{"id":1405,"date":"2015-02-03T16:16:44","date_gmt":"2015-02-03T16:16:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/?p=1405"},"modified":"2015-02-03T16:17:01","modified_gmt":"2015-02-03T16:17:01","slug":"christopher-wool-and-the-art-market-selling-the-soul","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/?p=1405","title":{"rendered":"Christopher Wool and the art market: selling the soul"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>American painter Christopher Wool (b. 1955) has been described by the New Yorker as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153perhaps the most important painter of his generation\u00e2\u20ac\u009d. Christie\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s are in less doubt, describing him as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153one of the last century\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s most influential artists\u00e2\u20ac\u009d. Even by the risible standards of bullshit spouted by auction houses and art dealers this is ridiculous. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve never heard anyone, artist or otherwise, ever say they were influenced by Wool. Have you? Well have you? Indeed, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d never heard of him at all until about a year ago.<\/p>\n

Wool joined Gagosian in 2006, since when the noughts increased and the words got longer. In 2009, courtesy of an organisation called The American Fund for the Tate Gallery, the first of two Wools entered our national collection \u00e2\u20ac\u201c the second, acquired in 2012, was also secured in part courtesy of this same influential body. No institution in the UK has ever staged an exhibition of Wool\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s work, but let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s face it such a \u00e2\u20ac\u02dccelebration\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t now be far off. His backers will surely procure one soon. I wonder which gallery will be first to follow the money.<\/p>\n

To investigate how the art market operates I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll concentrate on the sale of one of his pictures for two irreconcilable reasons: first, like Polaris blasting from under the ice cap, his reputation has been suddenly, suspiciously meteoric; second, I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t discover an atom of merit or originality in anything he does. He is, therefore, a revealing example of how the art market, which is so disproportionately influential in dictating what we see in public galleries, is run for the investment benefit of rich people. (One of the most important dealers in contemporary art said recently of his collectors: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153They have no interest whatsoever in art; they look at paintings as a diversification of their investments.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d)<\/p>\n

Illustrated opposite is Apocalypse Now. This 1988, 7\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 x 6\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 work, painted in polyester enamel on aluminium, was sold by Christie\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s last year for $26.4 million, over three times the previous artist\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s record. Manifesting more than a trace of evangelical fervour, the person who bought it gushed: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I wanted the absolute best work by that artist and this is the best of the best. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s in another league. There is Apocalypse Now and then everything else.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Why it should be \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcbetter\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 and more valuable than similarly fabricated Wools reading SEX LUV, FOOL, BAD DOG and IF\u00e2\u20ac\u02c6YOU\u00e2\u20ac\u02c6CANT\u00e2\u20ac\u02c6TAKE\u00e2\u20ac\u02c6A\u00e2\u20ac\u02c6JOKE\u00e2\u20ac\u02c6YOU\u00e2\u20ac\u02c6CAN\u00e2\u20ac\u02c6GET\u00e2\u20ac\u02c6THE\u00e2\u20ac\u02c6FUCK\u00e2\u20ac\u02c6OUT, one can only speculate.<\/p>\n

The technique is stencil, in mimicry of the graffiti legends and adverts which are supposedly its inspiration. And before you commend the concise nihilism of the message, these words are not the artist\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s own. They are the looney Kurtz\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s exhortation to his abandoned wife in Coppola\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Apocalypse Now: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Sell the house. Sell the car. Sell the kids. Find someone else. Forget it. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m never coming back. Forget it.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

Nothing about this piece, either in its handling or conception, might make you think it is of remarkable value. Indeed, objectively there is no good reason why it might not be worth 25 bob instead of 25 million. What establishes its value is something you can neither see nor understand without being indoctrinated as to what it is … usually by someone with an interest in flogging it for as much as possible. Its value resides purely in its perceived status as a tradeable luxury. It has, curiously, no more intrinsic value than any other share certificate.<\/p>\n

In its short life Apocalypse Now has passed through ten billionaire collectors. All were Americans except one, Frenchman Fran\u00c3\u00a7ois Pinault, five back, who is the proprietor of Christie\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s, the firm who sold it this time. Incidentally, the owner before Pinault was Donald Bryant, until recently a trustee of MoMA New York who is also on the aforementioned \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcAmerican Fund\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 committee of the Tate, which was instrumental in the Gallery acquiring both its Wools. Californian winemaker Bryant obviously likes Wool, but not sufficiently, it seems, to hang on to what is allegedly his pi\u00c3\u00a8ce de r\u00c3\u00a9sistance. You will have noticed that the world of posh art is a very small and incestuous one.<\/p>\n

The speed of turnover in Apocalypse Now \u00e2\u20ac\u201c 30 months on average \u00e2\u20ac\u201c tells us something about the motivation of modern collectors, for whom genuine discernment would appear to be the last thing on their mind. The very idea of connoisseurship or discernment in collecting contemporary art is an absurd notion when the relative value of a work can be made up so it flies in the face of the little you can actually see. Art is now a fund manager\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s hobby, a gamble or a pitch from which, as with any other investment, profit is periodically milked.<\/p>\n

The last seller of the picture, hedge-funder David Ganek, is also a trustee of the Guggenheim Museum in New York where Wool just happened to be enjoying a retrospective coincident with the auction of Apocalypse Now. In 2010, Ganek\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s business partner was convicted for insider trading. Though himself deemed a co-conspirator Ganek was never charged. He left his company and paid $25 million in fines. There is a book to be written about the connection between contemporary art and insider trading. Everyone has now forgotten that the first sponsor of the Turner Prize, Michael Milken, the inventor of junk bonds, got four years for related offences. No more telling indictment of the contemporary art market exists than that it appeals to high-risk investors, hedgers and generally shifty operators to whose activities the cachet of art ownership is used to lend a patination of social respectability.<\/p>\n

Was the sale of Apocalypse Now a straightforward auction? No it wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t. It was sold before the sale because a guarantor had underwritten the low estimate price of $15 million. A third of the works in the same auction were also the subject of pre-sale guarantees.<\/p>\n

Christie\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s threw their all behind this lot claiming that Apocalypse Now \u00e2\u20ac\u0153is the emblem of a generation\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u201c an obvious lie. They continued: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Christopher Wool\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Apocalypse Now is the essential image of our times… It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s much anticipated appearance at auction, firmly places Wool amongst the pantheon of great masters of the 20th century.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d There you have it: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the essential image of our times\u00e2\u20ac\u009d. Not the twin towers, or Obama being sworn in, or Neil Armstrong, or Mandela striding victorious from jail, or tanks in Prague or Tianenmen Square, or even Sergio Aguero scoring in extra time, but this second-hand slogan.<\/p>\n

And what of the artist himself? He has said: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153With the painting the inspiration comes from the process of the work itself. Like music making the work is an emotional experience. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a visual language and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s almost impossible to put words to it.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Not half.<\/p>\n

What conclusions might we draw from all this perversion of genuine standards:<\/p>\n

1. Monetary value is unrelated to aesthetic worth. By looking at contemporary art you can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even guess to within three noughts what it might cost.<\/p>\n

2. Once a powerful cocktail of mutually interested dealers and speculators get behind an artist their rise is unstoppable. The auction market in contemporary art is a game played by six of the world\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s biggest dealers, two salesrooms, 40 artists, about 30 billionaires and a clique of subservient museum directors and careerist curator-clones. No one else matters. In 2012 11 of the top 20 artists sold at auction were represented by Wool\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s dealer Gagosian.<\/p>\n

3. Most commentary on the art market is disgraceful advertisement.<\/p>\n

4. At the top end, the art market encourages a sort of religious cult participation by hobbyist fat cats eager to cash in on safe bets.<\/p>\n

5. When the auction market has nothing to do with liking art or actual visible qualities, the dealer is happy, the artist is happy, the seller is happy, the other collectors of the same artists\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 works are happy, and the auctioneer is deliriously, pants-wetting happy.<\/p>\n

6. The cowardly complicity of State Art before this squalid system is a shocking betrayal of what they really ought to be standing up for.<\/p>\n

The whole thing is a filthy racket.<\/p>\n

David Lee<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Jackdaw, Nov-Dec 2014<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

American painter Christopher Wool (b. 1955) has been described by the New Yorker as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153perhaps the most important painter of his generation\u00e2\u20ac\u009d. Christie\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s are in less doubt, describing him as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153one of the last century\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s most influential artists\u00e2\u20ac\u009d. Even by the risible standards of bullshit spouted by auction houses and art dealers this is ridiculous. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1406,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[248,116,246,40,250,173,249],"class_list":["post-1405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-leader","tag-auctions","tag-christies","tag-christopher-wool","tag-david-lee","tag-filthy-racket","tag-gagosian","tag-the-art-market"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1405","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1405"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1405\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1409,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1405\/revisions\/1409"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1406"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}