Innovation

Rip Cronk

Chapter 10

 

                                                           Innovation and the Art Market

Assessing value in the arts has always been a contested issue. Arguments recognize the same or different art for reasons that augment developing perspectives in the historical dialogue. This Hegelian-like dialectic has shown itself to be a good-old-boy network of art intellectuals whose first priority is to guard the prestige of their established institutions.

When postmodern theorists de-emphasized the art encounter to focus on definable attributes of art, it first seemed coincidental they created self-contained systems of value in support of the art market. In the process, they elevated the role of critics and scholars to arbiters of value. It was in the best interest of long-established institutions to reduce art's content to conceptual strategies. Investors are not buying art that evokes a response. They seek recognizable name and resale value, and the prestige of owning esoteric art. Substituting monetary value and critical endorsement for the value of the art encounter was a capital idea that set a dangerous precedent. With bureaucracy pulling the purse strings, succeeding in art became a financial proposition. There is little regard for content. The radical spirit alive in the art environs of 19th century France and briefly in the postwar New York succumbed to elitist ideologies.

The methodological conformity of mainstream art in America runs contrary to the revolutionary spirit. Without regard for art’s impact on the viewer, the essential distinction between art and criticism was lost. The artist and critic, while sharing in the brotherhood of aesthetics, are by necessity in an antagonistic relationship. Neither discipline develops by fulfilling the other's expectations. This is not how it works. When artist and critic find themselves on the same side of the fence, they are blind to the assumptions they hold in common.

The graffitied trains of the New York City subway system in the 1960's presented a new art form. For a brief period the graffiti writer was an anarchist existing outside the established view of art. See how quickly the graffiti writer was co-opted and his work mediated and exploited by the art establishment. In the need for marketable art, the graffiti writer was coerced into producing relatively small art-ified canvases that no longer carried the impact and immediacy of the original format. The graffitied canvas was the bastardization of a revolutionary grassroots art form. Policed by establishment interests, graffiti art in the gallery became subservient to the very social structures street art vehemently opposed.

Mainstream galleries and the art bureaucracy are depressingly political. Too often, it is who you know and your willingness to submit to gallery demands that determine success. As a result of talent and circumstance, a few artists enter the mainstream in a big way. The careers of up-and-coming artists are soon reduced to the production of esoteric commodities sold as status symbols to the capitalist elite. Artists subjugate themselves to the capitalist ideology as they tack on the frame. The future of art is directed by critics and gallery directors that censor the enigmatic to reflect the values of an established clientele. The idea that art is independent of non-art is a means of control. Conceptualizing art as an autonomous and self-analytic discipline works to limit the field of inquiry while keeping galleries supplied with esoteric sofa paintings.

In a catch 22, fine art is a pseudo-autonomous discipline limited by its own ideology. The art establishment recognizes art for its relevance to a belief system that justifies continued faith in established hierarchies and institutions. Only the definition provided by critics and historians make the gallery version more art-like than the graffiti on the subway train. The established system of accreditation defuses and absorbs revolutionary art forms before they can effect the status quo.  In time, the triumvirate of art, scholarship and capital elitism will succumb to its own exclusivity, and art will be liberated from the exploitive ideology.

While the exploitation of artists by the art bureaucracy is subject to criticism, artists support existing inequities by their involvement. For artists to create meaningful art in the 21st century, they must stand outside class stratification and oppose the commodification of art. Revolution in art has become a force of resistance. The vanguard artist must be secure in his own acts of subversion and defiance. Avant-garde attempts to restructure art's ideological priorities while producing commodities for the established market are destined to be assimilated with little effect. In order to affect change, art must gain critical and public recognition without being assimilated as commodity or historical object. Also, it cannot be so obscure as to be indecipherable by the educated art audience. It must be understood as subverting the conditions that have reduced art to dollars and sense.

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