It’s got to be amusing when you realize how limited your view has been, how when you’ve only seen one side for so long you think it’s real, and then some random conversation on a street corner, or maybe in facebook, reveals the rest of the story, the part that’s been missing. I admit to being peasant class. Oh sure, the parents aspired, always well-presented in public, a big stupid car, but I’d seen water carried into the house a generation back, and had as a child even sat on a board with a hole cut in it, thistles by the door. I thought early on the ‘game’ we played was to get a lot of money, but the carrot seemed so far away I decided to be an artist instead. I rented a studio and began from scratch, and that was my first mistake.
I didn’t know there was a difference between rich people’s art and everybody else’s, and I’ve struggled with it ever since. Rich people’s art is as commodified as poker chips, which in a kind of way they are. At the top super stars rake in more and more money for doing less and less, and not even touching the product at all is grand. Hire grad students for as little as possible to do the work, they’ll consider it a relief from flipping burgers, and the art is so easy you can leave them alone with it. Sell it for millions, expos, parties on boats, so glamorous, and everyone down the line wanting a piece of that. I didn’t even try. From the outside rich peoples‘ art can look sort of silly.
Up ‘til now there hasn’t been much of a public market for art, not a lot of art up in homes, and galleries have a habit of sprouting up and blowing away, many times just money-losing indulgences for well-heeled people wanting to jump in. They show rich peoples‘ art, and wonder why they don’t do better. Let me explain. All that glamour at the top gets sliced into slimmer and slimmer pieces the further you get from urban centers, and by the time it gets to a small southern town that kind of art needs government assistance, with just a cargo-cult resemblance to the real thing, so sad. Still, this style of ‘rocket to fame’ art represents the aspirations of many faculty members and ambitious townies, and finds support from an extremely small section of the community who want to pretend they’re rich, too. So sensitive.
I don’t think there’s a poor people’s art. There’s just art, all one thing, but change perspective and art changes too -- it’s a back and forth deal. I personally don't think it’s great to know about an artist before the first time encountering their work, just a distraction. See, we’re on a different path already. Wanting to know a name, maybe a bit of bio, after a painting proves interesting seems more natural, but it’s still less important than the picture. Why is this so wrong?
On the other side, buying a piece of art as an investment would be like raising a child to play professional ball for the sake of a comfortable retirement -- a missed opportunity to bond. I hate to tell you, but a surfeit of stuff tends to short-circuit some of the drama of life, and yearning and ecstasy are there in the art if you can see it. That’s why common folk are beginning to like it, because they’re seeing independently produced art for the first time in public places, and community awareness is approaching a critical threshold of familiarity and acceptance. If that happens, and an appetite for regionally produced art arises, what rich people want far away won’t matter so much.
I didn’t know there was a difference between rich people’s art and everybody else’s, and I’ve struggled with it ever since. Rich people’s art is as commodified as poker chips, which in a kind of way they are. At the top super stars rake in more and more money for doing less and less, and not even touching the product at all is grand. Hire grad students for as little as possible to do the work, they’ll consider it a relief from flipping burgers, and the art is so easy you can leave them alone with it. Sell it for millions, expos, parties on boats, so glamorous, and everyone down the line wanting a piece of that. I didn’t even try. From the outside rich peoples‘ art can look sort of silly.
Up ‘til now there hasn’t been much of a public market for art, not a lot of art up in homes, and galleries have a habit of sprouting up and blowing away, many times just money-losing indulgences for well-heeled people wanting to jump in. They show rich peoples‘ art, and wonder why they don’t do better. Let me explain. All that glamour at the top gets sliced into slimmer and slimmer pieces the further you get from urban centers, and by the time it gets to a small southern town that kind of art needs government assistance, with just a cargo-cult resemblance to the real thing, so sad. Still, this style of ‘rocket to fame’ art represents the aspirations of many faculty members and ambitious townies, and finds support from an extremely small section of the community who want to pretend they’re rich, too. So sensitive.
I don’t think there’s a poor people’s art. There’s just art, all one thing, but change perspective and art changes too -- it’s a back and forth deal. I personally don't think it’s great to know about an artist before the first time encountering their work, just a distraction. See, we’re on a different path already. Wanting to know a name, maybe a bit of bio, after a painting proves interesting seems more natural, but it’s still less important than the picture. Why is this so wrong?
On the other side, buying a piece of art as an investment would be like raising a child to play professional ball for the sake of a comfortable retirement -- a missed opportunity to bond. I hate to tell you, but a surfeit of stuff tends to short-circuit some of the drama of life, and yearning and ecstasy are there in the art if you can see it. That’s why common folk are beginning to like it, because they’re seeing independently produced art for the first time in public places, and community awareness is approaching a critical threshold of familiarity and acceptance. If that happens, and an appetite for regionally produced art arises, what rich people want far away won’t matter so much.
2 comments:
Just came across your blog on this sculpture. I shared a photo of the sculptor on an Old Photos of Cincinnati page, as well as a photo of the sculpture where it now resides in a park along the river Bicentennial Commons at Sawyer's Point.
The sculpture was always intended for Fountain Square, for the 100th anniversary of the Bar Association. The international competition seems to have been fully aware of Von Sartory's vision of the piece, although I think it's a little bit different than what they thought, but not significantly so.
In 1972, I was working downtown and would go to the Square to watch him work. Knowing some German and he a bit of English, we chatted some and he expressed the same sense of the piece; particularly the reflection of society and the people you picked up on.
The work was universally lampooned and most people considered it an eyesore, but I've always had an affinity for it, having spoken to the German sculptor, Barna von Sartory, but also for it being so outside the box. Your epiphany certainly captured exactly what I think he was getting at.
I understand this is late having only stumbled on it by accident recently, and I appreciate your insight and comments. I hope you're still a reader.
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