ART AND DELUSION
Ross Neher

According to U.S. Census data, there were 2,196,000 “artists” in 2001. (The quote marks come from the Princeton University Center for Arts and Cultural Policy Studies but we know what they mean.) This staggering figure includes architects, authors, actors, dancers, musicians, etc., as well as visual artists. If we tote up the painters, sculptors, craft artists, and photographers in the survey the number comes to 414,000. (That’s just the United States; the worldwide figure is anyone’s guess.) It’s safe to assume most of these artists have settled on the two coasts with a preponderance taking up residence in the New York metropolitan area. There could be anywhere from two to three hundred thousand artists living and working in New York. Vast swaths of Brooklyn would be tumbleweed desolate if those who call themselves artists were to up and leave.

Subtract the artists who support themselves from sales of their work, are independently wealthy, teach, or who eke out a living by caging grants (a quickly evaporating group) and you get the number of “struggling” artists. Even if we take a wildly optimistic figure, say 50,000 (and no collector base was ever that large, even during the recent boom, to bankroll so many artists) there still might be 200,000 trying to hit the art jackpot. And that’s a conservative estimate based on figures almost ten years old -- a half million is not unthinkable.

The remaining legion is representative of all age groups; from the newly minted MFA in her 20s to the diehard octogenarian in his 80s; and all genres, from the painter of posies to the performance artist. Moreover, while the attrition rate for art school graduates is high – something like 80% of MFAs stop making art five years after they graduate – there is still the fresh crop that arrives each year from all over the country wanting to give it a shot, hope springing eternal. Would-be Damien Hirsts more than make up for the ones packing it in.

Ever since the demise of Church and court patronage there has been a surplus of artists and artwork done on spec and that surplus, over time, has gotten exponentially larger to where we are at present. Few have paid much attention to this development because it seemed like the natural course of events. After all, everybody loves art, art is good, being an artist is good, the more the merrier (all debatable assumptions, I might add). But just as the universe cannot expand forever and must one day collapse upon itself, so too the number of artists relative to the general population must cease to grow and begin to decline. I believe we are now at that historic inflection point.

Many critics -- Peter Schjeldahl, Jerry Saltz, Holland Cotter, to name a few -- have commented on the effect the financial downturn is having and will have on the art community and the general consensus is that “it’s different this time” i.e., from past boom/bust cycles. I agree, it is different this time. But whereas most see a permanently shrunken, but still familiar art world (fewer galleries and art fairs, less elaborate installations, etc.), I see an art world so radically changed it’s bound to impact the very definition of art and what it means to be an artist.
What might this brave new art world look like? In order to draw its contours we have to start with a discussion of (what else?) money. Money is the lifeblood of the art world. No money = no art world. Money is also called capital and capital is created by capitalists. The process whereby this happens is called capitalism. Ergo, no capitalism = no art world.

While I do not predict transformation of the United States economy from capitalist to socialist/communist per se, I do see severe restrictions on capital formation. That is because capital will go to funding government. One place it is already going is to bailout the banks, for which the taxpayer is on the hook. The administration hopes the government will eventually make money on these massive bailouts but that’s all it is at the moment, a hope. In the meantime, in exchange for the bailouts, and to make sure this mess never happens again, the banking industry will be tightly regulated. The extravagant salaries and bonuses that helped fuel the recent art boom will be things of the past.

Wall Street, once synonymous with the capital markets, will exist as nothing more than a street sign. Yes, a stock exchange and some banks will remain, but profitability will be low as enforced prudence trumps risk. Few employees let go as a result of downsizing, mergers, or bankruptcies, will be rehired. The collapse of the financial system has already devastated the New York real estate and restaurant industries and small businesses are reeling. In Chelsea you can see the collateral damage; each month there are fresh reports of gallery closings. (There is even a blog called “Deathwatch” where artists post rumors of their demise.) Without Wall Street playing Daddy Warbucks to New York City, many segments of the local economy will remain weak, even after a general economic turnaround.

The administration’s multi-trillion dollar spending plan will be on top of the bank/Detroit bailouts and crippling mandated spending. Here again the administration is confident that it will save money by spending money -- reforming healthcare and education, developing new sources of energy, etc. -- but that, too, might be wishful thinking. Many economists fear a sea of red ink for decades to come, and with the Federal Reserve printing money as fast as Road Runner Turbo, the prospect for a weak dollar and rampant inflation is very real. Moreover, while we don’t yet know the ultimate size of the deficit, we do know most of the tax burden will fall upon those most likely to collect art, donate to museums and back art galleries, i.e., the wealthy, who will hardly regard tax hikes as an incentive to buy art.

The wealthy (those making over $250,000. a year?) will be less apt to collect for reasons other than higher taxes. One little studied area in collecting is the psychology of collectors. After each bust, collectors, unless they bought the bluest of blue chip art, find themselves stuck with a lot of worthless junk. There’s no telling how much third rate Pop and Op Art was acquired in the ‘60s, or how many god awful East Village neo-expressionist paintings were snapped up in the ‘80s (the art of both periods eventually winding up in flea markets or curio shops worth cents on the dollar) but collectors, furious at having been suckered, make solemn vows never to buy art again. Then the art world has to wait around for the next generation of rubes. And if one thinks the work of the ‘60s and ‘80s looks bad, wait and see what scatter installations, inane videos and boring large scale photography will look like (and be worth) a few years from now. Also, with newly impoverished bankers, investors, and friends of Bernie Madoff heading for the exits at the same time, the value of the art they’re trying to unload is plummeting. It’s a good time to be a pawn broker, as those who ply the trade in Palm Beach will attest. Not so good to be in the auction business.

So, it doesn’t take a Nostradamus to describe the future of the art world. With collectors taxed, burned, and dumping art, the galleries will be hurt severely. Out of five hundred or so holding on for dear life, I’m guessing not more than fifty commercial galleries will survive in New York. The rest will be cooperatives and not-for-profits. And what profits the commercials make will be driven down by vulture collectors playing “Deal or No Deal.” Art magazines will cease to publish as ad revenue dries up. Old Master art will gain in value relative to contemporary. Museums will have to close on more days and rotate access to less popular sections. Bye, bye blockbuster. Then there is the effect this cumulative reality will have on art education.

I teach in a Master of Fine Arts program where, typically, students have anywhere from $60,000. to $100,000. of student loan debt that by law must be repaid (no filing for bankruptcy here). They’ve heard about artists, straight out of grad school (and some, outrageously, still in school), getting shows in Chelsea and selling out those shows with artworks priced at $80,000. Why not them? They’ll be able to pay the loans back in no time and then the world will be their bivalve. They think they’re invincible. After all, since infancy they’ve been told they were geniuses by boomer parents who say it’s just great Jennifer/Jason wants to be an artist.

Not so long ago, parents, envisioning lives of poverty and despair, vigorously discouraged their children from “following their bliss.” But thanks to the ministrations of Charles Saatchi and Mary Boone, “being an artist” became a viable career move. The art stars of the ‘80s seemed to print their own money. Art school enrollment skyrocketed. But how long can art schools sustain the illusion that a costly degree has any value once it’s obvious it won’t lead to anything except a bartending job? A stock answer students give when asked why they want an MFA degree is “to get a teaching job.” Where? Colleges are laying off staff and I wouldn’t be surprised if entire art departments were dismantled as enrollments drop precipitously. So, there aren’t going to be teaching positions and only a select few will find gallery representation. Those pondering a career as an artist will have to make a sober assessment. Many will say no. And that’s why we’ve come to an inflection point. For the first time in generations the question will be posed of what it really means, existentially, to be an artist. I believe that only a different historical mindset will make the sacrifice worth it.

Earlier I cited three New York art critics – Peter Schjeldahl, Jerry Saltz and Holland Cotter. All wield considerable art world influence as reviewers for The New Yorker, New York Magazine and The New York Times respectively. All are American, white, male and, with the exception of Schjeldahl (born 1942), boomers. But Schjeldahl is close enough in age to the other two that for argument’s sake, I’ll name him an honorary boomer.

Here are some recent critical snippets: Schjeldahl, in reviewing the “Younger than Jesus” exhibition at The New Museum, said upcoming artists “will make a point of entertaining themselves on the cheap, and self-consciously, as members of an ingenuity-and drollery-loving generation.” Saltz, reviewing the same show, intoned, “These young artists show us that the sublime has moved into us, that we are the sublime [which is no longer] in God or nature or abstraction.” And Cotter (“The Boom Is Over. Long Live the Art!”) wants to see artists carve out “a place in the larger culture where a condition of abnormality can be sustained, where imagining the unknown and the unknowable – impossible to buy or sell – is the primary enterprise.”

I’m American, white, male, 60, and, having actually attended the original Woodstock Festival, I can detect a strong whiff of the patchouli scented ‘60s in these comments. There’s the Kesey-Kolored yuk-it-up embrace of doing your own thing, the Nietzschean stew of the Ubermensch mixed with the embryonic stem-cells of the human potential movement (God is dead; you are your own God), and the Castaneda-like mumbo-jumbo of “imagining the unknown and unknowable.” Throw in a bit of Marshall Mcluhan to deal with new media, a dash of Bucky Fuller visionary whimsy, a tad of Up with People pluralism (no, make that a lot) and the requisite tirade against filthy lucre (“impossible to buy or sell”) that derives from ‘sixties-style “dematerialization” of art, and you have the mindset of these critics. It is a mindset stuck in time, impervious to critical analysis or challenge. It is the de facto ideology of the art world, an ideology over forty years old. What accounts for the vice-like grip these tired clichés have on those who take them as gospel?

As a graduate student at NYU writing a history of the counterculture for his dissertation, Peter Braunstein (yes, that Peter Braunstein) coined the term “possessive memory.” Fighting racism, protesting an unpopular war, and forcing a sitting president to all but abdicate is heady brew. Indeed, “participating in a sweeping social movement,” Braunstein conjectured, “creates a sense of self-regeneration so powerful that it can become a constitutive part of the activist’s later identity.” Possessive memory, therefore, “leaves the person in a lover’s embrace: The person is in possession of his memories and no one else can touch them; at the same time, his memories are in possession of him.” I’m inclined to think that a majority of those that came of age during the ‘60s are “possessed of their memories,” not just the ones who stormed the ramparts. For them 1968 is a talismanic year. Achievements prior to it are slighted, those after are valorized, and Bob Dylan is a better poet than William Shakespeare. The historical nearsightedness of this position is breathtaking. Taken to its logical conclusion, it posits that the boomer generation is the only one in history to have ever mattered.

One would think boomer narcissism precluded approbation of younger generations. A defining trait of boomers is to want to remain forever young. Boomer art critics maintain the illusion of eternal youth by hanging out with the artist/kids (a seemingly inexhaustible source of fresh blood), and by buying into the cult of novelty. In exchange for a tacit gag order that forbids the questioning of their view of history, older critics turn a blind eye to patently shallow work. Young artists turn out evanescent work in return for nano accolades. Possessive memory, and the mindset it fosters, is secure. (The critics get the best of this bargain. They remain a static force while the mass of young artists is ever changing. After one or two shows, poof!)

How do we get beyond this state of affairs? I think that the very seriousness of the commitment to become an artist will force a change in the prevailing ideology. One willing to devote a life to a profession that promises little remuneration or recognition (and for whom that outcome is a foregone conclusion, in contrast to the artist who toils away with misplaced hope intact), is likely to want to make an art of consequence and durability. After periods of excess and frivolity, such as our own “we are the sublime” Facebook era, which makes going out to buy orange juice the equivalent of cathedral building (and makes the Rococo look like a period of self-flagellation), artists have frequently turned to classicism as a way to restore a much needed cultural balance. The classical artist has always looked beyond the self, to structures and subjects of complexity and depth.

Classicism offers the new artist a way out of the cul-de-sac of boomer narcissism. One’s own generation is not privileged but is seen in relation to past generations and civilizations. Any tendency towards narcissism is tempered by knowledge of those who’ve tested the limits of what is humanly possible. We confront them across the divide of time and are humbled.

For a new mindset to take hold, the artist will have to acquire what T.S. Eliot in his essay, “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” called the “historical sense.” “The historical sense involves a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence… it is what makes [an artist] most acutely conscious of his place in time, of his own contemporaneity.” Thus the artist with an historical sense is not a fusty antiquarian but is someone with a keen sense of how the past lives in the present. It is, Eliot insists, what permits the artist to make art that is genuinely new.

Of course, it’s impossible to describe what a new classical art will look like. Certainly cultural differentiation will give new art a distinctive flavor as artists mine not only their own culture’s history and myths, but those of others to create a multifaceted art of intricate visual play. As for media, I wouldn’t be surprised if cutting-edge digital animation played a substantial part in the context of a classical revival. But who knows? Too judge from classical art of the past, only two requirements are necessary. One is that the art be about something; it cannot be self-reflexive or non-objective. Two is that the art be of surpassing esthetic excellence.

How realistic is this scenario? One obstacle standing in the way of a classical revival is education, or rather, the lack of it. The new artist wanting to make an art worthy of the sacrifice of being an artist in an impoverished time will not receive an adequate education from either liberal or fine arts colleges. Most liberal arts colleges have long ago traded core curricula for politically compromised social anthropology. In art schools, the trend has been towards an interdisciplinary approach that devalues craft based disciplines (painting, photography, sculpture, etc.) in favor of multi-media projects where students explore such issues as their “identity.” Indeed, the word “fine” has been dropped from the name of many art schools so as to suggest that basic skills, such as drawing, are no longer taught and that what “art” is taught is conceptually oriented. Lacking traditional venues for learning, the new artist will, of necessity, be an autodidact. Suffice it to say, there won’t be many. But if I’m right in assuming the financial crisis has made it ripe to challenge prevailing art world ideology, it won’t take many to alter a point of view stuck in 1968.