Readers of this blog will know that I am a fan of Robert Hughes, once considered by Robert Boynton of the New York Times as “the most famous art critic in the world.” Hughes died in 2012. But it was several years before his death that Hughes was, in effect, blacklisted by corporate media in the US. And why was this? It was because he had become fiercely critical of the contemporary art world, as evidenced by his 2008 film (made for British television but not shown in the US), The Mona Lisa Curse.[i]  

In 2011, Miles Mathis, an artist-writer, described Hughes’ blacklisting this way:

Since Hughes began questioning the direction of contemporary art in the mid to late 90s, he has seen his star fall dramatically. He should expect now to be the granddaddy of art criticism worldwide, but the only place that continues to give him a nod is England…. In the US he is mostly persona non grata…. The US media was happy to promote Hughes’ The Shock of the New back in the early 80s, since in it Hughes was selling Modernism like an old-time barker. But as soon as Hughes’ cooled on the new art, the market pushed him aside as a nuisance.[ii]

So what is this Mona Lisa “curse” that Hughes witnessed, as a supreme insider, with “growing disgust?” It was the “giant shift” or “cultural engineering,” in full swing by the 1990s, that transformed the production and exhibition of “important” art into an investor’s dream: a market that maximized returns with virtually no real chance of downturns. Let me be clear here: Hughes argument isn’t that money “corrupt[s] the wells of imagination.” That, he had previously noted, “is a pious fiction.”[iii] Rather it is the vast network of control, a kind of totalitarian system, where all the moving parts internal to the contemporary art world lock together in service of the bottom line of mega-wealthy speculators. The curse, argues Hughes, “affects artists… how art is made and above all the way it is experienced. And this curse has infected the entire art world.”

Hughes’ critique turns, to a large degree, on the rise of billionaire hedge fund executives and oligarchs who have bought warehouses of art on speculation, created their own museums or who have absorbed into their portfolios branded museums so that the exhibition of branded contemporary artists can easily be integrated into the exhibition of branded luxury goods and fashion.[iv] As night follows day, ambitious and savvy young artists gear their work to catch the eye of speculators all the while speculators search for artists whose work satisfies the new imperatives of the luxury brand integration. Many are familiar with the story of how Charles Saatchi, in 1990, drove his green Rolls Royce to a warehouse to see Damien Hirst’s large glass case containing maggots and flies feeding off a rotting cow’s head.[v] Saatchi bought the rotting cow’s head and a year later declared that he would fund whatever artwork Hirst wanted to make. That Saatchi was co-founder of the world’s largest advertising agency and master in the blending of words and concepts in marketing was of no small significance in his interest in Hirst. This cultivation of artists as securities with maximum risk avoidance requires the complicity of very pliable artists; this often means very young artists quite untroubled by Faustian bargains. Charles Saatchi, for example, purchased the work of Alison Fox who was, at the time, still in college. He then persuaded the Guggenheim to do the same. Obviously this added value to Saatchi’s investment but, equally as important, it increased the probability that Fox might acquire a global brand, with production lines and PR teams to be exploited by the money men.[vi] “Apart from drugs,” notes Hughes in the film, “art is the biggest unregulated market in the world….[with] contemporary art sales at about 18 billion a year…boosted by regimens of new rich collectors and serviced by a growing army of advisors, dealers, and auctioneers.”

But here’s the thing: this “giant shift” does indeed impact the “entire art world,” even those of us who grind through canvases atop easels, one at a time. Think about it: what is the most a collector will pay for, say, a painting without the artist being credentialed out the ying yang (which is to say, anointed by an article in Art News or maybe a branded gallery that exhibits in one of the major chi-chi art fairs)? One or two thousand dollars? Maybe three? But after that, who is going to come along and drop – say $5,000 – on a painting simply because they like it, without reference to a fat and reassuring resume? It may happen, but not often. And if a painter wishes to live in a decent world city where a professional painting career might be possible, she would need to gross about $26,000 (the living wage in a city like Boston) at minimum, which really means $52,000 if the painter is working through a gallery.[vii] So let’s say our artist sells one $2,000 painting every month at the gallery. This unlikely scenario means that she would still be at less than half the gross “living wage,” possibly living alone, in some not-so-great apartment in Boston. This is not a promising situation for somewhat independent artists, and our metric didn’t even include the cost of supplies, framing or on-going training.

Okay, so let’s say I try and get the fancy magazine write up, or get into the special exhibition sponsored by Coke, or Nike, or The Gap. Should I sanitize my blog so there is no mention of the internecine corruption in the contemporary art world that disgusted Hughes? Surely that would undermine my life chances if editors, gallerists, or collectors googled my name. Must I shy away from pointing out that currently there are active campaigns against Coke, Nike, and The Gap because of their horrendous labor practices, practices that have resulted in the murder of union organizers or the quasi enslavement of workers in the poorest regions of the world? [viii]

This is where the “disgusting” part, for me, gets real. Go along, get along. And in the art world this means that I am better served if I’m a pleasantly chatty, apolitical, and institutionally obedient fellow that networks and self-markets my brains out and who has learned to push down any feelings of empathy for, say, the 1,100 girls burned to death at the garment factory in Bangladesh.[ix] After all, if they can disappear Robert Hughes, they can surely disappear me.

There are other ways of piecing together respectable sales and maintaining a critical voice and a degree of freedom. It’s quite a hustle, riddled with insecurity, to be sure. The notion of independence from centers of power, of having control over what one makes, and/or having positions on social developments around the world (that was once the basis of dozens of artist groups – the Impressionists being just one – since the French Revolution straight up through into World War II) used to be the hallmark of an “artist.” Recall Mary Cassatt’s passionate defense of independence when in 1904 she refused an award saying:

I, however, who belong to the founders of the Independent Exhibition must stick to our principles, which were no jury, no medals, no awards…. Liberty is the first good in this world and to escape the tyranny of a jury is worth fighting for, surely no profession is so enslaved as ours.[x]

Imagine contemporary artists banding together to “protest official exhibitions.” Sigh. That ship has sailed, big time. A different spirit envelops us now, one that Andy Warhol expressed rather well: “Good business is the best art.” And thus I turn back to Hughes for solace. His exchange with Alberto Mugrabi just tickles me:

Hughes: Someone has told me that your father had something like 800 Warhols. Is this true?

Mugrabi: Yeah, that is true.

Hughes: What’s your opinion of Warhol?

Mugrabi: I think Warhol is probably one of the most visionary artists of our time. He’s an artist that has opened every door for every artist today.

Hughes: Did you know him?

Mugrabi: No. I never met Andy Warhol.

Hughes: I used to. I thought he was one of the stupidest people I’ve ever met in my life.

Mugrabi: Really!

Hughes: Yeah.

Mugrabi: Why is that?

Hughes: Because he had nothing to say.

[i] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JANhr4n4bac  

[ii] Miles Mathis, http://mileswmathis.com/hughes2.pdf

[iii] Robert Hughes, Nothing If Not Critical (1990) p. 388.

[iv] “Are Museums Selling Out?” online.wsj.com/articles/are-museums-selling-out-1402617631

[v] If you are saying, “I don’t get it” – then the speculators have already won. To say “I don’t get it” means that somebody does (ie, the “smart guys”). What virtually no one does is to simply declare what, in fact, you do understand: “This is one unmitigated piece of shit.” But to say that would be to say that the fabled emperor has no clothes; pull on that dangling thread and the entire fabric of elite control might be in jeopardy. In addition, this type of art, Saatchi (advertiser in-chief) would remind us, is about the “idea” (so often totally sophomoric but who’s sticking their neck out?). And the shift toward celebrating the “idea” means that the oligarchs can more easily control the production process: the actual making of stuff is pushed off onto “assistants,” directed by the “executive” artist in collaboration with curators, marketers, et al. Goodbye independent artists who use both their hands and mind.

[vi] 220 Don Thompson, The $12 Million Stuffed Shark (2008), p. 220

[vii] The calculation of a “living wage,” which means living just above poverty, in Boston (not known as an art center on the level of New York or London) is $26, 316. This means that if I’m selling through a gallery, which generally takes 50%, I would need a gross income of $52,632 just to scrape by. http://livingwage.mit.edu/places/2502507000

[viii] Coke sponsors many art exhibitions (http://bit.ly/1p73m1J) as does Nike (http://bit.ly/1pAn7ha). The Gap founder (now deceased), Robert Fisher, is well known for his extensive collection of contemporary art which now constitutes the larger portion of work at the SF MOMA (the collection is on loan, not donated).

[ix] http://gapdeathtraps.com/; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_Savar_building_collapse

[x] http://www.qotd.org/search/search.html?aid=8147