Painting After Art is Dead

As I work through some of the challenges with a new piece that will be mutable and interactive (for the audience- see below this blog) I’ve been thinking a good bit about Walter Pater’s famous observation that “all Art aspires to a state like music.” Yes, part of the reason is also music, having recently been to several shows by groups whose performance incorporates real-time, sometimes broad re-interpretations of compositions, resulting in art works that will never again be repeated exactly as I experienced them.

As this article observes, one interpretation of Pater’s observation “is that music is the only art whose form and content are not just inseparable, but the same. … Pater was writing at the dawn of the modern art revolution when literal representation was being purged from art and literature like pests from an old, dirty house.” I’m not going to waste a contemporary reader’s time with unpacking all the usual topics or point at what is wrong-headed about this time period in Art’s development. I hope with these words to point at the experience of live music and the quality of immediacy- of “bringing one into direct and instant involvement with something, giving rise to a sense of urgency or excitement.” Granted, as I’ve written, urgency and excitement don’t have to be the only sensations or emotions we experience through Art- awe is an option; and I’m just not convinced this moment in history is the time to narrow our aperture regarding what is or isn’t Art anyway.

Featuring prominently in my mind these last couple of weeks has been the recent passing of Robert Irwin. There is. No. Artist that has had more influence on me than Robert. I am so privileged to have seen so much of his work, including his installation at the former DIA Beacon, the gardens at the Ghetty, his retrospective at the Hirshhorn, and the work that was included in the recent Light and Space retrospective at LACMA

“To be an artist is not a matter of making paintings or objects at all. What we are really dealing with is our state of consciousness and the shape of our perceptions.”

Robert Irwin

tldr #1; I am painting after art is dead (long live art).

tldr #2; despite having to use words to point at it (because thoughts don’t exist without language) I’m convinced that there is an experience to be had through Art that is unique to the same and exists- with immediacy- prior to our ability to describe it using language.

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!