collecting vs owning -- different universes

Remember as a child, preschool, watching my fifteen year old uncle deal from a ragged cigar box the neat rows of carefully sorted and ranked baseball cards. It was a complicated business, trading these cards back and forth, angling to get the better deal, and of course there was always the potluck of a nickel’s worth of bubblegum. This was a fascinating business from several angles.

On the front of each card was some skinny kid in a baggy uniform, but on the back was the important stuff, batting average in the minors, on base percentage, mother’s maiden name, phase of the moon when he was drafted. Lot’s of numbers and in those numbers the clever could make a killing, lot’s of fun. I’ll trade you two mid-career ‘Phil Rissutoes’ for that ‘Duke Snyder’ rookie card -- no way. The rookie cards were the emerging artists of the national pastime. Most washed out, went back to the minors, but can you imagine owning a ‘Pete Rose’ rookie card, anyone who later became a big star? Not only was the on-field career of the ball player important, the bubblegum people could control the rarity by printing lots of mid-range players and restricting the more successful ones, and that added to their value too.

There are many successful people out there who ruefully regret letting their cigar box of baseball cards slip away -- probably worth millions by now. Thankfully grownups can graduate to collecting art, all the same principles. Heard some mature artist is getting another look because he was a roommate of some other artist who later become famous, oh really? Each artist has a ranking based on all these numbers, awards, corporate collections, former roommates, calculated indiscretions, it’s difficult to keep up. One difference between collecting baseball cards and art is with art there is no on-field performance, no sweat and flies, no bus rides with rattling windows, nothing except a quivering, volatile, manipulated consensus to determine worth.

What’s on the front of a baseball card never mattered much, low definition, out of register, subject to color slippage due to high levels of acid in the pasteboard -- just some ballplayer holding a bat anyway. Here at owning art we don’t care what’s on the back of the card, the long, glorious resume of official affirmations, we want to see the picture first. All that other stuff might be interesting but it won’t make the art any better. There’s a difference, after all, between ‘collecting’ art and ‘owning’ art, a deep and profound difference almost like residence in different universes. You guys and gals swap your stories of ten-fold increases overnight, chortle about blunders among your peers, but don’t imagine any of it has anything to do with art. Works of art are nothing more than baseball cards to you.

We think of buying and owning art is an investment in self, that art has inherent worth and can become a restorative element in a home or working environment, worth its price in strictly utilitarian terms, if justification is necessary. Collectors have plenty of ‘bluebooks’ to sort through, lots of ‘homework’ concerning who’s hot and who’s not, but I’d just as soon piss away the loot at a slot machine. On the other hand, there are thoughtful artists all around with something to say but no prior approval by the gatekeeper experts, and while finding their art is hard, owning their art is easy. 

state support -- state control

So I guess it would be just too bad to live in a country where the state controlled art, favored certain styles, picked winners and losers. They would do this through a vast bureaucracy of grants and stipends, foundations and agencies, by jiggering the tax code, and, of course, hiring all the teachers. Even if they didn’t round up dissidents and throw them in prison they could just cut them out, ignore them, force them to seek other occupations. Be it fascist or communist, that would be a sorry place, I’m here to tell you. 

On the other hand, governments have manipulated art for a long time. Egypt lasted three thousand years with people walking sideways, all dressed the same, thinking the same thoughts. The church had a message and was a big influence for a few centuries, and you wouldn’t want to paint something they didn’t like. Since the nineteen sixties, and secretly before, this government here has sought to encourage art, to support artists and art endeavors, to bend public opinion toward art, all of a certain sort as it turns out. Not only is there nothing dark, conspiratorial, or evil about it, anyone who benefits in any regard is ready to defend every dime as essential to our cultural lifeblood, sincere and pleading. Please don’t let art die, folks. 

Einstein gave us the ‘thought experiment,‘ a hypothetical situation only possible in the imagination which illustrates possible outcomes. Let’s try. Suppose the apparatus of art sponsorship by our government, fed, state, and local, was suddenly suspended, everyone on leave with pay of course. Wouldn’t want to take colored pencils and paper away from the kids, wherever that happens, but all the afternoon sessions with styrofoam cups and the careers of artists on the table would stop. Who are you people? Did you try in school to make art, gave up and wound up here, or are you only a celibate scholar toting a bag of credentials? Do you own any art, live with art, and how much could you say about it?

No need to get personal, I’ve just always been curious. The real point is this. Since you’ve been pumping in tons of public money how many citizens these days have original art in their homes, how many artists make a living independent of your programs and support mechanisms, and how do rusting culvert sections piled on a building roof across from the downtown library encourage either of those? None of these concerns are your problem, understood, but I’d sympathize with anyone claiming all that money would be better spent on providing shelter in the winter, planting grass in the median, such as that. Let the state see to its responsibilities, and let art find its own way -- out of studios and into homes, the way a free society operates.

low expectations -- truth unclaimed

Rauschenberg, famously, asked DeKooning for a drawing so he could erase it. At first DeKooning demurs, but after enough ardent persuasion to give the story a little punch, he says ok, go ahead, you can have the drawing I made this morning of my terrible hangover. Rauschenberg erases it, so he says, and presents the blank paper as a work of art which some rich collector surely owns to this day, proudly displaying the empty frame. I wouldn’t want to say what this reveals, but it is an example of just the naked idea, just as the artist intended, without an inch of fine stitching to back it up. Insanely clever, what?

It’s just a little thin is all. So much of art these days is. Problematic since even the astutely clever tires quickly, just as humor in art begins to fade by the second time it’s encountered. It’s all going to be ok if the art is changed out on a regular basis, passing fancies, white hot trends, the way the press, which isn’t a press at all, portrays serious art. I’m not saying it’s a racket, perhaps just overly entrepreneurial, the way the advertising intertwines with infomercial-journalism to boost high end consumption, but it’s a rarified aesthetic of blind acceptance and a deep desire for social ascension that gives them lift.

I kid, and no one’s offended. Over my head is the simple explanation, but that isn’t exactly it. I cling to the archaic notion that visual art ought to be primarily visual, in through the visual apparatus, decoded and considered in the fifty percent of our brain devoted to sight. I don’t care about linages and derivations, or an echo chamber of urbane cult code -- I need to see it. Visual art is supposed to be visual, and social-scold titles and pages of foggy rationale won’t prop up a mess. On the other hand folks these days don’t expect much, they hardly look. Many would prefer to read the tag on the wall, listen to the explanation in the headset, while the eyes fail to focus. This is the legacy of Duchamp, and the way art is taught and talked about these days. 

Why this is so is hard to say, although the tribe of the ‘culturally elite’ like to keep their passwords hidden behind the dollar signs in uptown galleries. No one needs to be like them. No one needs to be like them. Look at the art instead. Understand there are artists in your hometown with more to say and who say it better than the super expensive less-than-personal art available in those upscale major-metro tourist strolls they call gallery districts. Actually making and looking at art is by golly more interesting than calculating emerging investment potentials or trying to impress snooty friends.

If you look at enough art you’ll know when to be impressed, and ‘also owned’ by a celebrity or some big prestigious corporate entity won’t mean so much. Even after looking a lot, sometimes an artist does something unexpected with color and line, creates an image unique and full of charm, can’t explain it. Ask the price. Learning about art is fine, but looking at art forges a respect for human communion and achievement, an affirmation of self and personal judgement, and a sudden interest in who’s been saying what above the din of false promises and for-profit lies on the evening news. 

finding cheap art -- using the eyes

There’s this article ‘French Gallery Shows off 'New' Rembrandt at Fine Art Fair’ on the abc.news website about a painting once destined to be auctioned for a pre-sale estimate of 500 to 800 dollars, when this clever, clever dealer sees it and thinks maybe it’s fledgling work by a young Rembrandt, could be, why not? After a slight massage, he turns it over for over a million dollars, and that’s one handsome markup for an autograph -- not exactly an autograph, just three scrawny little letters, one looks sorta like an ‘r.’

I don’t care if any of it is ‘true’ -- maybe it is. The painting which the dealer admits isn’t very good, ‘slightly crude’ he says, is, once you think about it, obviously a rembrandt (wink). They also admit to restoring/repainting it, just to make it even better. From nicknack destined for someone’s guesthouse to star of a big glamorous international exhibit is quite a skyrocket ride for a little patch of canvas, so inspirational.

Extravagant wealth plays a fiddle to the crackling of a burning planet and don’t the hippest among us love to dance? Just don’t have time for the sideshow, me, and probably neither do you. These stories of gigantic deals, major cons, capers pulled belong over bourbon in a hotel room after a big successful ‘art fair,’ or maybe off on a yacht, so grand. Don’t much care for glamour, not up to it. I like art. I’ll offer this radical, damn near heretical, notion -- screw a lot of paperwork, it’s what’s in the frame that counts. Bet you didn’t see that coming.

The actual resume, the credentials, the working history, along with a statement of depth and character are there on the wall in front of you, hopefully well-lit. I wouldn’t say that a running log of official accolades is unimportant, just that the tastes of academic curators and corporate asset managers might not, in the main, represent the thoughts and desires of the person considering giving up cash to own something. All that documentation has something to do with the price, you bet-cha, but that’s a negotiation that comes after the heart sees what it wants. It’s a whole new way of thinking about art.

Look first. When in a gallery, stop in front of something that appeals to you and bend an ear to the gentle patter of background and achievement there beside you, and then ask the price. If the art has no tender, in a restaurant or an office, look for a tag -- most art for sale has a tag, and if it doesn’t, ask someone. Many people, waitstaff and office personnel, like having original art at work and will be glad to tell you who did it, and maybe something about them. Contact that artist direct and you’re liable to get a bargain. It’s true, pretty good art can be had for cheap, or at least reasonable, when using just the eyes.

getting dumber -- art as antidote

Having gone to school a while back, we all just assumed educational standards would keep getting higher, that eventually people would know more, think better, and everything would be great. Look around. Is a novelist, Hemingway, Faulkner, Baldwin likely to be a culture hero these days? Where are the visual artists more celebrated for their images than for their bankroll? We have presidential debates in which candidates imply demeaning things about each other’s genitals, around the water cooler people discuss last night’s talent contest, and our major sport strategizes on-field attrition, so maybe we aren’t getting smarter after all.

How does a gene pool become dumber in just a couple of generations you may ask? Well high school is mostly about football, it has a regular slot on the news, and colleges with huge administrative burdens have become more like businesses, granting ‘cliff’s notes’ degrees, reducing support faculty to sharecropper status all the while building larger stadiums. That might be part of it. Television has given us cookie-cutter role models, aggressive cops and violent criminals interacting with maximum firepower, along with comedies featuring idiot fathers and sensible but one dimensional moms. It further demeans us at regular intervals suggesting we could be more virile, smell better, and drive a bigger truck. After a while, night after night, folks begin to assume some of those characteristics without really noticing. 

Art was made stupid on purpose, and it’s ability to positively influence thought and identity were wiped out from the top. They said they did it to win the war of ideas with the russians. They said abstract art represented our individualism, our freer imaginations, our dynamic cutting edge ‘newness’ to the world, and as such abstract art was immensely subsidized by a public that didn’t care much for it. Scalding ridicule in a co-opted press was their major weapon against traditional forms -- voices were silenced, and there have been consequences. 

One thing you can say about reproducing soup can labels as fine art -- it’s dumb. Gloriously dumb is how they liked to think of it, and ‘everyone famous for fifteen minutes’ is a slogan nihilistic enough to poison any desire to accomplish anything. Andy and his ilk happily pissed on notions of integrity and artistic merit in favor of selling the merchandize, selling the shelves, selling the floor, and we, at least the ones who merit media coverage, bought it by the pound. How’d we all get so dumb we’d want comic books for movies and baboons for politicians you’d like to know, and some of it was in the art.

It’s time to turn it around and move forward. How many fixes are there in the cultural toolkit? Substantially upgrading the educational system would work out fine maybe twenty five years from now, and distributing wealth more evenly would help if it was possible without violence and displacement. What is a matter of immediate free choice is what art to own, and an art that embodies struggle and accomplishment, intimacy and reflection, commitment and resolve would be nice to have around the house as the language sheds syllables and the media embraces low common denominators.

where the money is -- selling to the rich

Reading an article about how to sell art to rich people because they’re rich. This sure sounds practical but not perfect. The top twenty percent is where the cream is, where the dollars are, but not where art awareness, interest, and insight burn brightest. This incongruity causes wobble. 

When we visit the homes of the rich and famous, via video and magazines, where’s the art? Pictorial essays in the ‘architectural digest’ might feature expansive ocean views but interior walls carry nothing but screen-savers. Too much trouble to secure signed releases from actual artists, they explain, so they install catalogue ordered abstracts instead, or maybe that’s the art. Fact is designers don’t much care for art lest it distract from the balance and flow of fine furnishings, diminish their control and screw up the budget. The wrong art would just take over is what they think, and they’re professionals.

Original art is more potent than most of us expect, used to posters and prints of significant art. Its presence draws the attention and influences the space it’s in, setting a mood and tone in a room while making the metallic thread in both couch and drapes seem somehow beside the point. Art would actually better serve the less affluent for several reasons. Life seems more immediate as you move down the economic ladder to where a flat tire means late for work, and lease terms are inconvenient. This daily vulnerability imposes a kind of direct awareness that lends itself to the appreciation of art, as well as creating an appetite for its balm and solace.

In the long run art is also the most efficient use of the decorating dollar, something the less affluent should bare in mind. A good painting and a doily will make a worn place on the arm on a couch seem insignificant, and threadbare carpet becomes friendly and full of character in a room with well chosen art. Not just that. The decorator will have you changing out every ten years regardless of wear, ‘that dated couch has to go,’ while the art just gets better. Pro-rated over the rest of a lifetime even expensive art will turn out to have been cheap, easily transported place to place, and in the end significantly more valuable to its owner than the purchase price.