Saw a movie last night about art, ‘velvet buzzsaw,’ on netflix, but didn’t get quite to the end. It started out to be an insider expose of the art world at the top where millions of dollars are required to be taken seriously, and that is in fact all you need. It’s about a critic so powerful he can make or break artists or even galleries, but he’s pure, an ethical egomaniac who makes snap judgements based on his superior gut, an onboard aesthetic oracle. The action starts when a gallery assistant snoops after the death of a reclusive neighbor and finds a trove of unseen canvases, artwork so magnetic and astounding that it stuns jaded professionals, fresh air in an arid industry. Loved the premise but movie executives must have decided there should be more blood, so when the vile art advisor puts her hand into a hole in a metallic sphere in the gallery late one evening, she finds a wood-chipper inside. The metaphors were rolling loose and sloppy with a pool of blood to sell tickets for a movie about art that no one would otherwise want to see. That’s when I began to suspect an unhappy ending and went to bed, but I appreciated the the arctic white interiors and high-gothic conversations portraying the horror of big time art.
The art was probably done in-house by the studio art department, just props after all, and to convey the notion of visual potency the screenwriters gave the paintings some sort of creepy supernatural power, but the message comes through. Artwork created in isolation to assuage some internal existential dissatisfaction rather than chasing the high-fashion caprice of conspicuously dirty money may turn out to be better art, and given the chance it would displace that vacuous charade of tax evasion and competitive spending, actual substance slicing through the posturing and petty contrivance for all to see. This is the renegade notion that drives isolated painters everywhere pumped up beyond max to make a movie. After decades of working at art they still find themselves invisible, unable or unwilling to satisfy public-funded gallery programs and without commercial representation, year after year piling up the art.
When they die the art remains stacked hopefully in a dry attic until the grandkids haul it down to the auction house for pennies on the dollar. The auctioneers will advertise the work of an artist who died two decades ago and sell out the lot. It could be the first time the art has seen the light of day or been judged on its merits. The people who buy it will be acquiring the best and deepest expression that the artist was capable of making in that moment. Over time they may begin to recognize those same qualities in themselves by some sort of empathic osmosis, something that can’t be explained but which people who own art will understand. Now if those same people would just buy the work of living artists, perhaps from their own neighborhoods, those hordes of artwork would never accumulate while the art would naturally get better with support and encouragement, and the world would be a better place.
The art was probably done in-house by the studio art department, just props after all, and to convey the notion of visual potency the screenwriters gave the paintings some sort of creepy supernatural power, but the message comes through. Artwork created in isolation to assuage some internal existential dissatisfaction rather than chasing the high-fashion caprice of conspicuously dirty money may turn out to be better art, and given the chance it would displace that vacuous charade of tax evasion and competitive spending, actual substance slicing through the posturing and petty contrivance for all to see. This is the renegade notion that drives isolated painters everywhere pumped up beyond max to make a movie. After decades of working at art they still find themselves invisible, unable or unwilling to satisfy public-funded gallery programs and without commercial representation, year after year piling up the art.
When they die the art remains stacked hopefully in a dry attic until the grandkids haul it down to the auction house for pennies on the dollar. The auctioneers will advertise the work of an artist who died two decades ago and sell out the lot. It could be the first time the art has seen the light of day or been judged on its merits. The people who buy it will be acquiring the best and deepest expression that the artist was capable of making in that moment. Over time they may begin to recognize those same qualities in themselves by some sort of empathic osmosis, something that can’t be explained but which people who own art will understand. Now if those same people would just buy the work of living artists, perhaps from their own neighborhoods, those hordes of artwork would never accumulate while the art would naturally get better with support and encouragement, and the world would be a better place.
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