Art is for rich fucky fucks

Now that I have your attention… so, the ever pithy Hilde Lynn Helphenstein aka Jerry Gagosian asked a question recently that I thought would be an interesting topic.

“it’s wild that art must be expensive and sold to the very elite to be considered important or good. Whenever people have attempted to make art affordable and accessible it tends to lose its allure. A print of an artwork for $30? Gross kitsch! A single work of art sold to an exclusive class of people for hundreds of thousands or millions? Meaningful, important, elegant. The scent and sheen of money on art history is so powerful that recently when speaking to a famous
contemporary artist and I asked if they could sell their artwork to thousands of people but make the same amount of money, they told me that would degrade their allure as an artist. I appreciate their candor but I wondered if we can shake needing the approval of a few wealthy individuals to put a stamp on what is good or is this set in stone? Is it tacky to be understood by the masses or is this a condescending question?”

There’s so much to unpack here. Normally I would go with a “yes, and” answer, of course. I was in a workshop recently where there was a very candid discussion about making a career for oneself, and some of the particulars of working with galleries, and therefore a good deal of talk about relationships with “collectors.” That word is in quotes because it’s a stand-in that artists often use, I think, because the title of this article. My observation here is that literally no one raised any issues with the dependency of the speaker on this ecosystem, and in fact we all sat enraptured by his words hoping to find a nugget of truth we could take for ourselves so that we could carve out space for our own practices. Unpacking that is another essay though.

The “yes, and” would be “yes art is for rich fucky fucks, and, Art can still be amazing even with the primary lubricant of its existence being classism.” Probably worth mentioning that I’m not a “burn it all to the ground” guy, which shouldn’t surprise anyone who actually knows me *and* to be transparent I am a cis, het, white man living in America in 2023. All that to say, I’m enabled to sit in the position of holding this “and,” and not having an existential crisis about it (I think Jerry, I mean Hilde, probably is also). That is also another essay, and not the unpacking I wanted to do.

I’d like the reader to look at and think about many of the adjectives that are trotted out in this thought-provoking post on social media and pointed to/at as assumed goals for artists – “important,” “good,” “meaningful,” “elegant,” as well as “tacky,” and “condescending” (but as adjectives of traits to avoid). Also and, the word “allure” pops up twice in that paragraph.

I think the general question from Ms Helphenstein is about aspiration. She and her co-host on the often wonderful podcast Art Smack (Matt Capasso) have regularly dished on how to make it in the art world, aka NY City (no hate btw). Putting aside that “elegant” and “important” are pretty different aspirations, the direction I’d love to see a future episode take is a discussion of how these words resonate with and, further, motivate and drive the practice(s) of artists, in particular if the question is reworded as “to whom does the work in question seem… ?”

It’s hard to not think of Art as a meritocracy. I mean, jimminy Christmas, don’t we all want our creative output to, at *minimum*, achieve public consideration, which always, ALWAYS comes at the expense of someone else whose show proposal didn’t make the cut or whom the juror(s) ignored or just didn’t notice? And, we are told we live in a meritocracy, and therefore it shouldn’t be surprising that many, MANY people would see the “votes” of the affluent in the form of purchases of Art, and who have this status due to the merits of their labor (stick with me), as a sign of merit, as a qualification that said Art is likely elegant, or good and quite possibly important. As regular readers know I’m not opposed at all to evaluation of Art works. I’m not dogging out anyone’s position, or, again, saying “burn it all to the ground!”

That’s it. Sorry if you wanted answers. I’m just asking that we all be honest (once again) and pointing at the thing- every Artist makes stuff they want someone to see and consider (I certainly do) and I hope, whoever you are reading this, that you’ll take a few minutes to think about who “they” are and why they matter to you. Keep it real, lovelies!