Rebekah Kim
Survival of the Artist
amidst an economic crisis, contemporary art leaves the decadent behind
PrintBergamot Station in Santa Monica, Calif. is a complex of contemporary art galleries. Like Tribeca or the Meatpacking District, it’s a former commercial area that has been converted into a trendy hotspot during the past 15 years. Over winter break, I was wandering through the galleries and saw a shocking number of pieces priced at five figures. There was little evidence of a financial crisis. In fact, there seemed to be almost a denial of it.
But in the entryway to one of the Bergamot Station galleries, dozens of small rectangular pieces of paper painted with bright colors had been placed on the wall with thumbtacks. Above this display, a sign identified the work as “Recession-Proof Art, $300 each.” The installation was not only charming, but also posed an interesting question: Can contemporary art survive a recession? The answer—yes, but not without undergoing a significant and likely difficult transformation.
Prior to this past autumn, art was selling at auction and in galleries for unprecedented prices. In November 2006, for example, Christie’s set a record for the biggest auction in history—$491 million of impressionist and modern art sold in one night.
Money also flooded the contemporary art market. Perhaps the most poignant example of this is British artist Damien Hirst’s “For the Love of God,” a diamond-encrusted platinum skull that sold at his London gallery for $100 million. Esther Kim, a third-year art history Ph.D. student in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS) and former co-owner of a New York contemporary art gallery, describes Hirst’s work as something that will be “important [in art history] as a memory of excess.” It represents a point of consumption that “you can only go down from.”
Furthermore, it embodies an era in contemporary art when much of the work created seemed not only meaningless, but excessive and flamboyant to anyone outside of the small and exclusive world centered around Chelsea galleries. It is symbolic of a market spun out of control and pushed to unreasonable heights that could not be sustained.
Today, that the art market is going down—or already has—is not a question. This past autumn, prices at the major impressionist, modern, and contemporary art auctions were the lowest they have been in a decade. Contemporary art has been hit particularly hard. Chelsea galleries are closing, publications created in the midst of the art-boom are faltering, and jobs linked to the industry are rapidly disappearing. As private money has evaporated, it is now unclear where funding for contemporary art will come from—or how it will be funded at all.
Kim believes that money will now need to come from public sources. She thinks the art world will join a national movement “towards government support,” beginning with the rush for bailout money that has swept up many institutions. Jonathan Neil, a doctoral candidate in art history in GSAS and co-founder of the private curatorial firm Boyd Level, has a different vision of the future of contemporary art. He believes that the chance of government support being truly substantial is ultimately a “fantasy.” Therefore, the sources of funds will not simply change, but almost completely disappear. Artists will be forced to adapt, to create works on a shoestring budget.
Neil cited the recent project of artist Jeremy Deller to illustrate his point. Deller created a space at the New Museum that was explicitly meant to encourage visitors to discuss the war in Iraq. He filled the room with artifacts from the front lines—like the ruins of a car blown up in an attack from the streets of Baghdad—and arranged for guest experts to be in-residence in the gallery.
This work, according to Neil, is an indication that economic constraints could be a catalyst for “contemporary art to move into the ‘art-as-education’ mode.” He believes these hard times will allow artists and others in the art world to focus not on selling art, but on educating themselves and the public about it. In essence, it seems that now is contemporary art’s opportunity to prove its relevance—to show the public why it’s important and deserves to survive this crisis. This is a time when the contemporary art world will need to abandon the excess of Hirst’s diamond-covered skull, and support pieces that are not only more inexpensive, but are also meaningful to an audience outside of a relatively small and incredibly wealthy group of collectors and those who serve them.
This move towards general relevance has been expedited by the current economic situation. “A lot of the people will leave the contemporary art market. People drawn to the glitz and glamour and the people who weren’t sure they believed in art have gone away,” Kim says. As a result of this stripping away of those people who were in the industry for what can be seen as the wrong reasons, “the art world will be a better place,” she adds. Art can no longer be created and marketed merely as an attempt to capitalize on inflated prices, but the artist and those who support her must be truly committed. She must present something that she believes is meaningful and important.
Walking into a Chelsea gallery a few months ago, I saw a gigantic plastic tractor that looked like a blown-up version of a toy I played with in 1992. I had to skim a single-spaced typed page produced by the gallery to understand “the point” of the piece I was looking at. Art should not need explanations to make it meaningful. With luck, pieces like the inflated Tonka truck—pieces that seem irrelevant and inaccessible even to an art enthusiast and art history major—will not survive the financial crisis. Instead, what will survive, to return to Neil’s “art-as-education” phrase, are pieces that, without a three-page typed explanation, elicit meaningful thought about the world we live in.
9 April 2009
vol. 6, issue 9
More ARTS
No one wants to admit that they like playing video games.
Questioning Narrative Conventions
Jesse Ball's The Way Through Doors defies the strict classifications of genre—although it appears to be a novel, its dizzyingly complex narrative structure resembles poetry more than prose.
I didn’t consider running away from home until halfway through the third grade, when my mother bought me E.L. Konigsberg’s From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler.
Comments
We're looking for comments that are interesting and substantial. If your comments are excessively self-promotional, or obnoxious you will be banned from commenting. Consult the comment FAQ and legal terms.