In Terms Of

Tag: ARTnews

  • Make American Art Great Again

    “The Lack of Constructive Analytical Criticism and the Proliferation of Descriptive Analysis in Contemporary Art” with James Little
    Wednesday, November 15, 2017
    Lunchtime Lecture Series, Art Students League, Phyllis Harriman Mason Gallery, New York

    James Little (photograph by Christopher Howard)

    The audience gathered in the Phyllis Harriman Mason Gallery of the Art Students League, a midtown Manhattan art school founded in 1875, was mostly middle-aged folks and senior citizens, with a scattering of younger people who were probably students. They arrived to see and hear James Little, an abstract painter and professor, give a lunchtime talk. I was unaware of him prior to the event—I did not know if he was a critic, an artist, or some other art professional before showing up. Born in Tennessee in 1952, Little earned his BFA from the Memphis Academy of Art in 1974 and two years later received an MFA from Syracuse University. June Kelly Gallery has shown his work since the late 1980s.

    Today’s wordily titled topic, “The Lack of Constructive Analytical Criticism and the Proliferation of Descriptive Analysis in Contemporary Art,” felt like a time warp—meaning Little’s complaint was decades old. He characterized the current situation of contemporary art critics as a decline of quality that he likened to an “unedited book.” Critical debate, he claimed, has diminished since Clement Greenberg (1909–1994), Hilton Kramer (1928–2012), and Robert Hughes (1938–2012) were actively writing. An attitude of confusion was manifest in the most recent Whitney Biennial, he said, which included a 2016 artwork by Dana Schutz, whom he referred to as “Schultz,” that caused a controversy. Protesters accused Schutz, a white woman, of playing around with—and profiting from—the suffering of African Americans. “There was a big uproar about the fact that she did a painting of Emmett Till, Open Casket,” Little said. “The whole time, nobody said anything about the quality of the work. It was never mentioned…. What I recognized was that the critics weren’t stepping up, the artists weren’t stepping up, and we were just accepting this, accepting what they were feeding us, with no debate, with no criticism.” Little’s speaking style avoided complete sentences or thoughts. The supporting arguments behind his statements lacked substance.

    Dana Schutz, Open Casket, 2016, oil on canvas, 39 x 53 in. (artwork © Dana Schutz)

    I was puzzled and wondered how much reading Little had done on the controversy. Coco Fusco avoided the topic of quality in a Hyperallergic essay, focusing instead on censorship. Calvin Tomkins, though, noted the “deftly brushed colors at the top” of the painting in his New Yorker profile last April. Elsewhere in the long read Tomkins wrote, “The horror is conveyed in painterly ways that, to me, make it seem more tragic than the photograph, because the viewer is drawn in, not repelled.” A New Republic piece by Josephine Livingstone and Lovia Gyarkye compared the painting’s formalism with its subject matter; it also contextualized Open Casket within Schutz’s oeuvre, noting the artist is not known for her solemnity. These three examples are the first ones I read while writing this review. If I had followed up with dozens more articles on the subject, I’d surely uncover further discussion of the painting’s formal qualities. Little declared that criticism is essential, that it improves art, provides direction for artists, and even offers them something to resist. Criticism can only do these things if a person reads it, which Little seems not to have done. I wondered if he actually saw Schutz’s painting in person instead of online.

    Chris Ofili’s painting Holy Virgin Mary (1996), in the traveling exhibition Sensation: Young British Artists from the Saatchi Collection at the Brooklyn Museum in 1999, provoked New York’s mayor Rudolph Giuliani to call for censorship and defunding. “Nobody talked about the quality of that painting,” Little exclaimed. “Nobody said whether it was a good painting or a bad painting. Or if it was despicable. They didn’t say that. He made the guy famous. And that’s my point.” Later during the Q&A, Little agreed with an audience member that if Schutz had the skills, fewer people would have complained. “Dana Schultz was one of shock value. And she got it. She was in the right place to get shock value, and she got it in the Whitney. If she was a better painter, it could have been different. If it had been something, a personal experience of hers, it could have been different.”

    The matter of a white woman painting a lynched black boy had little to do with the work. For Little, closeness to the subject matter is important. That an artist needs to experience his or her subject matter firsthand is an odd stance to take, considering that few painters in the Italian Renaissance witnessed the crucifixion of Jesus Christ or the beheading of John the Baptist. Maybe Little meant that an artist depicting current or recent events should bear witness to them, implicating an early text-based work by the artist Glenn Ligon, who riffed on the “I am a man” posters created in the wake of the 1968 sanitation workers’ strike in Memphis, which Little lived through as a teenager—though his recollection of basic facts of the event were faulty in several important ways. Nevertheless, Little was there but the appropriator was not, and therefore Ligon trivialized the situation.

    Edouard Manet, The Dead Toreador, probably 1864, oil on canvas, 29 7/8 x 60 3/8 in. (artwork in the public domain)

    Little paired a slide of Open Casket with a work by Mary Cassatt—the first in a series of comparisons of art influenced by pop culture, the media, consumerism, and novelty (which was bad) with art connected to tradition (definitely a good thing). Contrasted here next were Paul Cézanne’s apples and Carl Andre’s bricks, then Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain (1917) and Édouard Manet’s The Dead Toreador (1864). Little showed an installation of rocks by Joseph Beuys called The End of the Twentieth Century (1983–85) and a painting from Claude Monet’s Haystacks series (1890–91). Little wondered how we got from one to the other without any critical debate, positive or negative. Once again, I was perplexed about this alleged dearth of debate. Hundreds if not thousands of books have been written on the evolution modern art. Bringing this specific painting by Manet was confusing. The artist had painted a bull in the picture, but critics wrote that it looked like a rat. Manet cut down the canvas and saved only the bullfighter. Does Little support critics having the power to force an artist drastically alter even a finished and exhibited painting?

    Little periodically read passages from the writings of Greenberg, Kramer, and Hughes—critics whom the art world generally recognizes as having conservative views. The quotes were meant to buttress the artist’s “I am not a Duchampian” stance. Fair enough. Not every artist should embrace the readymade. Little further articulated his position: “I don’t think idea is enough to constitute art. I think art has to have vision, content—emotive content. It has to serve a purpose to humanity. It’s essential for our spiritual and mental health.” For Little, Andre is minor art, and “minor art is not major art.” Minor art that proliferates today is evidence of a cultural decline. “When art gets better, everything else gets better.” In other words, the relationship of art to life is a matter of trickle-up economics.

    Jacob Lawrence, panel 35 of The Migration Series: They left the South in great numbers. They arrived in the North in great numbers, 1940–41, casein tempera on hardboard, 12 x 18 in. (artwork © Jacob and Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence Foundation)

    Little said he felt nothing upon seeing Duchamp’s urinal or Beuys’s Felt Suit in a museum, but he marveled at Manet’s fallen bullfighter. “I had an aesthetic experience,” he said of his episode. “What I mean by aesthetic experience is the experience that you have when you see a great piece of art. It’s a life-changing thing.” Little’s definition of the aesthetic experience was wholly subjective, even tautological. You not only know it when you see it, but it’s completely explains itself. “Rembrandt is Rembrandt” was what Little stated to demonstrate the self-evidence of greatness. Art “has to offer something,” he continued. “It has to enrich my life and my experience in order for it to be art. It has to give me something I didn’t have in the first place. It has to take me further along in this journey.”

    The three photographs comprising Ai Weiwei’s action Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn (1995) fail to meet his criteria for art, but paintings in Jacob Lawrence’s Migration Series (1941) do. Lawrence’s paintings speak for themselves as art, Little said, through a connection to the past, their color and composition, and their narrative. “An idea alone does not create an aesthetic experience,” Little reiterated. “An idea alone does not create art.” Little was agog at why Ai would drop a two-thousand-year-old Chinese vase, when a quick Google search would have turned up the answer. Sometimes an artwork doesn’t reveal itself immediately. Don’t we check the museum wall label to see who the subject of a portrait is? Does the iconography of ancient sculpture of Egypt or the Americas reveal itself to a nonspecialist? It needs interpretation.

    Cady Noland, Industry Park, 1991, zinc-plated steel chain link fence, 100¼ x 216 x 3 in. (artwork © Cady Noland; photographer unknown)

    I sympathize with Little’s disbelief that a destructive act can be creative. I agree that rigorous formal training is a necessary precursor for a certain kind of artist—but not all artists. What puzzles me is how Little started the lecture by lamenting critical discourse, but then began condemning art he doesn’t like and pleading for a return to reason. I understood where he was coming from but failed to grasp a coherent argument. A photograph of Cady Noland’s Industry Park (1991), which consists of an unaltered chain-linked fence displayed in a gallery, was projected onto the screen beside him. People don’t see their lives improved by this art, he said. Art needs rigor to make. “We can no longer allow for the public to feed us stuff that we don’t understand, or don’t really matter to us in our daily lives.” Description, novelty, and consumerism has infiltrated criticism, and Little finds the writing of Robert C. Morgan, Karen Wilkin, Mario Naves, and James Panero to alleviate this. Is it because they praise art he likes and denounce art he hates?

    A chain-linked fence does not reach the masses, Little remarked during the Q&A. Noland’s work does not provide an aesthetic experience. It’s only utilitarian. The Art Students League has provided traditional artistic training for decades, he reminded the audience, educating Jackson Pollock, Louis Nevelson, Roy Lichtenstein, and Robert Rauschenberg. “We can’t throw this [tradition] out the window, you know, because somebody decides they want to go out here and take a chain-linked fence and put it up in the Museum of Modern Art. And we look at it like it’s some, you know, revelation. No, it’s not a revelation! That’s what I’m saying! I’m gonna go get me a chain-linked fence when I leave here, and I’m gonna put it in my backyard. Is there any difference? Well maybe it’s Earth art.” Little has seen art exhibitions of trash swept into a corner—a clichéd insult that is ironically based on real life—and a room full of grocery carts. (Could the latter show be Josh Kline’s recent solo outing at 47 Canal?) Little admitted he was a conservative formalist, which he confidently understands as meaning “I know what I’m doing.” He obviously demands high craft and skill from artists, who make their work by hand, with a vision, and a sense of history. Further, Little feels he belongs more to the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries than to the twenty-first. He does not make art for himself but rather is concerned what others think and feel about it, including his fellow artists.

    An audience member speaks during the Q&A (photograph by Christopher Howard)

    During the Q&A an audience member asked about the connection between Rembrandt and Pollock. Thomas Hart Benton, Little replied, served as the lineage of formal training, which includes studying classical art and knowing the figure. “Where [Pollock] took it was another place.” Pollock had “developed a relationship with the medium” of paint and expressed himself through paint. Rembrandt was connected to Titian, El Greco, and Leonardo. “Look, if you gonna built a house, would you build it without a foundation? I guess not.” Someone else argued that Duchamp and Beuys attempted a dialogue with the past. “What you just said is right on,” replied Little. “They were trying to do that. I’m saying that they didn’t do it…. The others, they weren’t trying to do it—they did it.” Little returned to Beuys’s Felt Suit. “When I walk past this suit, at the Walker Art Center, it did not do anything for me. That’s just the way it is. It just didn’t do anything for me.” The work presented a conundrum. “Why is this here?” he wondered. “Why is there not an outcry against this art? Critics have failed us. I pray for another Clement Greenberg, and Hilton Kramer and Robert Hughes. I pray for it because we don’t get that.” Little contented that we have failed to uphold standards. That “we” includes artists, scholars, curators, museum professionals, and the public. Little was not surprised that art mocking middle-class values has found an audience among the wealthy elite who fund art museums and serve on their boards. One attendee remarked, “Whose interest does that serve?” The lecture thankfully ended before a discussion of collecting practices began.

    Earlier this year Bomb interviewed Little for the magazine’s Oral History Project. “His paintings are guided by intuitive responses to form, color, and feeling,” LeRonn P. Brooks wrote in his introduction to the piece. “This approach is not overly calculated, though its complexity may suggest so.” Little was interviewed by the Brooklyn Rail in 2009 and profiled by ARTnews in 2011. In the latter, he described his process in detail, describing how he applies layers of paint (made from powdered pigment and mixed with varnish and beeswax) to his surfaces to produce a high sheen. Though I disagree with most of what he said, Little’s views did not put me off. In fact, I am curious to see his paintings in person, to understand why he believes the things he does and how his vision for art manifests itself in his own production. I don’t wish to persuade him of accepting the value of Duchamp, Beuys, and Noland. How he feels about his own art is of greater interest and importance.

    In Terms Of count: coming soon.

  • Nice Guys Finish

    A Talk with the Critics: Ben Davis, Carol Kino, Andrew Russeth, and Benjamin Sutton in Conversation with Sharon Louden
    Wednesday, September 23, 2015
    New York Academy of Art, Wilkinson Hall, New York

    The journalist Carol Kino (photograph by Christopher Howard)

    Two years ago I stopped attending panels of art critics discussing the state of the field, mainly because the subjects such events would cover could easily be predicted: (1) money, and how there is little to be made writing about art; (2) a perceived loss of power in the art world, ceded to dealers, curators, and collectors; and (3) the differences between writing for print and online publications. Speakers overwhelmingly wrung their hands over problems that have existed for decades. The numbing repetition—I can’t even.

    I almost skipped this “Talk with the Critics” panel, part of a series moderated by the artist Sharon Louden on professional-development issues for MFA students, for fear of more of the same.1 But I was familiar with and respect the work of the four New York–based participants—Ben Davis, national art critic for Artnet News; Carol Kino, a journalist for the New York Times and other mainstream newspapers and magazines; Andrew Russeth, co–executive editor of ARTnews; and Benjamin Sutton, metro editor at Hyperallergic—and decided to give it a shot.2 The level of discourse was reasonable and pedestrian. That’s not surprising, considering Louden’s focus for the series is to demystify the work and approachability of critics for the academy’s graduate students. What follows are summaries of the major topics.

    Why Write Criticism?

    In college Russeth attempted to make art, unsuccessfully, so he studied art history. After studying with Rosalind Krauss, who “was a force of nature … [who] really made the stakes seem very high,” Russeth became attracted to what he perceived as the glamor of art criticism, deferring a halfhearted interest in law school. Sutton covered film, theater, and art for his school paper, and Kino came from a similar background—wanting to write about culture. Falling in with an art crowd in New York, she discovered she had a good eye. Davis, who studied cultural theory and philosophy in school, was introduced to the art world via Rachel K. Ward’s ill-fated group exhibition Terminal 5 at John F. Kennedy Airport, where he met the artist and writer Walter Robinson, who invited Davis to work for Artnet Magazine, which he edited. Artforum had deceived Davis into thinking that art was a place for ideas: “The art world is where important ideas go to die,” he joked.

    Andrew Russeth on the left (photograph by Christopher Howard)

    What Do You Look For?

    For Sutton, the lure to write about the big show was stronger when he was younger; now he finds it more rewarding, for example, to travel to out-of-the-way places and spend more time with fewer shows. Russeth aims to reset the balances where critical consensus is skewed or wrong, and also “to get people’s eyeballs on something new.” As a journalist, Kino looks for a good story, often on current events with “some meaty sociopolitical aspect.” “I look for a sense of contemporaneity,” Davis said, which he sometimes finds in older art, which can become relevant again.

    How Do You Find New Things?

    Louden tried to get a conversation going about Instagram, but the four critics had other ideas. “People drop casual comments at dinner parties,” Kino said; she also depends on friends who are artists and publicists. “The artists always know,” Russeth affirmed, identifying younger, plugged-in dealers and even collectors as those offering good recommendations. Davis rephrased the question to uncover the panel’s not-so-hidden motive: “How do you get written about?” Instead of boilerplate invitations, Davis said, write something personal, like “You may like my work for this reason.” Kino advised artists to time their pitches right for a publication—which may publish a review while an exhibition is still on view, or months later. She hesitates to carrying on correspondence with artists who don’t have galleries, or whose work isn’t appropriate for galleries, because her outlets are not interested in covering unusual situations. Sutton, who wades through press materials daily, recommended that prospective artists contact him by email, not phone or Facebook. Rather than brownnose with critics, Russeth said, he advocated artists to “start a gang,” reiterating an idea from Dave Hickey. “The best way to do it is to have a big group … have curator friends, have artist friends, have writer friends,” all of who can promote your work to others.3

    Can Critics and Artists Be Friends?

    Russeth has no problem with it, though unfavorable writing can lead to disappointment. Sutton finds it inevitable that artists and critics form relationships and views the separation between them to be old fashioned. Kino reminded us that an even older school—dating to the 1950s—fraternized comfortably. Davis cautioned against losing the balance between insight and embeddedness; he also recognized that “an honest review” in intimate art scenes outside New York “would mean severing all these relationships.” And then: “I don’t have a hard and fast rule except to be honest about it, if you’re writing about someone who you have knowledge of.” Regarding Robert Morris’s personal relationship with Krauss, Davis said, “A lot of art history formed by people who knew each other very intimately. You’d be foolish to overlook that as a source.”

    The contemporary Ben Davis (photograph by Christopher Howard)

    What’s Up with Listicles?

    Louden identified lists, such as “6 of Our Favorite Hamburger-Themed Artworks for National Burger Day” and “14 Young Power Players Set to Become the New Art World Aristocracy,” as a recent trend in art writing. The format, Davis claimed, is cheap to produce and does well—much better than reviews of small shows in Bushwick. The BuzzFeedification of discourse has spawned the entertainment article about art, he said, adding that it’s new to have an audience “amused by art.” While ARTnews publishes intelligent lists, Russeth revealed that the well-researched article gets an audience over time. Sutton argued that a well-written listicle can be informative.

    What Are the Issues in Painting?

    The audience Q&A started with an inquiry about contemporary painting. Russeth singled out a couple of schools in play—the networked painting of R. H. Quaytman and postinternet art—and told us he has to argue for painting’s relevance when writing about the medium. (Really, still?)  Sutton seeks what looks new or demonstrates a variation, break, or improvement in any medium, and Kino digs for personal stories and avoids theoretical discussion.

    From the crowd, the art historian and critic Irving Sandler—who began writing in the 1950s and was friends with many Abstract Expressionists—pressed the issue further. Davis ducked the question to ask his own: “What is art?” Kino placed the burden on artists, while Sutton stressed the need to pay attention to art scenes outside New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago. Online publications such as Burnaway and Pelican Bomb do that well, he said. (Louden added Bmore Art.) Russeth argued that criticism can be a tool to counteract obscene amounts of money circulating in the art world, and also to upend male white dominance.

    What Do You Love and Hate in Writing?

    Sutton likes writing about art that he doesn’t get initially, that gives him a new perspective. Kino hates an opinionated reviewer’s personality coming through strongly. “I like original ideas, plainly stated—that’s pretty boring,” Davis said, noting that his monthly roundup of art writing for Artnet News demonstrates his interests—though I notice that he recently sought recommendations for the list on social media. Russeth loves criticism that lays it on the line—he wants opinion, writers coming out swinging and being risk takers. “That’s what leads to better art,” he declared.

    Benjamin Sutton on the mic (photograph by Christopher Howard)

    What about Trends and Brands?

    Figurative art has roared back over the past ten to fifteen years, Russeth pronounced, partly because critics and historians have broadened their view. “People like Joan Semmel, Martin Wong, Philip Pearlstein—I mean, they’ve never looked better, right?” He explained, “It’s no longer necessarily a zero sum game, which when I read art history, it kind of feels like it once was.” For Davis, “contemporary” has eclipsed terms like postmodern or pluralism, an issue he explored in his 2013 book 9.5 Theses on Art and Class. When teaching painters, video makers, and performance artists, he observed, “The question, implicitly, that’s there, without being proposed, is, what are we all learning that’s the same?” Instead of having a unifying theory of it all, Davis detects a herd mentality in galleries, where “consensus about what was competent” has replaced “consensus about what was good and bad.”

    Sutton has witnessed an acceleration of branding in culture, when fashion crosses over into the hip, cool art world. The fast-fashion retailer H&M, he said, collaborated with Jeff Koons last year to produce a handbag. (Don’t forget about Takashi Murakami’s popular monogram bags for Louis Vuitton.) Taking a long view, Davis connected the early-nineteenth-century Romantic view of the artist with the Industrial Revolution. By the late 1990s, he sketched out, the fashion industry had evolved from producing couture for the few to cranking out ready-to-wear clothes for the masses, with designers producing sunglasses, cosmetics, and perfume. Huge conglomerates now use art to recapture high fashion’s exclusivity. “The whole point is that there’s a tension” between art and fashion, Davis concluded, not a synthesis.

    What’s Your Definition of Art?

    Russeth said that art, at its best, is a protected field to talk about things you can’t talk about elsewhere, in a safer and fuller way. He left out “through objects and images.” Sutton agreed but emphasized that art is not protected because it is permissive. Davis noted that art is a general term for excellence—an advertisement can be so good that it is art—so what is fine art? The tradition, the museum and gallery culture, and economically (a person with control over his or her labor). Earlier Kino had passed the microphone to Davis but got it back, saying “You know it when you see it.” She added that art constantly redefines what is art.

    In Terms Of count: 9.

    1 I spoke on a “Talk with the Critics” panel with Hrag Vartanian and Lily Wei in November 2013.

    2 Sutton was my editor at the L Magazine in 2011–12.

    3 Russeth misattributed the quote, slightly. Here is Hickey: “That’s why I still endorse Peter Schjeldahl’s advice on how to become an artist: ‘You move to a city. You hang out in bars. You form a gang, turn it into a scene, and turn that into a movement.’” What Russeth left out was the final step: “Then, I would suggest, when your movement hits the museum, abandon it.” Hickey, “Romancing the Looky-Loos,” Air Guitar: Essays on Art and Democracy (Los Angeles: Art Issues Press, 1997), 152.

    Watch

  • Writing for Socially Engaged Art

    Christopher Howard, founder and chief critic for In Terms Of, delivered the following untitled talk on a panel at the 2014 Open Engagement conference. The discussion, which was moderated by Chelsea Haines and included presentations by Sandra de la Loza and Juliana Driever, looked at new directions in writing about social practice from diverse perspectives.

    Writing for Socially Engaged Art
    Friday, May 16, 2014
    Open A.I.R. Workshops
    2014 Open Engagement
    Queens Museum, New York City Building, Queens Museum Theater, Flushing Meadows Corona Park, New York

    After being asked to participate on this panel, I wanted to know what kind of writing on socially engaged art is already out there. My conclusion is that there’s a lot of writing on socially engaged art out there. We have books devoted to the subject by Grant Kester, Claire Bishop, Pablo Helguera, Tom Finkelpearl, Nato Thompson, and Gregory Sholette, among others. We have essays by the above authors, as well as by Ben Davis, Steve Lambert, and Yates McKee. (Why so many men, I wonder?) They write on Project Row Houses, Theaster Gates, Suzanne Lacy, Tania Bruguera, Superflex, and the Yes Men, as well as projects sponsored by Creative Time, Art in Odd Places, and local and state arts councils across the country.

    Artists, writers, and curators discuss socially engaged art in Creative Time Reports and on several blogs hosted by the nonprofit organization A Blade of Grass. Over the past two months, the blog for Open Engagement has published daily responses to questions about social practice, and I’m sure we will read more about what happens at this three-day conference in the coming weeks, adding to the growing body of literature on socially engaged art.

    One could argue that participatory art probably generates more passionate debate than other form of art—although flipping through any art magazine or browsing any art blog would indicate otherwise. Traditional genres such as painting, sculpture, photography, and video still grab the lion’s share of attention, and reviews of socially engaged art rarely appear in the reviews section proper.

    Still, socially engaged art is totally mainstream. Last fall, for example, Artforum magazine, generally accepted as the pinnacle of art writing, published several major essays, including “Limits of Control,” Felicity Scott’s text on Rain Room at the Museum of Modern Art (2012) and other immersive environments, followed by several pieces on Thomas Hirschhorn’s Gramsci Monument (2013) and a reassessment of Andrea Fraser’s untitled sex video from 2003, which isn’t quite social practice as we generally understand it but which embodies many of the same issues confronting the field.1

    A view of Thomas Hirschhorn’s Gramsci Monument (2013) at Forest Houses in Bronx, New York (photograph by the New York Observer)

    Last month ARTnews published major exposés on social practice, Carolina A. Miranda’s “How the Art of Social Practice Is Changing the World, One Row House at a Time,” and this month’s Art in America has a pair of essays on the genre: on the artist Pedro Reyes and three architectural firms that involve communities in their process. The academic journal October has published several of Bishop’s key essays and devoted its Fall 2012 issue to Occupy Wall Street. In the popular press, articles have been published in the Guardian, the New York Times, the Huffington Post, and many other news websites that aren’t art-oriented.

    Considering all this activity, important questions arise: Are we content with the writing? Are we satisfied with the level of discourse? It depends on whom you ask. Many articles fret about documentation, about aesthetics, about experience, fussing over whether or not social practice is capital A art. Personally, I find such conversations to be uninteresting and unhelpful. My definition of art is elastic, expansive, and inclusive. Maybe I’m easy to please. But I fully recognize the need to keep having these conversations.

    In his 2013 essay, “The Device Laid Bare: On Some Limitations in Current Art Criticism,” published in e-flux Journal, Grant Kester addressed the anxiety over writing on participatory art:

    The result has been a series of largely unproductive debates over the epistemological status of this work, most of which entails variations of the same simplistic opposition between a naïve social art practice, associated with the evils of humanism or pastoral sentimentality, and a theoretically rigorous, politically sophisticated avant-garde artistic practice.

    Often the conversation revolves around the ethical and political position of the artist, and how much the artist seizes or relinquishes power. I’ve found too much finger pointing and hair splitting in this strain of writing, which can be intensely puritanical.

    So how do writers sort out the good from the bad, or the worthwhile from the inconsequential? Where does a critic—or a viewer or a participant—draw the line and evaluate a project? “Does it work?” offers one person. “Is it useful?” states another. These are two possible directions, but there are many more. A writer can discuss socially engaged art—or any form of art—through many lenses: the history of art, contemporaneous art practices, literature, music, politics, the social sciences, economics, religion—through anything, really, and that’s what great about art, and what’s fun writing about art. The only prescriptions I would suggest for a writer is: research your subject thoroughly, try to say something new, and always question received wisdom.

    In the same e-flux Journal article, Kester encouraged writers to take a long view of social practice. He described a “field-based approach, in which the critic inhabits the site of practice for an extended period of time, paying special attention to the discursive, haptic, and social conditions of space, and the temporal rhythms of the processes that unfold there…. When does the work begin and when does it end?”

    This is a good approach that is typical of historians and certain kinds of journalists writing long-form articles, but not really the methods of critics, reporters, and bloggers, whose publications require fresh content daily. When writing about a work of socially engaged art, it’s important to talk to the artist, the participants, the passers-by, the institutional organizers, the funders—whoever might have been involved in or witnessed a project. Consult the published record. Consult as many sources as you can. Don’t just rely on your reactions.

    Participants in Suzanne Lacy’s Between the Door and the Street (2013) in Brooklyn, New York (photograph by Nicola Goode)

    The history of art is far from static—it changes when new discoveries and connections are made. Moreover, a single review is a discrete piece of writing, never the final word, and one response at a given point in time. Would you get a sense of the 2014 Whitney Biennial if you just read one New York Times review and nothing else? Of course not. But read five, ten, twenty pieces—published over many months—and you’d get a good really sense of the reaction to the exhibition. The same goes for Suzanne Lacy’s Between the Door and the Stoop (2013) and Hirschhorn’s Gramsci Monument, which generated many written responses in print and online. It would be fantastic if writers would return to Forest Houses in the South Bronx, where the monument was sited, and talk to people who had been there last summer. Or talk to the attendees who live elsewhere, or to Dia Art Foundation employees. I’m hopeful this will be done, and we’ll eventually get a better understanding of long-term implications of the work.

    I’ve been a practicing art critic in New York for ten years, reviewing exhibitions for print and online publications and also writing the occasional essay, but I haven’t written much on socially engaged art. Perhaps a parallel project is something that I’ve been engaged with for a few years.

    A self-published blog called In Terms Of publishes criticism of live speaking engagements such as lectures, panels, conversations, symposia, and the like, concentrating on events in New York City (but not exclusively). Public programs have existed for decades, yet the rapid increase of such events over the past ten years, as well as their standing in the art world, is astounding. An art exhibition today is inconceivable without an attendant calendar of events. Furthermore, live speaking engagements constitute a core part of the mission of libraries, bookstores, universities, and cultural centers. Since much contemporary art—not just social practice—depends on dialogue and conversation, the need for informed commentary on lectures and panels is tremendous but underdeveloped.

    In Terms Of has examined talks with a wide range of players: artists, art historians, curators, critics, and students, as well as scholars in the related disciplines of literature, philosophy, architecture, and design. One recent post examined the intersection of aesthetics and politics generated from a panel of artists and activists that was moderated by the author of a book called 9.5 Theses on Art and Class. Another five-part series covered a one-day conference on curatorial authorship in art exhibitions, which featured historians, curators, and artists from around the United States. A third post explored the notion of critique in contemporary art through an analysis of a lecture by the installation artist Mika Tajima. Events outside the art world are also important: I’ve written about the contributors to an anthology of feminist comics, the author of a book that historicizes the Riot Grrrl movement, a former New York Times columnist on ethics, and the political philosopher Chantal Mouffe, as well as the occasional forays into economics, politics, and law.

    I consider texts in In Terms Of to be experimental, not in the avant-garde sense but rather because I’m drawing from multiple genres: basic reporting, investigative journalism, art criticism, newspaper editorials, polemical prose, book reviews, art-historical research, and so on. Most of the time I follow the chronological presentation of the speaker or panelists, but not always, and that’s one thing with which I constantly struggle. After attending an event and taking scrupulous notes, I conduct research and interject my own responses into the written narrative. If the event was recorded and the video posted online, I’ll watch parts or all of it.

    I don’t approach live speaking engagements as art and would have a good laugh if you tried to convince me that a panel is a “performance of language.” I have no problem, though, stating that the overall goal for In Terms Of is to publish “socially engaged writing.”

    What kind of writing do social-practice artists want, if they want it at all? Do they need a fatter CV and bigger portfolio to establish professional credentials for job applications? Do they need publicity that will help them get a grant to fund the next project? How about clips to show mom and dad to justify the frivolous and expensive master’s degree? It still feels good to see your name in print, right? In a larger sense, are social-practice artists looking for a silver-bullet treatise, a text that defines and validates their work, something like Michael Fried’s “Art and Objecthood” or Rosalind Krauss’s “Sculpture in the Expanded Field”? You tell me.

    I would assume that any artist would want feedback on his or her work, something that acknowledges their effort and legitimizes their work. Not as approval—after all, an artist doesn’t work for his or her critics. But the work cannot exist by itself. It must be supported by an audience and by participants, through spoken and written words, through memories and feelings, with some level of intellectual satisfaction and aesthetic fulfillment. Will there be good writing about socially engaged art? Most emphatically yes. Will there be bad writing? Without a doubt. Will some writers miss the point? Sure, but others will get certainly get it.

    In Terms Of count: 0 (naturally).

    1 See the table of contents of the November 2013 issue of Artforum for links to the articles on Hirschhorn and Fraser.

  • Speculate in Art? Not Us!

    This text is the first of three that reviews the first World Art Market Conference, held in 1976. Read the second and third reports.

    First World Art Market Conference
    Friday and Saturday, October 29–30, 1976
    New School of Social Research, New York

    Rereading this report [from Lynden B. Miller] in 1990, the notion of a “Last World Art Market Conference” comes to mind—what to do while the value of your collection bottoms out. Of course all this took place at the onset of gold fever, when it did not do to admit, at least in public, that one might indeed “speculate in art.”

    Speakers: Thomas Hoving, Milton Esterow, Thomas Messer, Leo Castelli, Ivan Karp, Ruth Braunstein, others, dealers

    Billed as “The First World Art Market Conference,” coproduced by the New School and ARTnewsletter—a biweekly hot-tip dispenser that you can pick up for a mere $60 a year—the show was, as John Everett, president of the New School, said in his opening remarks, about the “business of art.” It appeared to be mostly a media event. The press was given the three front rows, fussed over with TLC. Some four hundred others, dealers, and collectors from around the country, and a few artists hoping to learn about “business,” paid $200 each to see and hear the superstars of the art market. Those expecting a clear view of the crystal ball—specific investment advice—were disappointed. But they got lots of encouragement and word that the art market is very good these days.

    After the “welcoming continental breakfast,” Everett told us there’s money “itching” to be spent in art. Next, Milton Esterow, publisher of ARTnewsletter and ARTnews, cosponsor, and comoderator, earnestly assured us that those who make money on art buy for aesthetic reasons only—that you can’t make money speculating on art. Then we got down to the serious business of trying to find out how to do just that.

    Keynote speaker Thomas Hoving, director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, bounded onstage for a rapid-fire delivery of his optimistic view of the future of museums, now changing, he said, from passive displayers of art to active educators and conservators of art and culture (thus, not surprisingly, making a case for many of his own controversial changes at the Met).

    Then the august directors of such institutions as Wildenstein, Parke Bernet, and Christie’s sedately discussed trends in art-buying around the world, with an emphasis on pre-twentieth-century painting and sculpture and other art objects of increasing rarity, which, they agreed, will become even more expensive. Despite several years’ slump, it seems there is still a lot of money around for art, particularly in the US Southwest, Europe, and, more recently, Iran and the oil-producing countries. Esterow tried manfully to elicit some inside information on specific items or periods for investment, but to no avail.

    castellikarpwarhol
    The dealers Leo Castelli (left) and Ivan Karp (center) with Andy Warhol in 1966 (photograph by Sam Falk/New York Times)

    After lunch, Thomas Messer [of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum] spoke wittily of the museum director’s difficulties in maintaining the excellence of a collection without money, and his efforts to get same.

    The 2:30 PM panel discussion—with Leo Castelli, André Emmerich, Lawrence Rubin, and Ivan Karp of New York; Portia Harcus of Harcus-Krakow, Boston; Ruth Braunstein of Quay Gallery, San Francisco; Richard Gray of Gray Gallery, Chicago; and Meredith Long of Meredith Long & Co., Houston—was considerably livelier than the morning’s, and of greater interest to contemporary artists.

    Karp, in flame-red open-necked shirt and black leather jacket, a well-calculated contrast to the banker’s attire of his colleagues, began with a lament on the dearth of big-spending collectors while a wealth of exciting new art fails to sell, which brought howls of laughter and appreciation from the audience. Rubin, of Knoedler Gallery, and Emmerich said they found no exciting new art beating down their doors. There was also disagreement about the number of collectors, but it was clear from the discussion that there is a lot of money and art activity in what Castelli, with a wave of his hand toward the out-of-towners, referred to as “the provinces.” He said he himself is looking for “stars, not activity.”

    Ms. Braunstein noted that the New York dealers on the panel, except for Karp, are the “establishment,” so that perhaps little exciting new work comes to them. She said she finds much thrilling new work with new materials. She also asked Esterow why there were so few women participating, which drew applause from the audience, particularly the press section, which was predominantly female. Esterow was ready for that: “25 percent of art dealers are women; two out of eight panelists equals 25 percent.” (However he wasn’t quite so careful introducing the panel, having named first all the men in order down the table, and then the two women seated among them. It also bears noting that no woman artist was mentioned by name in the entire day, though Karp did use the phrase “his or her artistic temperament” to indicate that the artist is of two possible sexes.)

    The dealers seemed to agree that their major function is educational, as big sales are few and far between. All day there were pious protests from speakers that one would not, heaven forbid, speculate in art. Castelli finally reminded his fellow dealers that such folk do exist.

    The discussions would all have been more relevant and informative if moderators Esterow and Donald Goddard, managing editor of ARTnews, had asked better questions, or been more alert and articulate, or allowed some exchange with the audience. Nevertheless, Castelli’s reminiscences of the ’60s, when he was a kingmaker, were colorful; Rubin’s and Emmerich’s snobbery was piquant; Karp was hilarious, irreverent, and delightful, as when describing the “Hirshhorn Waltz”—an embrace from Mr. H. at the conclusion of a bargaining session. (All agreed that Joseph Hirshhorn was a keen bargainer.)

    What did the audience, exceeding in numbers [greater than] the sponsors’ fondest hopes, get for their tax-deductible $200? A simulated leather portfolio, suitably inscribed, crammed with promotional material for the New School and Parsons (now part of the New School), literature about New York City museums, advance copies of ARTnews, and, of course, ARTnewsletter, which, begun one year ago, circulates to one thousand dealers and collectors. A catered buffet, where perhaps the concrete information about investments and the market not coughed up by panelists and speakers was exchanged off the record. And a glimpse of the movers and shakers of the art market world.

    What did the sponsors get? $80,000 less costs. A lot of promotion with collectors and dealers, and, potentially, in forty-three organs of the press. Confirmation that there is indeed a lot of money “itching” to be spent on art, although perhaps not much in New York as there used to be. And proof that there are a lot of people itching to make money off the people making money off art.

    In Terms Of count: unknown.

    Source

    Written by Lynden B. Miller, “Speculate in Art? Not Us!” was originally published as “Art Business at the New School: World Art Market Conference” in Women Artists Newsletter 2, no. 7 (January 1977): 1, 4; and reprinted in Judy Seigel, ed., Mutiny and the Mainstream: Talk That Changed Art, 1975–1990 (New York: Midmarch Arts Press, 1992), 47–48. In Terms Of thanks Midmarch Arts Press for permission to republish this review.

  • The Market Is the Moment

    How the Marketplace Gives Form to Art
    Friday, December 6, 1985
    Artists Talk on Art, New York

    This serious-humorous examination of the art and craft of art marketing clearly engaged the panelists, who frequently all talked at once, as well as the audience, which laughed and applauded, and asked some questions, not because it didn’t know the answers, but because it did. Ronald Feldman rendered a wicked riff on how the art market, nefariously, operates. But Leon Golub, self-styled “old timer,” who ought to have been the most cynical of the lot, hinted at possible “substance,” or other mysterious factors that defy market manipulation, or even analysis.

    And let the record show that the woman in the audience who asked if anyone besides Women Artists News ever looked into which artists got reviewed, and why, was not known to us—although we’re glad she noticed.

    Moderator: Lynn Zelevansky
    Panelists: Dara Birnbaum, Ronald Feldman, Leon Golub, Richard Kostelanetz, and Amy Newman

    Moderator Lynn Zelevansky introduced panelists as follows: Ronald Feldman, codirector of Ronald Feldman Fine Arts Gallery in New York since 1971; Dara Birnbaum, artist and independent producer, the only video artist in the Carnegie International; Leon Golub, well-known painter; Richard Kostelanetz, essayist, anthologist, and multidisciplinary artist engaged in the worlds of both literature and fine arts; and Amy Newman, managing editor of ARTnews.

    Lynn Zelevansky: The question “How the Market Gives Form to Art” is one I ask not at all cynically. I think it’s the question of the ’80s and a difficult one to answer. My premise is that the drastic change in the art market over the last twenty years has effected a change in the condition of the artist as modernism defined it, that is, as outsider. The artist’s life is still difficult, the speculative nature of his or her work remains the same, generating insecurity and so providing a continuum with earlier times. However, today, opportunities are far more numerous than they were two decades ago and this seems to have reduced the artist’s identification with the marginal.

    In a period like this one, which is basically tolerant of all kinds of different styles, things like pink hair are vestigial references to antibourgeois lifestyles, rather than a real affiliation with marginality. The adoption of more conventional material values must affect the form of 1980s art, just as the artist’s oppositional stance impacted on the form of earlier work. Today, references to comics, movies, and cartoons ally current art with mainstream culture, rather than functioning as social commentary, or denoting an anti-high-art position as they might have in the past. Another example of contemporary art’s alliance with the mainstream is the reemergence of large painting, an emphatically material form of art, as a central issue of the art world at the beginning of the Reagan era.

    I assume that the huge growth in the marketplace influences all of us, regardless of our values or the form of our work.

    Amy Newman: I think the issue is to a certain extent specious, for two main reasons. First, artists have always produced for a market of one sort or another. Nearly without exception, art aspires to a condition of creating an impact, whether commercial or ideological. I don’t think the marketplace for ideas is any less tyrannical than the financial market. Just as many people are willing to be corrupted for reasons of moral, ideological, and philosophical influence and stature, [many] are willing to be corrupted for financial reasons. How extraordinarily rare is the artist, and I don’t think I’ve ever encountered one, who works without concern for whether the work is recognized or discussed, even if he or she doesn’t care whether it’s sold.

    The second reason I think the issue is specious is that for art to be interesting, the work must have something to do with its historical moment—distill or crystalize, reflect or reject, embrace or expose it. The presence of one of these facets doesn’t necessarily make the art good, but the absence makes it vapid. And today, certainly in the West, the market is the moment. The culture is surely permeated with conditions of the marketplace, as the fourteenth century was conditioned by belief in the power of religion, and the sixteenth century by belief in the power of man, and the nineteenth century by belief in the power of science.

    That said, certain factors are troubling about this relationship and I do have some random thoughts on the issue. Our culture, and increasingly that of the rest of the world, revolves around information, image, and effect. This is what the marketplace trades in and what consumers consume today, even more than tangible goods. And this is why, with the frequently (but not always) ingenuous collaboration of the media, the market is so all-pervasive, and why I consider the market is the moment.

    We hear frequent complaints that information, image, and effect can be conveyed and purveyed with very little substance, but “substance” is a [tricky] concept in this context. Does it have any meaning beyond a certain nostalgia? Substance has profoundly different meanings in different eras, and we’re now in a different era. What we can perhaps say is that “substance” in some way confronts the questions of the human condition, and that is in fact what the best contemporary art still does—precisely when it is shaped in some way by the marketplace.

    Certainly the rampant insecurity of taste and the nefarious atmosphere of financial speculation that characterize the market moment can be devastating and abusing to the artist’s ego. We sometimes forget when we talk about abstractions of the marketplace that we’re talking about people, and I guess the audience does frequently have unfair, heroic expectations for artists. [But] we all have to face moral dilemmas and make moral decisions, no matter what profession we’re in.

    What the marketplace is giving shape to is not the physical aspects of art, as frequently happened in previous eras, or not as much, but the more general conception of art. Art has become a generic catchall term. It has never before subsumed so many different forms and ambitions…. Today we erase almost all distinctions of purpose and ambition and that [affects] the function of the market.

    Creativity goes along in its myriad ways, as it always has, with different ambitions as to psychological profundity, cultural profundity, humor, decorativeness, ability to communicate, ability to intervene in contemporary life. The market tries to erase all distinctions. The leveling is certainly also an outgrowth of the ’60s and ’70s challenge to so-called fine art, which should have been and in many ways was a very valuable and beneficial process.

    The challenge to rigid definitions opened a wide spectrum of experience to a new level of contemplation. [It also] had not only the effect of making alternative investigations and manifestations more meaningful; contradictions of the original impulse made them more valuable…. We found that the status quo of the market culture was more powerful than the challenge. So while it’s certainly true, as Carter Ratcliff says, that the market is instrumental in forming the image of the artist, and that has to do with celebrity and fashion and speculation, we also can say that many of today’s serious artists do have an adversarial position to the prevailing mainstream culture—the market—in that they are trying to reassert the distinctions among kinds of goals and ambitions.

    Kruger, Holzer, Borofsky, Haring, Scharf, Greenblat, Salle, Longo, Clemente—they’re not all aiming for the same place in our minds and our lives, as much as the market would like to purvey them all as an homogenous product.

    Leon Golub: The art market depends on glamor and scarcity, particularly today. The two work together—you can almost identify one with the other. Scarcity means that if someone wants to collect something, he or she is told there aren’t too many of them. “This is a prime optic of a prime artist, and you may have to wait in order to get it.” But scarcity makes us avid. We want it. If there’s too much of something, we don’t need it. Glamor is the same thing, because glamor says that some people have it and some people don’t.

    Certain old-fashioned romantic artists [projected] talent or genius, but today we depend on glamor. So artists outshine movie stars…. They become, more than movie stars, people to get to know, to associate with. There are artist groupies for that gold dust, which is sprinkled on them in a psychological sense. I once tried to call Roy Lichtenstein about a project and I got the wrong number. I said, “Is this Roy Lichtenstein’s home?” and the woman said, “I wish it was!”

    This is not necessarily a new phenomenon…. Art was taken up by the popes and the Medici—and they gave it glamor, too. Art was extremely glamorous in the Renaissance. And that aristocratic aura, that notion of serving public power at the highest level, is translated into the peculiar forms of our day.

    But art has always served power. Whether you serve the Roman emperor, or the church, you’re still serving power. Image-makers make the kind of pictures, signs, and symbols that are called for. If they get out of line, they won’t get commissions…. Most artists eventually fall into line.

    The avant-garde was able to move the struggle away from the political and social aspects, which got mixed up in the nineteenth century, into another sphere, the so-called autonomous sphere. You could be allowed an aesthetic transgression, even if you were not allowed a political, social, or public transgression. [Think of] the history of Courbet or against the history of an artist who changes the sense of form. Not that the change of the sense of form doesn’t have political aspects as well, but it’s more abstracted. Which is why we have abstract art….

    Under modernism, you get all kinds of accruals and additions, from technology, for example, TV, telephones, film, photography, satellites. These change imaging. All these accruals bounce against each other, which is part of the atomization. You get a kind of open-ended market, which does permit a certain kind of—a word a lot of people don’t like—pluralism….

    You can take different aspects of the modern world, whereas in the medieval period, the world was one direction and developed more or less in a vertical or linear fashion. So the market today is a special kind of market, but the conditions of control and power are still there. [T]hese accruals have weights, entropy; they all disperse at the same time. All this is going on, and may even give you some elbow room.

    Ronald Feldman: I have two sets of slides to show two aspects of the marketplace. First, the work of a particular artist. I will read criticism he has had over the years to show the conflicting nature of art opinion and the incredible perversity of the marketplace. The artist is Joseph Beuys.

    Quote: “It would be strenuous to explain to museum goers that Abbie Hoffman was the most brilliant performance artist of the ’60s and ’70s and it is equally difficult to explain the similar genius of Joseph Beuys.”

    Another reviewer: “If there were an American artist as political as Beuys in his activities, would an American museum turn over almost its entire exhibition space to him or her? I doubt it.”

    Another declared a Beuys show the “worst European modern master retrospective,” saying, “Beuys is in the business of selling himself. He really doesn’t do anything. So his career boils down to public relations, but he has no point of view to express.

    Another quote: “But when all that is said, Joseph Beuys is at the very least a valuable absurdity in a world that is locked into the status quo. As an artist, as a performer, as a politician, and as an irreducible individual, he has tried all his life long to extend our notion of what it means to be a human being.”

    Another quote: “Nobody who understands any contemporary science, politics, or aesthetics, for that matter, could see in Joseph Beuys’s proposal for an integration of art, sciences, and politics, as his program for the free international university demands, anything more than simpleminded utopian drivel lacking elementary political and educational practicality.”

    Audience: Was that [inaudible]?

    Feldman: No, that was Benjamin Buchloh…. But if you were reading these, and didn’t know anything [else], you’d be in a lot of trouble in the marketplace.

    The next set of slides has to do with corporate sponsorship of the arts. This is a brochure the Metropolitan Museum provides for corporations to encourage them to sponsor shows in the museum. Some quotes from this brochure:

    Many public-relations opportunities are available through the sponsorship of programs, special exhibitions, and services. These can often provide a creative and cost-effective answer to a specific marketing objective, particularly where international, governmental, or consumer relations may be of fundamental concern.

    David Rockefeller says, “Involvement in the arts can give direct and tangible benefits. It can build better customer relations, a readier acceptance of company products, and a superior appraisal of their quality.”

    Herb Schmertz, chairman of Mobil: “We believe our involvement with PBS has persuaded an important segment of our society to look at Mobil in a new light, to be more open minded when we speak out on issues.”

    Tom Messer at the Guggenheim said, “You approach corporations with projects you believe are acceptable in the first place. These tend to be the safer projects. The avant-garde stance of museums is somewhat weakened by the need to seek outside funding.”

    [This is a picture of] the Whitney Museum and ITT in bed together. Tom Armstrong said about the Ellsworth Kelly show: “American businesses are calking themselves into new reasons for supporting the arts….” Here’s George Washington of Philip Morris: “We are in an unpopular industry. While our support of the arts is not directed toward that problem, it has given us a better image in the financial and general community than had we not done this.”

    These are two different cross currents in the marketplace, quite a diverse and exciting place.

    Dara Birnbaum: At the recent Carnegie International, not only was I the only video artist, I was one of only four women—and probably the only person there without a gallery…. I represent the position of many people in my peer group making an attempt to get out of the gallery system, to reach a larger public.

    I did a video show, Wonder Woman, of totally popular imagery, and put it in the window of [a commercial space]…. After 1979, it was shown in the first film and video room at P.S.1…. This was the opening at the Mudd Club, ’79 to ’80. The Mudd Club was one of the first places to open up to video. For a year, a group of us had an independent space there, to sit upstairs and talk about video. It gave you a very local feeling for a medium usually transported out of your hands almost immediately after you’ve created your statement…. The Mudd Club was one of the places where this art [reached the public].

    This is Grand Central Station. In 1980, ten artists were commissioned, other people being like Jenny Holzer, to do works in the station waiting room. [At the time] it was very difficult for people in video arts to exhibit in museums or any kind of art spaces. The galleries were not really supportive except Castelli Sonnabend. Museum funding for these works had been cut. [You had to] become your own package deal. You had to make a work that, no matter where it was, the statement still read, that, like a trade show, could be put up anywhere, At Documenta 7, again, I was the only video installation…. Here’s the Art Institute of Chicago 74th American Art Exhibition. Mine is the only video work inside the show—at least in a partly connected space, a cul de sac. Usually it’s completely shut off, in an independent room with the separate designation “Film” or “Video,” rather than saying it still belongs to the arts.

    [But] at the ICA in Boston, for the first time, video was displayed on the upper floor, taking over the space, unheard of before. Another display, twenty-one different installations of video work, was at the Stedelijk in 1984, the first time a major world museum opened up to the public the language involved in a new form of art making.

    The intentions of my peer group, working either electronically or through music, are to make art as a purposeful challenge to mainstream culture…. This is the Whitney Biennial this past year, the first time a video installation was allowed out in the open on the fourth floor. This is the 1985 Carnegie International Exposition that just opened in Pittsburgh, again the only video in the show allowed out in the open, so the vocabulary can be associated with the other forms of work.

    Richard Kostelanetz: There’s a difference between literature marketing and visual-arts marketing—visual arts is retail, and literature is wholesale…. When you take a work to a dealer, he knows his regular customers. He’ll make a calculation [about marketing] that is obviously kind of subtle. When you bring work to a publisher, all he knows is bookstore managers—the bookstore managers sell books. And this means lots of differences.

    First of all, art is sold [one at a time] and reviews criticize it. Reviews sell literature because they publicize it to ten thousand to one hundred thousand customers. Art is basically sold to individual rich people who can afford to pay for large units. Literature is sold to the masses…. The thing about contemporary visual art is that very little sells; it’s remarkable that it sells at all, which makes the operation of selling visual arts in our time very naïve…. So the major phenomenon of contemporary art in our time is the development of an extravagant market. Second is the development of an unprecedented support system for artists who don’t sell. They live on jobs and grants….

    Another development of the past two decades is the increasing gap between the commercial world and the noncommercial world. Particularly in literature, we have commercial presses and small presses. And the small press is a cultural entity whose particular function is to do what the commercial press doesn’t do—but also to continue literature, which has been abandoned by commercial presses in favor of best sellers. The same thing happened in music, with the record companies getting more and more commercial…. So [people set up] alternative music spaces, like the Kitchen. I think you get this in visual art as well….

    It was traditionally thought that if someone succeeded in the noncommercial world, he would jump into the commercial world. The gap has become so great that, in literature and music, I can think of only two people who have made that leap in the past decade—Philip Glass in music and Walter Abish in literature. So we have not just the development of that which is commercial, but [also the] development of institutions and a means of dissemination of that which is not commercial.

    [I]t’s really hard to sell out nowadays, in part because the gap between commercial art and art is so great…. And because of selling ten thousand versus selling one, eccentricity is far more cultivated in the retail [visual] arts.

    Zelevansky: I think I was misunderstood by both you and Amy. I never used the term selling out. I was interested in what Amy said, that the marketplace is the moment, and there’s no way somebody, whether they’re rebelling against it or not, can fail in some way to reflect that fact. I can’t imagine taking the position that the marketplace does not give form to art.

    Now a question to the panel: how do you create a market for an artist’s work?

    Feldman: I don’t know—I’m waiting for the Mary Boone book. [Laughter, applause] Actually, I could give you a lot of ways. First, you have to pick a very nice art form: painting would be number one, absolute top-of-the-list. Paint! If one of my kids [were] going to be an architect, I’d say don’t do that strange thing. Paint! (Well, I wouldn’t say that, but I would say paint.) What you have to do is paint something really kind of attractive aesthetically right off the bat. It can be strange, but it should be really nice looking. It shouldn’t be too, too big, because then it can’t get into the museum. When you’re a little more known, you can make really big things—they’ll find room. To market that work, as a strategy, one should have a few sold-out shows. Before they open is the best way, really, but even during would be good. Or even after, you can state that that happened. Even if it didn’t. That word “out” is really good. When dolls are hard to get, they can run into thousands of dollars. If you sell out ten to twelve paintings, that’s peanuts really—but big news in the art world.

    Secondly, in order to sell out, one should pepper the art world with paintings at very low prices that no one quite knows what price they were sold for. But a high price is told to the public! That also helps—a lot of PR that this sold out at “x” high price. It’s not true, but it helps a lot.

    Newman: In other words, people think other people paid more?

    Feldman: Yes. Very good strategy. Let them get on the waiting list.

    Newman: You get one person to say, yes I paid…?

    Feldman: You don’t have to lie, just [say] this is the price and everything is sold out! Nobody really quite asks, did they pay what I’m paying. The best thing, then, would be to have a waiting list. Scarcity is really good. A sold-out show gives the glamor and the scarcity at one time. If you can do that a few times in a row, that’s really good. Another aspect would be to find some critics that really, genuinely like the work. They may be misguided, they may be correct, but they really have to like it, and they really have to want to plug it. Then you have to get some curators to decide they want to have it, that they really like it, or stampede [them] into liking it.

    Panel: How often does this happen in your business?

    Feldman: Not to me! I can make it for any artist here if you want to just follow some simple rules. I don’t know how to make it if you make anything strange. I know how to live with you and show the work; but I don’t know how to make it for you.

    The art has to be in a form that sells. I can’t stress that enough. One of my artists is now painting and I am absolutely overjoyed, because I know that I can sell it, and both of us can have a little money…. I don’t push them to paint. They paint because that naturally becomes the form they’ve chosen—thank god!

    But recently I spoke to a New York curator, very high up, very important—who for years has been playing this cat and mouse game with me, like, I really would like to know about all your artists, and how important they are, and what they’re about. I’d like you to set up a slide show and I could come down and look at everything at one time…. So one day I made a phone call and asked, if the art I show you is not stretched or a little difficult to store or curate or put on the wall, or you have to worry about the temperature a little more, or whatever, do you want to see it, can you curate it, can you collect it? Oh no, of course not! We didn’t make the slide presentation.

    And that fact does not change. So when Dara said, it was the first time

    this way, that’s very important. Of course, that doesn’t mean she sold it.

    Golub: I don’t think you can tell anybody how to make it in the marketplace. I’ve been in the art world a long time, I’m an old timer, and I still don’t know how the art world works. I try to be very analytical [but] I can never figure out what’s corruption and what’s not corruption. I know what I like and don’t like, although I’m often unsure about that, too. You made a comment about Mary Boone. Of course she’s very successful. But she’s riding a bronco, she’s not riding a horse. And she doesn’t know herself, I would guess, when she’s going to get thrown off. [Meanwhile, other people are] saying, if I could only I get to Ron Feldman!

    I was just told about a show in a very well known gallery. The show sold out. A man I know very well had a show at that same gallery not long ago and sold nothing. What made the difference? I can’t figure it out.

    Feldman: I wouldn’t want you to confuse “how to make it” by a formula, in certain steps, with really making it because your art is terrific. I personally don’t equate being famous and in many art museums and collections, and [having] private collectors stampeding [to collect work], with really making it, really being talented, really being what I would consider successful, whether that gets commercial recognition or not.

    Zelevansky: Amy, how important are the magazines? How powerful are they in selling artwork?

    Newman: I think magazines are, um….

    Golub: Crucial.

    Kostelanetz: In comparison to literature they are inconsequential.

    Newman: They’re important because they get the ideas in the work out. I don’t think that necessarily influences what sells. I think what influences what sells is what other people are buying. There’s a kind of snowball effect and I don’t think that starts with the magazines. In fact I think the magazines are the coattails, because if someone is selling, then the magazines put that person on the cover.

    The problem that has stymied me the most is reproducibility. You reproduce art that can be reproduced in a magazine. There are very strict limits to what comes across. Where you have twenty artists and can reproduce five works, you don’t choose something very delicate, pale, subtle, or conceptual, or a certain kind of manipulated photography. You can’t have sort of a vague blur on the page. The only way around that is to have art magazines that don’t run pictures. That’s unfortunate, but it is sort of pure.

    Golub: I would think that given good-quality reproductions and sufficient attention to paper, there’s almost nothing that can’t be reproduced. But there are always questions of the relative importance of people in the back of one’s mind. I don’t think the criteria are technical. If you have a big enough page, you can reproduce anything.

    Feldman: As far as strategy is concerned, Amy is right. As far as being right, Leon is right.

    Newman: There’s one thing I want to add—the influence magazine or newspaper critics have, I think, is not based on the magazine or newspaper. It’s based on the reputation the critic has built up. I don’t think that simply by reviewing for a magazine you have the power to make or break an artist’s career. I don’t think those reviews and articles have that kind of importance. But if a critic has built up an independent reputation and been intelligent and consistently written about artists that people agree have emerged as significant voices, then I think the critic has a certain amount of power.

    Kostelanetz: I can think of only one way reviews function in selling art, and that’s if someone has to justify a purchase. When I tour universities, and I go to the art museum and see a Philip Pearlstein, I know there’s only one way that could happen. The curator wanted to buy it and he came up with the Hilton Kramer review from the New York Times and went to his board of directors with it, and between the curator and the subsidiary support of the review, they bought it.

    Zelevansky: Reviews are very important for artists applying for grants.

    Golub: It’s more crucial than that. I’d say there are one hundred people who are important to artists—collectors, critics, museum people. They all have a shifting relation to each other; they all have certain tensions of their own [and] different kinds of nervous dependencies…. Nobody has one hundred. If you have, say, 60 percent of this informed opinion behind you, you have a worldwide reputation. If you have 40 percent, you have a national reputation. If you have 20 percent, you have a New York reputation. If you have 5 percent, maybe a few people have heard of you. If you don’t have any of these people, you don’t exist—except to your friends.

    What this means is that influential people out there, artists too, are determining the course of events. Now these people are not so sure in their own mind. They watch each other. Collectors watch collectors. Collectors watch dealers. Critics watch other critics. They’re always ready either to jump on a new ship or leave a sinking ship. And everybody does it, just the way I do…. In the middle of all this, the agency that influences people are the critics. They influence the people who influence the people.

    Kostelanetz: The New York Times theater critic can make or break a Broadway production with that wholesale audience. The New York Times art critic cannot break a production….

    Golub: You know why? They have devalued themselves. When Kramer and [John] Russell run off in a kind of generalized way they devalue themselves, but they still have a very powerful influence.

    Kostelanetz: Is there any example of a critic demolishing an artist’s reputation?

    Newman: No.

    Golub: I’m not going to name them, but there are artists I know who have been attacked publicly who had a very strong reputation in the ’70s and who have suffered from it. It doesn’t mean they don’t have support, but part of the aura around them has been dissolved.

    Newman: I think what we’re talking about is the marketplace of ideas, and I do believe critics have a lot of influence there, but I don’t think they have that kind of influence in the financial marketplace. If you have 4 or 5 percent of art-world-informed position behind you, that’s fine. I know artists nobody knows who are selling their work better than artists who get reviewed. They have their parents’ neighbors [and] doctor’s offices….  If you’re talking about the financial market, I don’t think critics have a lot of influence. They have influence in the exchange of ideas.

    Zelevansky: Most critics have to review what the publication is interested in. As a critic who did a lot of photography reviews, I can say there was a time suddenly you could not place photography….

    Audience: Who, besides Women Artists News, looks at who is reviewed? Where do those decisions get made?

    Newman: It’s different at all the magazines. At ARTnews I would generally assign critics to the gallery. If the critic didn’t think the show was worth reviewing, that stood; we didn’t try to get the show a good review, or get a review at all. If I sent someone to a show and they wrote a bad review, we printed the bad review.

    Audience: What about advertisers?

    Newman: It’s pretty well known which magazines have a policy [of reviewing advertisers].

    Audience: It’s well known in the trade….

    Newman: The magazines that [cater to advertisers] don’t have as good a reputation with the general public. They don’t have the same authority.

    Kostelanetz: Are you saying you can buy a review?

    Newman: Yes.

    Golub: You can get in one or two magazines, maybe. If you take a medium-sized ad and your gallery has done this for a while, then there’s a good chance you are in the swim and the shows will be reviewed. But you’re not necessarily buying a review. I don’t think you are.

    Audience: How do you measure what’s real and what’s just people giving their opinion?

    Golub: That’s the biggest question in the art world! If you read the history of American art from, say, Abstract Expressionism on, you get a certain picture from one critic or historian, and someone else may give a related picture, but [neither one] is necessarily true. What we see as “history” has been taken for granted because of usage. We’re told certain things and eventually we learn them. But there is such a thing as revisionism—the history of art can change….

    But instead of going from one thing to another, we have catastrophes. Pop art was a catastrophe for Abstract Expressionism. Minimalism was a catastrophe for so on and so forth…. The catastrophe interrupts the assumptions of artists that things are going to continue as they are. But how you get to that new point doesn’t come from paying off critics and reviewers.

    Birnbaum: This is taking a very mainstream course, for me at least. We’re really in very conservative times. Leon has now at least said things can change. But I haven’t heard any specifics. For example, publications such as Flash Art on an international level support certain art. It is nearly impossible as an independent to be reviewed by Flash Art. And if you don’t have a gallery it is next to absolutely impossible to get into Flash Art in a color photo print. Many times works—performance art, film, and video—that had their seedbed in the ’70s haven’t been able to continue in the mainstream of talk and articulation because they aren’t reproduced in any form; they’ve been suffocated. There are a few small incidences of change, but change hasn’t so far affected the dominant marketplace.

    When I first looked toward video art [at] Castelli Sonnabend, as a youngster hanging out in the gallery, I would hear meetings on how does one sell a video disk—and are there precedents in printmaking or photography or any mechanically reproducible form. There was this idea of production in a limited number. But video to me is like literature: it should be in unlimited number…. The reason I stayed in art making [despite having other] skills was because I felt art could be valid as a challenge inside society.

    At Castelli Sonnabend, selling video tapes, they found they couldn’t do a limited edition. Can an artist sign a video tape? Where? Does regular pen work? Can you write on video tape? It’ll ruin the deck you play it on….

    So eventually they had to make a very expensive-looking package and, in the case of Joseph Beuys, a lithograph by Beuys, signed by him, to market these tapes.

    Now a group of artists decided in the ’70s and ’80s not to go with that part of the market. So while I’m very glad I have tapes selling in the art market for two hundred, two hundred fifty dollars. You can buy them for a dollar ninety-five at Video Shack. The same tapes. I’m not saying it’s an answer, but it opens up issues.

    Golub: It works for you. You have developed a philosophy and a technique to get out to this kind of public.

    Birnbaum: Well, I’m one of those who has deliberately chosen a form of expression that leaves them outside the dominant marketplace.

    Audience [to Newman]: On what basis do you select a gallery or show for review?

    Newman: I see the show myself. (I used to see an enormous percentage of shows). Or, if I don’t see the show, [I select] based on the announcement, or something I know or [that] somebody told me. In other cities I rely exclusively on the critic in that city.

    Audience: Is it true that if a gallery or an artist took a full-page….

    Newman: Not at ARTnews.

    Audience: You say not at ARTnews, but that means somewhere else. Is it fair….

    Panel: What’s fair?

    Kostelanetz: A critical reputation is debased if it’s so obviously, blatantly for sale. But there’s more subtly for sale. For example, take the New York Times Book Review. I did an analysis where I discovered that the reviews were apportioned to publishers in direct proportion to how much advertising they took over a period of time.

    Golub: That was deliberate, you think?

    Feldman: You made this survey yourself? When?

    Koslelanetz: Yes, I made the survey. It’s published in a book of mine called The End of Intelligent Writing.1

    Newman: And was it reviewed in the Times?

    Kostelanetz: Yeah, sure. [Laughter] That’s a longer story.

    Golub: He ran a big ad!

    Kostelanetz: Their rationale is, we exist to review what’s in the bookstores, and we know what’s in the bookstores by what’s advertised in our pages! … Here’s a funny story. [An editor at the Book Review], whom I happen to know, told me, the art world’s all money. I said, Oh? When you put a book on the cover of your review, what does it sell? He said ten thousand copies. And that’s worth how much? Obviously a twenty-dollar book is worth two hundred grand gross. So I said there’s no way an art reviewer can sell two hundred grand of anything! That’s the nature of wholesale versus retail. Bookstores are much bigger business than art business.

    Feldman: But an art review appears after the exhibition is closed.

    Zelevansky: That doesn’t matter—it’s for the next exhibition.

    Kostelanetz: That’s still different from a book review when the book is in the stores.

    Golub: The New York Times comes out coincident with the exhibition when they do review something. And they do influence….

    Zelevansky: And the accrued prestige is definitely part of the package.

    Newman: But you’re suggesting that the work shouldn’t be talked about.

    Golub: Nobody’s 100 percent pure and nobody’s 100 percent corrupt…. Everybody tries to manipulate the situation to their advantage, one way or another.

    Audience: Reviews are an extremely sensitive issue for the artist because reviews are sometimes the only payment you get. You can go a long time on a review. [Applause] Dara mentioned showing video in an alternative situation … at Castelli and then at the Palladium and selling work at the Palladium and other clubs. I wonder whether you can take a work which involves thought and contemplation and put it just anywhere and expect it’s not going to change.

    Birnbaum: It depends on the work. I was one of the first people into the clubs and one of the first out of the clubs—because it didn’t suit the content I wanted to get across. Lately I’ve decided to go back into the clubs at chosen times, because there’s an audience there I wanted to address, and I wouldn’t be able to get to those people if I didn’t find a vehicle that had a certain kind of immediacy…. The people I’ve worked most closely with felt it essential to find temporary relief from the dominant marketplace, which had been highly, highly conservative.

    Kostelanetz: I have a question about selling photography. You saw it and now….

    Zelevansky: Now there’s no market. Photographers can make—it in an art-world context, but the photography community at this point can no longer promote photography. The reason they make it in an art-world context is that they make very large images in color, so they can be sold for a lot more money.

    Feldman: I’ve been on several panels [on this topic]. Every five years it convenes and appears in Print Collector’s Newsletter…. Some artists working with photography will not show in a straight photography gallery. It’s demeaning, or it’s craft, or too traditional. Others want to show or will show anywhere. This thinking is the fault of museums, because they’re curated by departments.

    Edited from tape.

    Post Script: In case anyone missed Feldman’s irony, as some seemed to, it should be added that his advice on “making it” was tongue-in-cheek, and that his reputation among artists for support of non-money-making, especially artists’ political, causes, is unsurpassed. However, the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs may have taken his remarks at face value. One official, apparently hearing about hanky panky in the art world sufficiently in advance of an election to take forceful action, decreed that art, like other merchandise for sale in the city, must have all prices clearly marked. As the press played the story with great glee and keen appreciation of the ingenuousness (or disingenuousness) of the ruling, Ronald Feldman was among those singled out for several hundred dollars in fines—caught by an inspector without his prices posted. The regulation was subsequently contested. The denouement is not on record.

    In Terms Of count: 0.

    1 Now out of print. However, an abridged version, “The End” Appendix/“The End” Essentials (RK Editions, 1979), is still available.

    Source

    “The Market Is the Moment” was originally published in Judy Seigel, ed., Mutiny and the Mainstream: Talk That Changed Art, 1975–1990 (New York: Midmarch Arts Press, 1992), 241–47. In Terms Of thanks Midmarch Arts Press for permission to republish this review.