The Triumph of Hucksterism

At $195m, Warhol’s Shot Sage Blue Marilyn is the second most expensive artwork ever sold at auction. This puts Andy firmly in the pantheon of the greatest artists of all time, surpassing all contemporary, modern, impressionist, and classical artists except Leonardo da Vinci, whose Salvator Mundi (a much reworked painting, supposedly but not certainly by the master) sold for the staggering sum of $450m. 

Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Vermeer, Monet, Rodin, Van Gogh, DuChamp, Picasso, and the rest - stand aside!

With this auction sale Warhol’s status has surpassed even the fawning adoration of the Netflix documentary (The Andy Warhol Diaries) that labeled him “the most important artist of the 20th century”. Andy’s most important works? The Marilyn portraits and his Campbell’s Soup cans, mass produced in studio he called “The Factory”.

The soup cans propelled Warhol to fame by provoking outrage among critics. Yet this had been done 45 years earlier by Marcel DuChamp’s Fountain, a urinal lying on its back.

Fountain was a political statement aimed squarely at the Society of Independent Artists, of which DuChamp was a member. It is the most notable example of the avant-garde Dada movement that rejected the ideals of capitalism and bourgeois aesthetics in reaction to the horrors of WWI.

Warhol’s soup cans are by comparison completely empty. There is no political statement, no criticism, no humor. They don’t even hold soup.

“The Soup Can effect was not to rescue American banalities from banality but to give banality itself value.” - Gary Indiana

The Marilyn portraits, like the soup cans and everything else, were produced ad nauseum in huge editions by subcontractors.

“most of his works from around 1970 onwards were made in off-site studios that he never visited. He simply sent templates for the paintings and prints to be made from, and signed the finished works when they were sent to him.” - Jonathon Jones, The Guardian

This is now the definition of high art - but only if money is the gauge. If you are looking for meaning in Warhol’s work you will only find economics: a combination of public relations, celebrity culture, and mass production. The Warhol estate had a collection of some 100,000 pieces.

Warhol was the adored enfant terrible of the elite, rubbing shoulders with and making Marilyn-style portraits, often commissioned, of musicians, actors, socialites, sports figures - anyone and everyone notable in one sense or another. In this way he became - in more ways than one - a celebrity artist.

“[Warhol] is the last of the truly successful social portraitists, climbing from face to face in a silent delirium of snobbery, a man so interested in elites that he has his own society magazine.” - Robert Hughes

This was a marketing campaign tuned to perfection, based on education in commercial art and experience in advertising and promotion.

“Good business is the best art.” - Andy Warhol

Which brings us back to the fundamental question that is the basis of my work: If art is business, is it still art?

WTF is NFT?

Would you pay $999,000 for this? Image: Cryptokitties.co

The Newest Financial Twist in art is the promotion of financial products, in this case the crypto-currency known as Ethereum. The art is irrelevant, the only thing that matters is money.

Beeple is an ideal vehicle for investors (those with No Fucking Taste). His endless regurgitation of lowbrow images in digital collages recalls critic Robert Hughes, who pointed out that “What strip-mining is to nature, the art market has become to culture.” The self-named Beeple-Crap (https://www.beeple-crap.com/) “art shit for yer facehole”, is undoubtedly the most honest part of the whole affair.

In the final minutes of the Christie’s auction, bidding suddenly accelerated in increments of $10 million. Bid manipulation is an old game in the auction world, where artists and dealers buy their own work to boost prices. The secrecy surrounding the identity of buyers lends an additional air of illegitimacy to an already cloudy activity.

Damien Hirst was reportedly among the “consortium of businessmen” that bought his £50 million skull “as an investment”. Among the many things we will never know is whether there really was a consortium and what the actual price was, as the appearance of huge sales benefits both the artist and the auction house.

Art at the high end has always been an investment vehicle. In the good old days dealers guided collectors in building diversified investment portfolios of art. Collectors were expected to support the dealer with regular purchases, and if they didn’t they were out. Now most galleries are busy slugging it out for sales at art fairs and online platforms, and investors (formerly known as “collectors’) are only interested in the best (lowest) possible price.

Enter the NFT, short for Non Fungible Token. One cannot help buy enjoy the obvious contradiction of the name.

fungible adj. law: of such nature or kind as to be freely exchangeable or replaceable, in whole or in part, for another of like nature or kind

What’s really for sale here is not the art but the crypto-currency. Nobody is talking about what a magnificent piece of work this is, or the artist’s purpose in creating it, or the cultural relevance of the work (see Robert Hughes’ quote above). It’s all about the astounding amount of money - the third-highest auction price for a living artist - and the crypto. Which, unfortunately, is for some the very definition of cultural relevance.

This is simply a promotional event publicizing the new currency. NFT trading volume in Ethereum increased 2,850% between December 2020 and February 2021. What better way to boost it than with a controversial, record-setting, and highly publicized transaction?

Art Fairs and The Economics of Art

[The Economics of Art]

For the most part, the art at art fairs reflects the changing whims of the ravenous hordes of investors banging on the door of the contemporary art world, looking to “flip” works of art like stocks. — Hyperallergic

I’m not sure if this was written out of hope or ignorance, but in either case it is dead wrong.

The “ravenous hordes” are those cashing in on artists who remain - as the foundation of the entire industry - at the bottom of the food chain. Some of the most egregious offenders are the Art Fairs themselves, which have found a way to insert themselves as yet another middleman into sales - or the hope of sales, to be more accurate.

Art fairs are highly profitable affairs - for the fairs, not necessarily for artists and galleries. Exhibition fees are steep and the additional costs for transport, travel, staffing, and lodging can make participation a dubious venture at best. It’s gotten so bad that many galleries have abandoned the fairs altogether or are charging artists to participate in them. Some formerly brick and mortar galleries now exist only on paper, having traded their rental overhead for the costs of participation in the fairs. Some artists have gone so far as to represent themselves as galleries, trading the art dealer’s commission for the art fair attendance fees (and the hope of sales).

Art fairs are the Uber of the art world, and the galleries are the drivers. The fairs provide (in theory at least) high volumes of traffic for the centralized shopping of curated art. In reality the curation is largely based on which galleries can afford to buy in. The vast majority of traffic is there for entertainment, not buying, and volume is subject to weather. Attendance figures are like box office receipts; a fair’s success is measured by the number of visitors.

The shift in the marketing of art from galleries to art fairs has most obviously come at the financial expense of the galleries. But the negative effects go far beyond the cost. The vast quantity of work displayed - often of questionable merit - is overwhelming and dulls the senses, and is multiplied by the sheer number of often simultaneous art fairs.

Art galleries face enormous competition at the fairs: rather than having an identity and place within a local community, galleries are placed in stall in what amounts to an international flea market. For quality galleries collector relationships are critical and client lists are fiercely guarded. Personal relationships are typically not built at fairs, except maybe with the art fair staff. Some galleries try to poach artists from other galleries - they look for what is selling (or supposedly selling, as not all Red Dots are genuine).

The artwork itself is at risk not just from shipping damage but also from excessive handling under high pressure in ridiculously small time frames. The necessity of a gallery to sell anything to help recoup the costs can have a negative effect on the artists in the form of high discounts - which not only can mean less for the artist but devalues the work as well (note to artists: have a clear consignment agreement that specifies the maximum allowable discount).

In the end it comes down to separating hype (as quoted in the Hyperallergic article above) from reality.