"Artists in the Marketplace" | Catalogue for exhibition at Bronx Museum of Art, Summer 2008

The Elephant in the Room

In the late 1960s and early ’70s, artists protested the Vietnam War by refusing to make objects whose sale and circulation might contribute to war profiteering. Today, however, there is no similar option for resistance. We operate in a different economy—one that traffics more in information, ideas, and symbols than in objects. In this setting, the dematerialization of the object has none of the radical impact on politics—much less art—that it had forty years ago. And it must be acknowledged that the propaganda supporting the war in Iraq has been crafted to devastating effect. The terms under which the conflict was launched are so slippery that without clearly understanding the reasons behind the invasion, or having any true sense of its duration, it is difficult to contest it. The avant-garde art of yesterday provides a guide, but only in perseverance, not in methodology.

Because we are now standing at this dialectical brink, the topic of this essay gnawed at me for some while. On the one hand, a discussion of the “crisis” faced by the art world owing to a hyperinflated art market seemed appropriate for the catalogue accompanying the Artists in the Marketplace 28th annual exhibition: there is no question that the art market is a pressing issue for many of today’s cultural producers and critics. Throughout 2007, New York gallery-goers were able to see several strong exhibitions that took a hard look at the art-world economy, such as "Air Kissing" at Momenta Gallery in Brooklyn, and "The Price of Everything," organized by curatorial fellows at the Whitney Independent Study Program. Jerry Saltz fueled the fire with an article in New York magazine in October, in which he wondered whether the art market had corrupted New York to the point where it was “doomed to being a trading floor but not a center of artistic production.”[1]

And yet as I began writing this essay, I couldn’t help being distracted by a date other than my looming deadline: March 20, 2008, which marked the fifth anniversary of the start of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. The deeper I delved into my researches of the art market, the more I wondered if a discussion about its dangers would be useful to emerging artists at this moment—after all, Leo Steinberg was bemoaning the art market’s effects in his seminal 1972 work Other Criteria.[2] In the course of an informal conversation with the AIM program’s participants, many of them admitted that they rarely concerned themselves with art fairs and auction prices—and why should they? The market’s major players make up a small, rarefied circle, and most artists are too busy making work to give it much thought. Though critiquing the market is important, it also seems somewhat safe, and perhaps even a form of projection—a way of avoiding more distressing events, particularly those related to the U.S. occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Nevertheless, art (and essays) addressing the situation in Iraq and Afghanistan and the problems of today’s cultural economy hardly need be contradictory. Indeed, as many critics—such as David Joselit, Olav Velthuis, and Boris Groys—are pointing out, the market is an information stream, a network that can be tapped into. To take the technological metaphor a step further, art about the market is a closed circuit, not open-source software; but while art explicitly about the market does seem to address only an elite group of insiders, one wonders if art using the market might have a different impact, one that is more widespread.

A photograph by Louise Lawler that appeared in the 2008 Whitney Biennial, on the third floor of the museum, makes an argument for the market’s potential as a manipulable instrument, rather than as an unstoppable force. Lawler has long been rendering the art market transparent by stripping the art object of its autonomy and mystery, revealing how art circulates in the “real” world: showing artworks awaiting sale at auction houses, crated up in warehouses, or next to someone’s sofa. By astutely situating sculptures and paintings in settings that, unlike white-cube galleries, rarely highlight their preciousness, she underscores their commodity status. Her 2008 photograph at the biennial (one of three on exhibit there, collectively titled Sucked In, Blown Out, Obviously Indebted) was easy to miss. Not only was it situated in a transitional location, where there was a lot of foot traffic—next to the stairwell—but also the photograph itself is subtle, seeming almost deliberately to be trying to fade into the background. The image is washed out, mostly showing the edges of a white sheet draped over what appears to be an elephant, although only the tip of its curling trunk and two of its hooves are visible. Hovering in the lower right-hand corner of the image are two nearly washed-out words: “iraqi oil.” One doesn’t need to know that the elephant is a sculpture by Maurizio Cattelan (Not Afraid of Love, 2000, pictured here at a 2004 Christie’s sale) to get the point. The text explicitly reminds us that once art becomes stock, it is implicated in a compromising exchange, one in which not only the billionaires who buy and sell such stock but also the very institution in which the photograph was on view are profiting from the war in Iraq. Because few works in the biennial explicitly referred to the war (although there were some notable exceptions, such as Omer Fast’s 2007 video The Casting), Lawler’s quiet piece stood out for literally pointing at the elephant in the room: the fact that, for all its theoretical posturing, the exhibition itself was indebted to the ever-profitable economy swirling around the war. But the real message lies in the photo’s unwieldy title: Spoils (the lightest, sweetest, most profitable*).[3] That sly asterisk directs viewers to a strongly worded article asserting that the U.S. invaded Iraq primarily to have greater access to its rich oil reserves—and it also means that no matter where the photograph ends up, its reference to the cynical purpose for which the war in Iraq is being waged will prevail, at least in art-history textbooks. The article’s URL is now permanently embedded in the arena of contemporary art, perhaps finding new readers as a result. (This essay itself will likely be one of many texts exposed to the title’s viral properties.)

While artists like Lawler, Hans Haacke, and Barbara Kruger may be inspiring models for today’s younger artists, the truth is that any institution or gallery is a poor backdrop for effective protest art. As David Joselit points out in an essay in October, “Given the clients of this art business—that very class of mega-financiers and corporate leaders who have plenty to gain from the war—it’s hard to imagine much tolerance for explicit statements of political resistance, not only in commercial galleries but also in the museums where these collectors serve as influential trustees and indispensable benefactors.”[4] Joselit rightly calls on artists to exploit the market as a medium as a way to draw attention to the atrocities in Iraq, although he also admits that this is easier said than done. But if we look at such artist-activist “corporations” as RTMark and Bernadette Corporation, we begin to see ways in which artists can more meaningfully insert themselves into the public arena. Martha Rosler, the influential artist, critic, and teacher whose work addresses social and political issues, once claimed that she participated in the market in order to become part of art history. This is the sense in which the art market can be viewed as just another information stream, nothing else.

Perhaps the most compelling current model for taking advantage of the market to promote other causes is the controversy over an unfinished installation by Christoph Büchel at Mass MoCA in North Adams, Massachusetts. Büchel refused to complete the installation because he insisted the museum was not meeting his demands, even though his project far exceeded the initial budget (a Boeing 747 figured prominently among the artist’s many requests for objects to be procured by the institution). Büchel’s management of the affair is an excellent example of his ability to use the market as a medium: in the aforementioned New York magazine article, Jerry Saltz angrily rejects the museum’s response, describing its behavior as typical owing to inflated market prices. Discussing his experience of walking through the unfinished work, Saltz writes, “The museum obscured the Büchel work’s components under ugly yellow tarps. When I was there, I paused to look at the tarps for a moment, and immediately a guard approached me and said, ‘You’re not allowed to look. You can only walk through.’ It was creepy and menacing. . . . This kind of hostile attitude toward artists from general audiences is familiar; from a museum, it’s deplorable.”[5]

But the debate is far more nuanced than this, because whatever side is in the right is beside the point. Büchel’s protest against the museum deliberately capitalized on the media’s love of conflict and spectacle—not to mention the art world’s predilection for gossip. What might have gone down in history as a smart, enthralling piece of installation art led instead to a more complex set of questions. The artist’s withdrawal from the show almost appeared to be a predetermined gesture, a planned act of provocation. Indeed, Büchel is now treating the ensuing lawsuit as a work of art in itself, framing the documents used in the trial and putting them on display. A small piece about his experience with the museum was on view at the Basel Art Fair in Miami in November 2007. “Mr. Büchel wrote in an email message that his new work ‘examines the power structures of the art system’ by anatomizing Mass MoCA’s ‘inner organs and psyche and the real motivations behind its public façade,’” Randy Kennedy wrote in the New York Times.[6] By pushing the museum as far it could go—by effectively exhausting it—Büchel tested the limits of all art enthusiasts: an act of arrogance, yes, but also an act of resistance. Had he acquiesced to the museum’s guidelines and gone ahead with the exhibition, the show would never have amounted to more than a footnote regardless of the quality of his work. As it stands now, it seems more of a precursor, a way forward—and a promising sample of what may yet come.

—Claire Barliant

[1] Jerry Saltz, “Has Money Ruined Art?,” [article online] New York Magazine, October 7, 2007, available from http://nymag.com/arts/art/season2007/38981/
[2] “Art is not, after all, what we thought it was; in the broadest sense it is hard cash.” Leo Steinberg, “Other Criteria,” Other Criteria (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 56.
[3] The asterisk points readers to the following: *Joshua Holland, “Bush’s Petro-Cartel Almost Has Iraq’s Oil,” Alternet, http://www.alternet.org/story/43045
[4] David Joselit, “Market Dissent,” October 123 (Winter 2008): 88.
[5] Saltz, “Has Money Ruined Art?,” http://nymag.com/arts/art/season2007/38981/
[6] Randy Kennedy, “Accusations, Depositions: Just More Fodder for Art,” New York Times, 2 March 2008, Arts Leisure sec., p. 31.

"Artists in the Marketplace" | Catalogue for exhibition at Bronx Museum of Art, Summer 2008

The Elephant in the Room

In the late 1960s and early ’70s, artists protested the Vietnam War by refusing to make objects whose sale and circulation might contribute to war profiteering. Today, however, there is no similar option for resistance. We operate in a different economy—one that traffics more in information, ideas, and symbols than in objects. In this setting, the dematerialization of the object has none of the radical impact on politics—much less art—that it had forty years ago. And it must be acknowledged that the propaganda supporting the war in Iraq has been crafted to devastating effect. The terms under which the conflict was launched are so slippery that without clearly understanding the reasons behind the invasion, or having any true sense of its duration, it is difficult to contest it. The avant-garde art of yesterday provides a guide, but only in perseverance, not in methodology.

Because we are now standing at this dialectical brink, the topic of this essay gnawed at me for some while. On the one hand, a discussion of the “crisis” faced by the art world owing to a hyperinflated art market seemed appropriate for the catalogue accompanying the Artists in the Marketplace 28th annual exhibition: there is no question that the art market is a pressing issue for many of today’s cultural producers and critics. Throughout 2007, New York gallery-goers were able to see several strong exhibitions that took a hard look at the art-world economy, such as "Air Kissing" at Momenta Gallery in Brooklyn, and "The Price of Everything," organized by curatorial fellows at the Whitney Independent Study Program. Jerry Saltz fueled the fire with an article in New York magazine in October, in which he wondered whether the art market had corrupted New York to the point where it was “doomed to being a trading floor but not a center of artistic production.”[1]

And yet as I began writing this essay, I couldn’t help being distracted by a date other than my looming deadline: March 20, 2008, which marked the fifth anniversary of the start of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. The deeper I delved into my researches of the art market, the more I wondered if a discussion about its dangers would be useful to emerging artists at this moment—after all, Leo Steinberg was bemoaning the art market’s effects in his seminal 1972 work Other Criteria.[2] In the course of an informal conversation with the AIM program’s participants, many of them admitted that they rarely concerned themselves with art fairs and auction prices—and why should they? The market’s major players make up a small, rarefied circle, and most artists are too busy making work to give it much thought. Though critiquing the market is important, it also seems somewhat safe, and perhaps even a form of projection—a way of avoiding more distressing events, particularly those related to the U.S. occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Nevertheless, art (and essays) addressing the situation in Iraq and Afghanistan and the problems of today’s cultural economy hardly need be contradictory. Indeed, as many critics—such as David Joselit, Olav Velthuis, and Boris Groys—are pointing out, the market is an information stream, a network that can be tapped into. To take the technological metaphor a step further, art about the market is a closed circuit, not open-source software; but while art explicitly about the market does seem to address only an elite group of insiders, one wonders if art using the market might have a different impact, one that is more widespread.

A photograph by Louise Lawler that appeared in the 2008 Whitney Biennial, on the third floor of the museum, makes an argument for the market’s potential as a manipulable instrument, rather than as an unstoppable force. Lawler has long been rendering the art market transparent by stripping the art object of its autonomy and mystery, revealing how art circulates in the “real” world: showing artworks awaiting sale at auction houses, crated up in warehouses, or next to someone’s sofa. By astutely situating sculptures and paintings in settings that, unlike white-cube galleries, rarely highlight their preciousness, she underscores their commodity status. Her 2008 photograph at the biennial (one of three on exhibit there, collectively titled Sucked In, Blown Out, Obviously Indebted) was easy to miss. Not only was it situated in a transitional location, where there was a lot of foot traffic—next to the stairwell—but also the photograph itself is subtle, seeming almost deliberately to be trying to fade into the background. The image is washed out, mostly showing the edges of a white sheet draped over what appears to be an elephant, although only the tip of its curling trunk and two of its hooves are visible. Hovering in the lower right-hand corner of the image are two nearly washed-out words: “iraqi oil.” One doesn’t need to know that the elephant is a sculpture by Maurizio Cattelan (Not Afraid of Love, 2000, pictured here at a 2004 Christie’s sale) to get the point. The text explicitly reminds us that once art becomes stock, it is implicated in a compromising exchange, one in which not only the billionaires who buy and sell such stock but also the very institution in which the photograph was on view are profiting from the war in Iraq. Because few works in the biennial explicitly referred to the war (although there were some notable exceptions, such as Omer Fast’s 2007 video The Casting), Lawler’s quiet piece stood out for literally pointing at the elephant in the room: the fact that, for all its theoretical posturing, the exhibition itself was indebted to the ever-profitable economy swirling around the war. But the real message lies in the photo’s unwieldy title: Spoils (the lightest, sweetest, most profitable*).[3] That sly asterisk directs viewers to a strongly worded article asserting that the U.S. invaded Iraq primarily to have greater access to its rich oil reserves—and it also means that no matter where the photograph ends up, its reference to the cynical purpose for which the war in Iraq is being waged will prevail, at least in art-history textbooks. The article’s URL is now permanently embedded in the arena of contemporary art, perhaps finding new readers as a result. (This essay itself will likely be one of many texts exposed to the title’s viral properties.)

While artists like Lawler, Hans Haacke, and Barbara Kruger may be inspiring models for today’s younger artists, the truth is that any institution or gallery is a poor backdrop for effective protest art. As David Joselit points out in an essay in October, “Given the clients of this art business—that very class of mega-financiers and corporate leaders who have plenty to gain from the war—it’s hard to imagine much tolerance for explicit statements of political resistance, not only in commercial galleries but also in the museums where these collectors serve as influential trustees and indispensable benefactors.”[4] Joselit rightly calls on artists to exploit the market as a medium as a way to draw attention to the atrocities in Iraq, although he also admits that this is easier said than done. But if we look at such artist-activist “corporations” as RTMark and Bernadette Corporation, we begin to see ways in which artists can more meaningfully insert themselves into the public arena. Martha Rosler, the influential artist, critic, and teacher whose work addresses social and political issues, once claimed that she participated in the market in order to become part of art history. This is the sense in which the art market can be viewed as just another information stream, nothing else.

Perhaps the most compelling current model for taking advantage of the market to promote other causes is the controversy over an unfinished installation by Christoph Büchel at Mass MoCA in North Adams, Massachusetts. Büchel refused to complete the installation because he insisted the museum was not meeting his demands, even though his project far exceeded the initial budget (a Boeing 747 figured prominently among the artist’s many requests for objects to be procured by the institution). Büchel’s management of the affair is an excellent example of his ability to use the market as a medium: in the aforementioned New York magazine article, Jerry Saltz angrily rejects the museum’s response, describing its behavior as typical owing to inflated market prices. Discussing his experience of walking through the unfinished work, Saltz writes, “The museum obscured the Büchel work’s components under ugly yellow tarps. When I was there, I paused to look at the tarps for a moment, and immediately a guard approached me and said, ‘You’re not allowed to look. You can only walk through.’ It was creepy and menacing. . . . This kind of hostile attitude toward artists from general audiences is familiar; from a museum, it’s deplorable.”[5]

But the debate is far more nuanced than this, because whatever side is in the right is beside the point. Büchel’s protest against the museum deliberately capitalized on the media’s love of conflict and spectacle—not to mention the art world’s predilection for gossip. What might have gone down in history as a smart, enthralling piece of installation art led instead to a more complex set of questions. The artist’s withdrawal from the show almost appeared to be a predetermined gesture, a planned act of provocation. Indeed, Büchel is now treating the ensuing lawsuit as a work of art in itself, framing the documents used in the trial and putting them on display. A small piece about his experience with the museum was on view at the Basel Art Fair in Miami in November 2007. “Mr. Büchel wrote in an email message that his new work ‘examines the power structures of the art system’ by anatomizing Mass MoCA’s ‘inner organs and psyche and the real motivations behind its public façade,’” Randy Kennedy wrote in the New York Times.[6] By pushing the museum as far it could go—by effectively exhausting it—Büchel tested the limits of all art enthusiasts: an act of arrogance, yes, but also an act of resistance. Had he acquiesced to the museum’s guidelines and gone ahead with the exhibition, the show would never have amounted to more than a footnote regardless of the quality of his work. As it stands now, it seems more of a precursor, a way forward—and a promising sample of what may yet come.

—Claire Barliant

[1] Jerry Saltz, “Has Money Ruined Art?,” [article online] New York Magazine, October 7, 2007, available from http://nymag.com/arts/art/season2007/38981/
[2] “Art is not, after all, what we thought it was; in the broadest sense it is hard cash.” Leo Steinberg, “Other Criteria,” Other Criteria (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 56.
[3] The asterisk points readers to the following: *Joshua Holland, “Bush’s Petro-Cartel Almost Has Iraq’s Oil,” Alternet, http://www.alternet.org/story/43045
[4] David Joselit, “Market Dissent,” October 123 (Winter 2008): 88.
[5] Saltz, “Has Money Ruined Art?,” http://nymag.com/arts/art/season2007/38981/
[6] Randy Kennedy, “Accusations, Depositions: Just More Fodder for Art,” New York Times, 2 March 2008, Arts Leisure sec., p. 31.

Louise Lawler

"Spoils," 2004/2008
Louise Lawler