At first glimpse Jerry Saltz’s much quoted comment on art (and therefore sculpture) makes perfect sense. It appears as a slide in the 2017 US television documentary Blurred Lines, a broad-spanned cinematic examination of the forces that shape contemporary art.
Saltz quips: ‘Art is for anyone. It just isn’t for everyone.’
In one sense, it’s a profound comment on all points of a creative spectrum that at its best is near miraculous, and at its worst, grotesque. Now, in place of the word art, try substituting just about anything else: sauna yoga, cockroach purée, 10-pin bowling, nude skydiving. Suddenly the fatuity of the statement—and much of the art it represents—slaps you in the face like John Cleese armed with a dead trout. Watch the surrealistically hilarious sketch here.
In this piece, the second in a two-part series, Australian sculptor, Todd Stuart, delves deeper below the surface of Blurred Lines. For Todd’s first impressions of the documentary, click here.
Never be afraid of the obvious. You have choices. You can like, love, dislike, abominate, or ignore anything or everything. Unless you live in a totalitarian state that prescribes (and proscribes) public opinion, you’re mostly free to express your preferences as you wish. Within the confines of the law, you’re free to spend your money and to consume as you see fit.
An ambiguous yes and no
Does this apply to art? The answer, of course, is an ambiguous yes and no. By the end of the 84-minute documentary, the ambivalence intensifies rather than abates. It allows this article to side step any spoiler alerts because the documentary itself evades any opinion of its own. It does so via the simple, elegant, and convenient device of having others express their opinions for it. And what a smorgasbord of assertions, pronouncements, and contradictions it offers.
Unsurprisingly, the Blurred Lines art debate art hauls in the usual suspects: taste, skill, money, ego, and greed, among others. Its introduction reflects on two events. The first was the September 15 2008 closure of Lehman Brothers, America’s then fourth largest investment bank. The bankruptcy remains the largest in US financial history, and signalled the onset of the global financial crisis (GFC). The second was a blockbuster auction of British artist and enfant terrible, Damien Hirst, a little more than a week later at Sotheby’s in London. The anonymous voice-over of a newsreader declares ‘It seemed the art market was oblivious to what was happening on the stock market.’
Other luminaries of the art world offer their summaries. Laurence Graff is the English founder and owner of Graff Diamonds International. An avid art collector, Forbes magazine estimates Graff personal wealth at US$5.5 billion(1).
‘A lot of contemporary art will be in the dustbin in ten years time…’
He has a forceful view: ‘A lot of contemporary art will be in the dustbin in ten years time, I think. It’s too much…’
Another prominent presence in the documentary is Vicky Ward, a best-selling author and formerly a journalist with Vanity Fair magazine. No stranger to controversy, she says: ‘Contemporary art is such a headline every day for one reason—money.’
Now contrast these two comments with two others. The first is from Amy Cappallazzo, currently Chairman of the Fine Art division of Sotheby’s, and founder of Art Agency, Partners. Sotheby’s acquired her business and her expertise in 2016.
She tells Blurred Lines ‘It feels like art’s in its golden age; people love it and appreciate it more than ever.’
‘Who gives a f*** at the end of the day…
The second comes from David Kandinsky, founder and owner of David Kordansky Gallery, one of the most influential art outlets in Los Angeles.
‘Who gives a f*** at the end of the day about how much something sold for? Really? Is it going to change your life? I can assure you of something. Art has changed my life, not an auction result.’
Blurred Lines takes narrative shape through a series of ten auction ‘lots’. The lots reflect the structure of actual art auctions, particularly those managed by legendary sales houses such as Sotheby’s and Christie’s. Flashes of auctions in progress punctuate the drama at regular intervals, acting as a counter-balance to scores of talking head interviews.
Along the way the lots record opinions from art aficionados airing their views on topics spanning the complete spectrum of art in modern times. The observations cover the art market, artists, dealers, collectors, museums, auction houses, and art fairs.
The latter parts of the production also examine art’s economic, vocational, and sociological impact, and its future in uncertain times.
Blurred Lines as a title
The documentary may well take its title from a comment made in the opening scenes of Lot 1: The art market. Glenn Lowry, Director of New York City’s ultra-prestigious Museum of Modern Art, sets the context of contemporary art, saying: ‘I don’t think anyone worries any longer, whether something is a photograph or a painting or a video or some digital manifestation. What we think about is, is it meaningful, does it convey some kind of impact? And so all those lines that clearly define whether something was a print, or a drawing, or a painting have long since been blurred.’
Lot 1: The art market
Amid a welter of arguments, positions, and postures, the one theme to consistently emerge is the gaping divide between those who produce the art and … just about everyone else.
Most commentators agree the centuries-old system of patronage, where the wealthy few dictated the terms on which artists produced public work has largely vanished. New levels of education and learning coupled with unprecedented scales of disposable wealth mean vastly expanded exposure for artists in the developed world. But exposure doesn’t necessarily mean understanding or appreciation.
On the one hand, noted American photographic artist, Taryn Simon, describes contemporary art as the ‘commodification of something that used to stand outside and is now fully on the inside. The sort of American Apparel ad version of the world.’ Dr Ian Robertson, Head of Art Business at Sotheby’s Institute of Art agrees, declares ‘we live in a commodity-driven environment. People acquire commodities and that is no different in the art world.’
His Sotheby’s colleague, Lisa Dennison, Executive Vice President and Chairman North and South America, and former long-term director of the Guggenheim Museum, turns to history. It provides the backdrop to explain the impact of art, at least on her home country, the United States.
‘Boundaries broken down’
‘By the early 80s really, things exploded here, where a new generation of American artists came to the fore. People like Julian Schnabel and David Salle, and then little by little, the world became broader and more global and the boundaries really just were broken down so that there is no more simple center of the art world and pretty much the market follows.’
Lot 2: The artists
Lot two focuses on a handful of artists—British, American, and European—who in their varying ways have combined notoriety, celebrity, outrage, and wealth to redefine our perceptions of art.
The segment kicks off with the so-called bad boy of world art, Englishman, Damian Hirst. Hirst turned the accepted structure of art sales on its head in 2008 when he took a one man show Beautiful Inside My Head Forever direct to auction instead of via the customary gallery and dealer route. The sale broke Sotheby’s record for a one-person auction.
According to American author and art economist, Don Thompson, ‘Hirst was the most significant artist post-war. He had the sense of the backstory to art; that art was not what it was, but it was what you thought it was, it’s what you saw.’
By contrast, controversial American multi-media artist, Sterling Ruby, talks of Hirst as an artist who surrendered to the lure of wealth: ‘I really liked Damien when he first started exhibiting. He was an artist who was making work that looked like work that had never been presented before. Over time, the subject matter got replaced with money.’
Art comes before the artist
Yet an overarching message emerges from both artists and those who engage with them. Whether they’re dealers, collectors, or critics, the anthem is that the art comes before the artist, or indeed anything else.
Sterling Ruby again: ‘I don’t think about what things cost. I just don’t. As the work has commanded higher prices, I have been able to make choices that feel more autonomous. At this point, I can keep those things extremely separate from what I do.’
Julian Schnabel is a celebrated American painter and award-winning film director. He says: ‘the only thing that is really important to an artist is making art. It’s sort of a privileged, lucky thing that actually. I mean I’m always surprised when I actually can pay for dinner. Everything I’ve got to say is in my paintings. The rest of this is just chitchat.’
Rashid Johnson is an African American photographer/painter/sculptor whose work attempts to transcend the racial divide of contemporary American society. He is also a long term client of David Kordansky, who this article quoted earlier, saying: ‘who gives a f*** at the end of the day about how much something sold for?’
‘It’s not about what people want’
Johnson explains: ‘I try to be patient as an artist. I try to make what I feel like I need to make. Once I get into this room, everything that is outside of this space no longer has significance to me. It’s not about what people want, what people are going to say about it. I honestly don’t feel a lot of pressure.’
Taryn Simon repeats the creative’s view: ‘my work is produced, created, conceptualized…everything in a vacuum. It’s truly me and my studio, and that’s it. There are no outside voices until the work is made and it’s always been that way for me.’
Jeff Koons, whom Don Thompson describes as ‘the most expensive living artist the auction world has ever known’ and ‘hugely qualified as the best art marketer of any artist in the world’, sums it up for the artists:
‘There’s always a lot of confusion with my work where people think I am making a critique and I’m not. I’m making an acceptance of ourselves and our own history. For me, it’s all about the future… I want to become the artist that I can become.’
Is Blurred Lines a fair and accurate interpretation of how the art world works, at least from the artist’s perspective? In light of the deprivations and degradations that assail most of the earth’s population, perhaps a more apposite question should be ‘who cares?’
Is there is any truth to art?
Is there is any truth to art when so much creative endeavour relies on fantasy, invention, and downright lies? T.S. Eliot was a fabled artist in his own right, debatably the 20th century’s most recognised poet writing in English. Even when much of his life was spent as a banker, publisher, and businessman, he put his finger on one aspect of our lives that lends credibility and meaning to art. In Burnt Norton, the opening verse of his Four Quartets, first published in 1936, he writes:
‘…human kind
Cannot bear very much reality.’
Throughout history, artists of every persuasion have attempted to transcend the quotidian in search of the numinous. It’s a complex way of saying we yearn to break our earthly bonds in pursuit of the heavenly.
Rock star gaucherie and rich brat excesses
Blurred Lines drags in more than its fair share of what some might call of rock star gaucherie and rich brat excesses. It unpacks a few spit-in-your-face assaults on ‘ordinary’ values that many—perhaps most—would find at best incomprehensible if not outright offensive.
Matthew Slotover is Co-director of Frieze Art Fair, which runs art events in London, Los Angeles, and New York. Reflecting on freedom of choice and taste in art he makes the legitimate point that the art industry can and does reject artists, just as artists can reject any or even every component of the art machine.
‘No-one’s got a gun to anyone’s head.’
In the end, our reaction to art is a purely personal responsibility. As he bluntly puts it: ‘no-one’s got a gun to anyone’s head.’
Perhaps in the end Jerry Saltz is right. It is, after all, only art. David Kordansky might be right as well when he asks who gives a f*** about the price of art. However you think about it, one universal truth persists. It doesn’t go away.
If you believe art, and particularly sculpture, has a place in your life, take your belief a step further. Click here to view Todd’s first response to Blurred Lines. Or try a conversation with an artist whose life is devoted to the profession. To learn more click here for our website, or for a personal take on sculpture in context, contact Todd Stuart direct on +61 451 518 865.
(1) https://www.forbes.com/profile/laurence-graff/#699befd4382a
