hally bowman

The artist endures tirelessly ever trying to perfect his skills, evolving a craft that will hopefully define a new way of looking at the world; a fresh aesthetic that challenges and eventually delights our modern sensibilities presumably on the heels of relentless study, extreme innovation and dogged will and determination. But what happens to the art if the artist is also good at something else? You might say that the art itself is not affected, but the influence of an artist’s other talent can have a huge impact on the success of her work. With the synergy of a few talents, the artist’s production can become less about the art’s intrinsic quality and more about the value the market is willing to give it at a particular time.

The artist endures tirelessly ever trying to perfect his skills, evolving a craft that will hopefully define a new way of looking at the world; a fresh aesthetic that challenges and eventually delights our modern sensibilities presumably on the heels of relentless study, extreme innovation and dogged will and determination. But what happens to the art if the artist is also good at something else? You might say that the art itself is not affected, but the influence of an artist’s other talent can have a huge impact on the success of her work. With the synergy of a few talents, the artist’s production can become less about the art’s intrinsic quality and more about the value the market is willing to give it at a particular time.

A few notable names of recent celebrity have probably already popped up in our collective minds, but one could argue that this has been going on in some fashion or another for a long time. Take the manifesto as an example of a very persuasive tool to set an atmosphere around of a set of works. The famous Futurist’s Manifesto by F. T. Marinetti in the early 20th century dictated the attributes of the movement’s output. It’s as though the work produced within the Futurist Movement takes on the personality of the crazed poet himself. The propaganda is as much about the art as the art itself.

Rothko it seemed, was obsessed with philosophy which no doubt guides the explanation of transcendence through the windows in his canvasses. Willem de Kooning was instrumental in setting the precedence in expressionism to involve debate preferably in dark taverns with excessive alcohol on a poor, empty stomach. Vincent Van Gogh’s 902 letters mostly to his brother Theo are rumored to have been the winning marketing collateral that helped improve awareness of the artist’s works after his widowed sister in-law started promoting them. And what is Warhol’s oeuvre if not the greatest example of how unprecedented reproduction resulting in massive amounts of inventory has played well on contemporary art collectors’ obsessions and addictions.

Perhaps giving too much credit to a person’s other talent is over simplifying things. They say that success is when preparation meets opportunity. It’s not only about producing great product, but being in the right place at the right time that can provide that elusive golden ticket. But, is just having top notch work enough even in this proverbial situation? Not lately.

Generally, art during its actual creation is not directly affected by an artist’s ability to sell it, but certainly promotion can greatly determined the perception of the art as it’s being introduced into the market place. As common sense as this may sound, it appears that we’re not really able to isolate the art from how it’s communicated to the market place. It might be said that the value of contemporary art is set more by the campaign for or against it rather than by its own artistic merits.

You would think this is obvious and that buyers would be savvy enough to scrutinize the market just like any other industry and a few are, but it has been said that the great art story of the last decade is not a specific break-through artist or even an emergent art movement, but the art market itself. It’s no longer just a matter of the top galleries promoting their best stock, nor is it as simple as riding the wave of a new trend in aesthetics. It could be argued that the prominent force in art during the last decade has been how the prices of contemporary art have been manipulated by a handful of top players. Make no mistake, these are passionate participants, but they seem to be more interested in what the game of contemporary art can do for them, than in what the works really mean within the context of post-modernism. We are not working any more within an art scene per say, but rather a market scene in which the potential of the art has been threatened if not tragically transformed into just another commodity.

Xo~Hal

The Real Van Gogh, The Artist and His Letters is on display at the Royal Academy of Arts in London until 18 April 2010