this day-to-day:

Paula Cooper, the New York art dealer, attends some fairs because they allow her to see work from numerous countries in one place. But mostly she sends others from her gallery, decrying the loss of what she describes as a more thoughtful time even just five years ago when she could sit with artists and collectors and talk about art. “It is just like any business in the world now,” she said. “It is becoming a global enterprise.” [emphasis mine]

Bowley notes that collectors will still seek out new artists in the emerging galleries, but unless those galleries grow quickly (i.e., via art fairs), they don't stand much of a chance in the new market:

Some galleries showing younger, more contemporary artists can still attract people from the street, and attendance is up, gallery owners say. But for more established artists, with more expensive work, dealers have to go where the customers are.

Now while dealers may bemoan the loss of the more thoughtful time when buying/selling art was genteel and less hectic, as well as the loss of income they must shell out on travel and shipping and art fair booths (that could have been spent on more catalogs or production costs or purchases of their artists' work), the fact remains that this new system is making it easier (in many ways) for collectors:

One longtime art collector, Howard Rachofsky of Dallas, used to buy his art mainly in New York, but in the past year has traveled to fairs in Basel, New York and London. 

“You want to see art, and you want to see the people behind it, get to know the gallerists and, ultimately, the artists, and the easiest and most efficient way of doing this is at an art fair,” Mr. Rachofsky said.

“It is really about networking and seeing an art gallerist from Düsseldorf and a gallerist from Madrid 50 feet from each other, and getting a chance to spend a few quality minutes with each one of them,” he added. “That is the reason we go.”

And Mr Rachofsky's observation is the key to why this seems irreversible. The globalization of the art market was both the savior of the gallery system (most people predicted a lot more galleries would go under during the recession in 2008 than did, which was in retrospect explained as not happening because the market was much more global by then than it had been in previous, gallery-smashing recessions) and the impetus (i.e., via art fairs) of the death of the gallery system as we knew it.

So what survived (or thrived even, in certain echelons) is not actually the gallery system as we knew it, but rather this new industry that is "just like any business in the world." This new industry where up to 65% of the annual sales for many galleries are made outside the physical space they call home. 

And even among all this chatter about how strong the market is at the top, no one I've read has yet done the math on what that means in terms of profit. Sure, as

The Arts Economics report found ...sales for dealers with annual revenue exceeding 10 million euros rose 55 percent.

But those galleries are doing as many as 10 fairs each year (some I know do 15), with costs ranging from $100,000 to $300,000 per fair at that level, and so you need to subtract $1 to $3 million from those revenue increases to gauge how well they're really doing compared with past years. 

For the time being it does seem to be paying off for the larger global enterprises (er, I mean galleries), but here's what I know about corporation-like entities where profit is Job 1. The expectation is that profits will increase on an ongoing basis. Annual goals will therefore meet reality quickly if (when) artists begin to bulk at "producing work according to the demands of the art fair calendar rather than their own creative rhythms," and when supply doesn't increase to match income goals as expected (there's only so many galleries left to poach from), the bean counters will insist on cost cutting. 

The most obvious place to cut from will be the few perks the long-suffering staff get while on the road for the relentless fair circuit, but then staff retention will become a new headache. Vendors will also be squeezed for better discounts, but there's nowhere near enough volume through all the galleries for them to marshal too much power there. Eventually the fairs themselves will be asked to help cut costs, and then here's where it will get really interesting.... 

With online ventures ramping up, nipping at their heels, the physical fairs will need to innovate in order reduce their fees. They can't cut back on production or advertising, lest they lose their valued position in the pecking order of fairs (oh, yes, there is one, and they care dearly about where they stand), and they can only pay the electric bills on the backs of younger galleries (who can't hope to recoup their costs) for so long (eventually, most younger galleries get tired of bringing the harder-to-sell "street cred" work to the bigger fairs, while the more established galleries unload their secondary market inventory). So what will the fairs do, when the bean counters demand saner rates? They could have simply welcomed other galleries in (who are willing to pay), but the fairs' very success is contributing to a decrease in the overall gallery numbers:

According to the Web site Galleries of New York, which collates real estate data, the number of galleries in the big art districts has declined in the past few years — galleries in West Chelsea have fallen to 282 from a peak of 364 in 2007; those in SoHo have dropped to 87 from 337 in 1995.

Eventually those trends will run smack into each other. Unless, the fairs become more gallery-centric. Oh sure, they'll tell you they understand the galleries are their clients and that they are there to serve their clients, but what I mean is that they better build their own business around their clients' businesses.

I'll give some of them credit, actually. Just after Hurricane Sandy last year, a few big fair directors reached out and asked how they could help. I believe they did this from a human point of view, as well, not just a business point of view, but I would like to see that impulse taken even further. If the fairs are here to stay (and they seem to be), I'd like to see the model evolve such that each expense is analyzed for how it might be reduced with the reality the galleries must deal with in mind. How can the fairs help galleries coordinate shipping and save on travel? (They can announce who's been accepted much earlier than they do, for starters.) How can the fairs help galleries deal with the times of year in which the schedule is simply nuts? October through December, and then March through June are so overloaded with fairs. They won't most likely volunteer to collaborate with the other fairs (they're trying to put the others out of business), but I know galleries who are opting out of one or the other of the major fairs' editions in different cities because they'll drop dead otherwise. How can the fairs help galleries reduce the staff they have to send to each fair? Can services be offered at discounted rates for art handlers or even booth sitters? Currently the fairs make a huge chunk of change from the "extras" they charge galleries. Lighting, closets, carpet, etc. Can these costs be reconsidered? 

Oh I know, the fairs are a "business"...but as I noted, their success is systematically contributing to a reduction in their future clients. Taking steps now to build their business with the galleries' costs in mind can help offset that trend, as well as help reduce the relentless demands on artists to make more work for the fairs. 

There's nothing less than the quality of our collective cultural legacy hanging in the balance here...

With "Protectors" Like This, Who Need Enemies?

A confluence of evidence emerged over the past week that the public's fear of "terrorism" (the ultimate in easily exploited boogeymen that seemingly no government in the world can resist) can and will be used against us. First came news that despite the US government's constant reassurances that there is judicial oversight of their domestic spying activities, the very courts they say are watching out for the public's interest admitted they have very little real power to do so. From the Washington Post:

The leader of the secret court that is supposed to provide critical oversight of the government’s vast spying programs said that its ability to do so is limited and that it must trust the government to report when it improperly spies on Americans.

The chief judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court said the court lacks the tools to independently verify how often the government’s surveillance breaks the court’s rules that aim to protect Americans’ privacy. Without taking drastic steps, it also cannot check the veracity of the government’s assertions that the violations its staff members report are unintentional mistakes.

“The FISC is forced to rely upon the accuracy of the information that is provided to the Court,” its chief, U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton, said in a written statement to The Washington Post. “The FISC does not have the capacity to investigate issues of noncompliance, and in that respect the FISC is in the same position as any other court when it comes to enforcing [government] compliance with its orders.”

The larger issue at play within using "we're protecting you from terrorism" excuses for governmental over-reach and/or abuse, though, is the way such "anti-terrorism" sentiment can foreseeably be used to excuse any atrocity a government wishes to carry out. For example, the interim government in Egypt has begun re-branding their killing of over 1000 protesters last week as "a war against violent terrorists" and began chastising any foreign journalist who didn't report it as such. From The New York Times:

“One could be forgiven for saying that there is a coordinated campaign against the foreign journalists,” Matt Bradley, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, said Sunday in an interview with Al Jazeera’s English-language sister network. He described being pulled into an armored personnel carrier by soldiers rescuing him after a mob tackled him, tore at his clothes and took his notebook.

Coming at the end of a week when security forces killed more than 1,000 Morsi supporters in the streets, the push to control how the news media portray the violence is the latest sign of the government’s authoritarian turn, which its officials have justified as emergency measures to save Egypt from a coordinated campaign of violence by the Islamists of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Scholars and human rights activists say they see signs of broad coordination between Egypt’s state and private media to drive home the same messages. After the first mass shooting following the military takeover killed more than 60 Morsi supporters at a sit-in, for example, television talk shows across the state and private media seemed to suggest that the Islamists might have deliberately provoked the violence to tarnish the military. Later, all seemed to discover that even Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain had argued for limiting human rights in the interest of protecting national security.

“There is very clear coordination,” said Heba Morayef, a researcher in Egypt for Human Rights Watch. “Forgetting what is true or not, it is interesting that you hear the same thing from everybody.”

Of course, that's Egypt, right...using anti-terrorism rhetoric and/or laws to excuse governmental abuse would never happen in more progressive countries, right?

Wrong.

Just yesterday came the chilling news that the UK government detained Glenn Greenwald's partner at Heathrow airport for 9 hours via what by all counts is a blatant abuse of a counter-terrorism law. Greenwald, as you may know, is the journalist for The Guardian who was contacted by Edward Snowden and who's been working carefully with his paper's editors to publish that story as conscientiously as possible according to most of the journalists I respect. His partner, David Michael Miranda, is a citizen of Brazil and not even a journalist (although he had been visiting a collaborator of Greenwald's on this story in Berlin and his trip was paid for by The Guardian). Whereas it's understandable the UK government (read: acting on request of the US government, imho) would use any option at their disposal to interrogate Miranda after he met with Greenwald's collaborator, it should be viewed as entirely unacceptable that they twisted a law designed to stop terrorists in order to do so. From The New York Times:

Mr. Miranda, Mr. Greenwald said, was told that he was being detained under Section 7 of the British Terrorism Act, which allows the authorities to detain someone for up to nine hours for questioning and to conduct a search of personal items, often without a lawyer, to determine possible ties to terrorism. More than 97 percent of people stopped under the provision are questioned for under an hour, according to the British government.

“What’s amazing is this law, called the Terrorism Act, gives them a right to detain and question you about your activities with a terrorist organization or your possible involvement in or knowledge of a terrorism plot,” Mr. Greenwald said. “The only thing they were interested in was N.S.A. documents and what I was doing with Laura Poitras. It’s a total abuse of the law.” He added: “This is obviously a serious, radical escalation of what they are doing. He is my partner. He is not even a journalist.”

Until the public begins to show a bit of backbone, governments will continue to abuse "anti-terrorism" rhetoric and laws that their sheepish, cowering citizens permit them to enact. It has always been obvious to me that with such laws in their toolkit, they would not be able to resist using them toward other, obviously authoritarian ends. They clearly have way too much power with such laws, and only the naivest of fools would believe such power will not corrupt them.

A Day For Detroit : Detroit's Other Big Three: Dürer, Rembrandt, and Picasso

From Sept. 13 to Dec. 31, 2006, the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) presented an exhibition near and dear to my heart, The Big Three in Printmaking: Dürer, Rembrandt and Picasso. With 90 prints in a variety of media (including etchings, woodcuts, engravings and lithograph), the exhibition focused on three Western artists who were so solid in their ability to draw they pushed the boundaries of human achievement in printmaking during their lifetimes as well.  

Photo ©2013, Detroit Institute of Arts
Albrecht Durer (German, 1471-1528), Adam and Eve, 1504, engraving printed in black ink on laid paper,
9 7/8 x 7 5/8 in. (25.1 x 19.3 cm),  Accession No.  F76.14.
Deaccession No. ???

My first exposure to the gallery world was in working with a space that focused on works on paper, where I developed huge respect for printmaking and the skill and talent it takes to do them well. (My first "major" acquisition for my own collection was an engraving by Picasso, which holds place of pride in our house and [along with our passports] is the possession we're supposed to grab on the way out the door in case of an evacuation due to fire.) DIA has some of the very best human accomplishments in printmaking in its collection, and this exhibition was a chance to focus the public's attention on them.

From the show's press release:

Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn (Dutch, 1606-1669), Angel Appearing to the Shepherds, 1634, etching, engraving and drypoint printed in black on laid paper, 10 1/4 x 8 5/8 in. (26 x 21.9 cm), Accession No.09.1S933.
Deaccession No. ????

While a wide range of each artist’s prints will be included, three masterpieces stand out: Adam and Eve (1504) by Dürer; The Angel Appearing to the Shepherds (1634) by Rembrandt; and Torso of a Woman (1953) by Picasso. All three prints are exceptional on many levels and the artists meant them to be seen in that way.

Dürer's Adam and Eve and Rembrandt's The Angel Appearing to the Shepherds can be thought of to some degree as intended "show-off" pieces. In the prime of their careers, both Dürer and Rembrandt conceived these works partly to demonstrate their dazzling abilities to interpret and present well-known subjects and to do so with unmatched technical skill.

The technically complex Adam and Eve demonstrates Dürer’s amazing ability to distinguish flesh, fur, foliage, and other elements with just the strength of his hand as he cut the image into the metal plate from which the prints were made. Additionally, Dürer intentionally loaded Adam and Eve with symbolic references to call attention to his intellectual prowess.
Rembrandt’s The Angel Appearing to the Shepherds represents the ultimate in ability to handle the demands and possibilities of etching. Its complexity is heightened by the fact that Rembrandt took on the added challenges of depicting the darkness of night (very difficult to do in an etching), and conveying high emotion and dramatic action.

Picasso’s Torso of a Woman is likewise a “signature” statement meant to be bold, beautiful, and indicative of the artist’s best. It is done in the Cubist style, of which Picasso was among the major innovators. This print is a pure aquatint, a type of etching in which broad areas of tone can be achieved by using an acid instead of a tool to create hollows in the metal plate. Like the Dürer and the Rembrandt, it is a brilliant display of printmaking skill that deserves to be called an outstanding masterwork.

OK, so DIA doesn't include an image of the Picasso aquatint mentioned in the press release on their website, so I'm sort of only guessing that this one from 1953 (titled "Torso of a woman") is the one in their collection.
I think it's a good guess.
This image is from the catalog of another exhibition on Picasso's printmaking in Prague this year. Catalog here.

A Day for Detroit (#DayDetroit) is an effort to spotlight the collections at the Detroit Institute of Arts that would be lost if the threatened sale of art in collections at the DIA are sold. All day long Modern Art Notes and many other sites will be spotlight art from the DIA's collection. As Tyler Green notes, the best way to support DIA is to become a member of the Detroit Institute of Arts.

While a wide range of each artist’s prints will be included, three masterpieces stand out: Adam and Eve (1504) by Dürer; The Angel Appearing to the Shepherds (1634) by Rembrandt; and Torso of a Woman (1953) by Picasso. All three prints are exceptional on many levels and the artists meant them to be seen in that way.
Dürer's Adam and Eve and Rembrandt's The Angel Appearing to the Shepherds can be thought of to some degree as intended "show-off" pieces. In the prime of their careers, both Dürer and Rembrandt conceived these works partly to demonstrate their dazzling abilities to interpret and present well-known subjects and to do so with unmatched technical skill.
The technically complex Adam and Eve demonstrates Dürer’s amazing ability to distinguish flesh, fur, foliage, and other elements with just the strength of his hand as he cut the image into the metal plate from which the prints were made. Additionally, Dürer intentionally loaded Adam and Eve with symbolic references to call attention to his intellectual prowess.

Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn (Dutch, 1606-1669), Angel Appearing to the Shepherds, 1634, etching, engraving and drypoint printed in black on laid paper, 10 1/4 x 8 5/8 in. (26 x 21.9 cm), Accession No.09.1S933.
Deaccession No. ????

Rembrandt’s The Angel Appearing to the Shepherds represents the ultimate in ability to handle the demands and possibilities of etching. Its complexity is heightened by the fact that Rembrandt took on the added challenges of depicting the darkness of night (very difficult to do in an etching), and conveying high emotion and dramatic action.
Picasso’s Torso of a Woman is likewise a “signature” statement meant to be bold, beautiful, and indicative of the artist’s best. It is done in the Cubist style, of which Picasso was among the major innovators. This print is a pure aquatint, a type of etching in which broad areas of tone can be achieved by using an acid instead of a tool to create hollows in the metal plate. Like the Dürer and the Rembrandt, it is a brilliant display of printmaking skill that deserves to be called an outstanding masterwork.
- See more at: http://www.dia.org/news/304/Detroit-s-Other-Big-Three--D%C3%BCrer,-Rembrandt,-and-Picasso.aspx#sthash.O4Rdysxu.dpuf

While a wide range of each artist’s prints will be included, three masterpieces stand out: Adam and Eve (1504) by Dürer; The Angel Appearing to the Shepherds (1634) by Rembrandt; and Torso of a Woman (1953) by Picasso. All three prints are exceptional on many levels and the artists meant them to be seen in that way.
Dürer's Adam and Eve and Rembrandt's The Angel Appearing to the Shepherds can be thought of to some degree as intended "show-off" pieces. In the prime of their careers, both Dürer and Rembrandt conceived these works partly to demonstrate their dazzling abilities to interpret and present well-known subjects and to do so with unmatched technical skill.
The technically complex Adam and Eve demonstrates Dürer’s amazing ability to distinguish flesh, fur, foliage, and other elements with just the strength of his hand as he cut the image into the metal plate from which the prints were made. Additionally, Dürer intentionally loaded Adam and Eve with symbolic references to call attention to his intellectual prowess.
Rembrandt’s The Angel Appearing to the Shepherds represents the ultimate in ability to handle the demands and possibilities of etching. Its complexity is heightened by the fact that Rembrandt took on the added challenges of depicting the darkness of night (very difficult to do in an etching), and conveying high emotion and dramatic action.
Picasso’s Torso of a Woman is likewise a “signature” statement meant to be bold, beautiful, and indicative of the artist’s best. It is done in the Cubist style, of which Picasso was among the major innovators. This print is a pure aquatint, a type of etching in which broad areas of tone can be achieved by using an acid instead of a tool to create hollows in the metal plate. Like the Dürer and the Rembrandt, it is a brilliant display of printmaking skill that deserves to be called an outstanding masterwork.
- See more at: http://www.dia.org/news/304/Detroit-s-Other-Big-Three--D%C3%BCrer,-Rembrandt,-and-Picasso.aspx#sthash.O4Rdysxu.dpuf

Date

1504

Medium

Engraving printed in black ink on laid paper

Dimensions

Sheet (trimmed within plate mark): 9 7/8 x 7 5/8 in. (25.1 x 19.3 cm)

Department

Prints, Drawings & Photographs

Classification

Prints

Credit

Founders Society Purchase, New Endowment Fund

Accession No.

F76.14

- See more at: http://www.dia.org/object-info/90633960-e871-40be-9765-acbd1dd3f521.aspx?position=1#sthash.9T0zTofc.dpuf