Who Arted?

“What you say in Advertising is more important than how you say it. I once used the word OBSOLETE in a headline, only to discover that 43 per cent of housewives had no idea what it meant. In another headline, I used the word INEFFABLE, only to discover that I didn’t know what it meant myself.” – David Ogilvy, Confessions of an Advertising Man – 1971

Numerous theories about the observed value of art (or over-inflation thereof) have been the subject of features, editorials and sound bites for years. Debates about whether or not a painting is art "just because you hang it on your wall" have kept the art world moving, I suspect. The debate, after all, is a form of advertising. A statistic presented in Howard Stern's idealized but autobiographical (book and film) Private Parts revealed that the average radio listener listened for eighteen minutes, the average Howard Stern fan listened for an hour and twenty minutes, and the average Stern hater listened for two and half hours a day. Why? To hear what he'd say next. Proof of the old adage that there's no such thing as negative publicity.


But in the Art World, the fight for publicity is everything. It's extremely difficult to garner publicity for any artist who isn't already relatively famous, and it's near impossible to become relatively famous. The majority of Art World luminaries are afraid to make a statement about any art that isn't open to extremely wide interpretation, and they are loathe to actually pan anything that hasn't already been embraced by the public. That means that no entry-level artist ever benefits from a scandalous, slam review, because in some strange way that would mean that the critic somehow found validation in their work to begin with. In other words, there's no value in skewering an unknown, so unknown they are destined to remain until they can find a secondary track at fame.

Case in point: Tim Burton.

While he's been a major league celebrity in the Halls of Geekdom since following Pee Wee's Big Adventure with Beetlejuice, his conceptual art and goth-pop illustration has been largely under the radar of the Art in America crowd. But following major shows of artwork by cult directors Clive Barker, John Waters and David Lynch, Burton has also been embraced by the local metropolitan Patron's Circle. Is his art any good? I leave that to you decide. Is it worth what it's priced? That's an entirely different debate, isn't it?

Well the short answer is that it's worth every penny that people are paying for it until they stop paying for it. Is it a good investment? Only time will tell. If it was a show of Nightmare Before Christmas illustrations I would respond with a resounding yes, as it appeals to pop-culture geeks, Disney collectors, wealthy goths and seemingly everyone else under the stars. But abstract paintings? I've got to think that the bottom will fall out on those if his Alice in Wonderland gets the chilly reception that Planet of the Apes got. And if he goes three in a row with lackluster film projects, it's a veritable certainty. Why? Because his fame in the art world is directly tied to (and mostly a result of) his career in Hollywood. Let's face it: if Tim Burton didn't direct Edward Scissorhands, Sleepy Hollow, and Sweeney Todd, I doubt anyone would care whether he painted his own canvases or other people's houses. That in no way belittles his achievements on celluloid, and I don't mean to infer that his journey was any easier than that of any starving artist. Having worked in the entertainment business for most of my adult life, I can attest to the difficulties that face anyone who would make it their career, much less someone who has become successful with so many quirky, off-kilter projects.

But success in one field can more than equate to success in another. And here are several examples of how wrong and right that statement is:

There are a number of musicians and actors that paint, sculpt or what-have-you: Tony Bennett, Marilyn Manson, Chris Mars, Mary Warnov, and Exene Cervenka are but a few. All the above are pretty darn good at what they do, too. Well except for Marilyn Manson. Sorry, dude, but those flower paintings are total crap. Regardless of how favorably or not their art compares to that produced by the majority of others, these people have all been quite successful in the fickle world of Fine Art.

Then there are the painters, sculptors and media folk that double as rock stars: Elizabeth McGrath, Shepard Fairey, Genesis P. Orridge, and Mike Kelley. Each of these has also accumulated a broad success base. But unlike the reverse, it's damn hard for fine artists to gain fame in a second medium.

McGrath and husband (and fellow artist) Morgan Slade each split time between exhibitions in the swamp-a-billy outfit Miss Derringer. Touring in a van, and releasing records on an indie label add to the street cred each has gained in LA's pre-makeover downtown scene, but it's no slam-dunk to success. It requires constant touring, calculated word-of-mouth and no downtime for illness, leisure, or mood swings. It's 24-7 for the portion of the 365 that they're not working on pieces for their next exhibits. Curiously, they have also chosen to keep their musical and art careers entirely separate: neither allows their art to grace the covers of Miss Derringer's albums. Tours sometimes interfere with gallery schedules. In other words, there is no synergy between the multiple varieties of press coverage that they receive. While this would seem unforgivable from a marketing point of view, it is probably invaluable for their quality of life. By keeping separate the things that they love, they will harbor no resentment for either of their passions and can meet each path on their own terms. Suffice to say that I respect the hell out of them both.

The cross-promotion of multiple professions doesn't impact the others very much, either. Shepard Fairey is an in-demand DJ, but not a conventional musician. Mike Kelley does large scale installation art these days, and while Destroy All Monsters may play the occasional opening night gig, they're in no danger of breaking into the top forty.

And Genesis? He has made his life an integral part of his art and vice versa, to the point that there is no separation between the two. While he started life as a performance artist, his music soon overshadowed his art until the trend reversed itself again, which it continues to do. The past decade has witnessed plastic surgery alteration of both his and his girlfriend's bodies so that the two are now close duplicates. That would be hi-concept art to you and me. In other words, both his music and his art are so non-commercial that neither has any impact whatsoever on his income.

So how does a young artist break into the spotlight?
Luck. Buzz. Talent. A mixture of the three. None of them.

It's impossible to make a blanket statement about how to succeed at fame of any variety, but even more so in the art world. Jeff Koons doesn't actually make any of his own sculptures, but he's one of the most famous, well-respected, and wealthy artists alive. His new pieces don't sell for millions, they sell for tens-of-millions of dollars. If you need another reason to hate him, he's also relatively young (for his level of fame) and good looking, and years ago he married an Italian porn star who got elected to Italian Parliament (they're since divorced). But here's the kicker: he's talented. As a conceptual artist, he has no peer. While he doesn't physically construct his own pieces, he has his hand in every part of their production. He is a perfectionist ad extremis. He also has a great mix of humor and a strong pop sensibility. That may not explain why a life-size toy train set sells for twelve million bucks, but it should go a long way toward explaining why it's worth that much.

Not only does Damien Hirst not make his own sculptures, they're not sculptures. His signature piece, considered the most important artistic work of the 1990s is a dead, rotting shark in a tank of formaldehyde. Second most recognizable piece? A dead sheep in a box. I could go on, but I won't. I don't have the same kind of respect for Damien Hirst that I have for Jeff Koons. There's no craft in Hirst's work. It's all conceptual, and it's just not that clever to me. He seems like a prime example of a smart art school guy that hoodwinked a handful of the right people, who hoodwinked the rest of the art collecting populace. These are people that walk into a Camille Rose Garcia or Todd Schorr show and walk out with a couple of thirty-five to seventy-five thousand dollar paintings that have been meticulously and laboriously detailed by hand. The crowd that keeps Hirst in mansions all over the world are Fortune 500 families with annual art budgets upwards of fifty million dollars. They establish art grants and trusts which are tax write-offs for the robber-baron enterprises that reap multi-billion dollar profits from all sorts of not-too-good. They have to keep adding to these billion dollar art collections to reinforce the money they've already spent. Then they loan the pieces they've purchased to the museums on whose boards they serve (or chair) sending the message to the public that these are important works of art, and making them more valuable.

This is the most insidious insider-trading still allowed in the industrial, civilized world. It is a scheme the likes of which Ponzi never dreamed. But it requires a vast support industry of henchmen and bit players. Pieces must first be placed in the right galleries with ridiculous price tags. The work can not be figurative or narrative, because that would require a criteria that any reasonable person could assess. It's got to be abstract or high-concept, and it will require a very expensive degree to properly appraise the lack of effort and technical skill that went into producing it. Then the right auction house has to offer it, so it can publicly appreciate in value or "be removed" before the auction starts.

That is admittedly an overly simplified and possibly cynical depiction. It also happens to be true. It is the most complicated marketing coup de grace I've ever seen, and I'd give my left nut to be involved in such a scam.

Of course removing my left testicle would have to be part of my NEA-funded performance/video grant. And it would have to be the Spring 2013 event at Gagosian...

Until then, I give you this:

This is the Art of Pinky Violence show I'm guest curating at Hyaena Gallery next week.

It will include original, museum-quality linen-backed posters from the golden age of the Japanese Exploitation film. For those without a budget for original release posters, we'll have a couple limited edition giclees and a mini show poster.

I released the cream of the crop of the genre when I ran Panik House Entertainment a few years back. Several of the out of print titles are back in print through Synapse Films, and we'll have an assortment of DVDs available at the opening.

Sex & Fury, starring the tough-but-sexy Reiko Ike supplies the primary imagery to the left. Many posters featuring Reiko, Miki Sugimoto and Yumi Takigawa will be included in the show. Rarities include an original, double-sized School of the Holy Beast poster.

What can I say, except that I know what I like. To paraphrase the great pop-surrealist Robert Williams: If a naked woman's body isn't art, I don't know what is.