February 22, 2015

The Hype! The Hype!

Sadly, San Miguel is changing from a city of hipsters to a city of hypesters. And saddest of all, most of the hypesters believe their own BS.

(The title of this "thought for the day" is a reference to Joseph Conrad's story, The Heart of Darkness. My apologies to those who got it.)

February 20, 2015

Being an Independent Artist, Less Secure but Free

Here’s a quote I came across in Janson’s The History of Art, and which I like exceedingly well: “To subject the artist to the impersonal pressure of supply and demand in an egalitarian society is not necessarily worse than to make him depend on the favor of princes. The lesser men will tend to become specialists, steadily producing their marketable pictures, while artists of independent spirit, perhaps braving public indifference and economic hardship, will paint as they please and rely for support on the discerning minority. . . Even the greatest masters were sometimes hard-pressed (it was not unusual for an artist to keep an inn, or run a small business on the side). Yet they survived – less secure, but freer.” (pp. 424-25) I salute those artists, like myself, whose fiercely independent spirit keeps them free despite the hardship they must endure.

More on the Branding of Art

A well-established painter here has started calling himself “a baroque artist for the 21st century,” (I thought most artists were ba-roke – ha, ha), but, frankly, I don’t see the baroque quality in his work. The Baroque movement (1600-1750) began in Rome with such artists as Caravaggio and Cranacci, and moved north, where it was exemplified by Rubens and Rembrandt. Baroque art characteristically has movement, dramatic light, and rich color, none of which I see in the painting of this San Miguel artist. (My own work seems more baroque.) Also, his paintings are devoid of perspective – the scenes and figures are presented with a flatness that I dislike and which cannot be considered “baroque” by any stretch of the term. So what we have here is another example of meaningless labeling, in order to “brand” his style. The branding of art is something I abhor, and I am quite dismayed that this otherwise serious artist, whose work I greatly admire, would stoop to that. And while I’m on the subject, he is scheduled a “pop-up” exhibit at a local gallery called The Bordello Gallery, a name I find most contemptible because of its suggestion that artists are whores. 

February 17, 2015

Outrageous Extravagance

Three hundred million dollars for a Gauguin painting seems a bit excessive. Has the art market entered a period of collective insanity? Are collectors vying for first place in the Outrageous Extravagance category? Are high-end buyers going off the deep end? The madness of artistic genius seems to pale before the madness of buying for the sake of outdoing other buyers in the game of one-upsmanship. Where and when will it stop? Would an individual artist refuse to make a sale because it is too high? Of course not. Would an artist sell a painting knowing it would be buried in someone’s private collection and never be seen by the public? Most likely. The higher the price paid for a work, the more it drives up the prices for other work by the same artist. The value of a work seems more and more to be determined by extraneous factors such as the artist’s moral depravity. Can an artist who lives a quiet life become famous for being a recluse and thereby increase the value of his work? Perhaps. But that route to fame will probably only come to fruition posthumously. And so the game of selling art gets more and more like an unstoppable runaway train.