it’s money that matters -- it’s a matter of form

In the case of visual art the biggest influence isn’t inspiration, it’s audience, or more specifically the party who pays. Is it really possible to identify the source of funding just by looking? Well, there are emulations and cross-overs, but major tilts can be identified by visual character alone. Art made on a salary doesn’t risk too much. If an institution pays, art tends toward the obscure and insular, mainly to avoid jostling faculty colleagues, and on the commercial side graphic flourishes reside safely within a six month window of currency.

Art bought by corporations tends to be large and abstract. They like color and action but they don’t want their art to say nothing -- no political views, no philosophy, no favoring one nationality over another or any stance on anything. They just want to stick to the story, stay in the pitch, and they don’t want to be distracted by art. They buy a lot of it.

Art sold on a large scale to the general public tends to fall within the expectations of regional convention -- the southwest favors canyons and cactus, coastal areas have sails and blowing palms, while sun-dappled paddocks prevail in horse country, and competent painters seem to make a living complying with the local code. One benefit of restricting painting to a certain subject is that direct comparisons make quality and accomplishment easier to recognize, but those subdivided genres are neutered and domesticated, a lap-dog sort of art. 

Major art centers, where big bucks flaunt, hashes them all together seasoned heavily with tawdry sensation and zany self-parody. High-roller tourists eat it up, flashing wads of cash. Here the game has to do with scarcity via branding, a manipulated and artificial exclusivity, with conniving insiders huddled behind a curtain of slightly-soiled gossip and glamorous photo-ops. The actual art can be minimal, light and frothy, monosyllabic and dumb, and it’s just good when it isn’t even an issue.

Then there’s the incipient third wave, the pull of the future, a thoughtful and receptive public who begin to reach into their own pockets for money they’ve earned to exchange it for art they intend to live with. Yes, this crowd, the general public, who have been long been alienated and forsaken by modern art’s romance with abstraction, indexing, and lock-step gullibility are going to break through. Will art change? It seems likely.