"The Birth o the Big, Beautiful Art Market" by Dave Hickey

This piece seems quite straight-forward and accessible, and yet, I can’t really say that I know what it’s about. I’m pretty sure he’s complaining, but I’m not exactly certain to just what end. Is he saying that high art banished pop culture, and that this is bad? That pop had a brief, glorious moment in the 60s when all was in harmony, and then conceptualism was invented to suck all the fun out? This would seem an odd argument in 2007, when all these movements of the past just function as vocabulary to draw upon, new letters in our ever-expanding alphabet, with no movement particularly privileged over another. But maybe this isn’t what he’s saying. Still, he seems a bit annoyed. That Warhol quote would appear to be important, the one about Western commerce becoming more artistic. And yet, I find myself skeptical—in fact, I have to call bullshit—when he says that all the car kids KNEW it was about a new democracy, a new canon, a redeemed ideology of motion. Really, they did? Weren’t many of them just some fucking meatheads?

I think Hickey makes some smart connections, but he also excludes something that I think is fairly important. When he talks about the proliferation of art objects post WWII, he should mention why that was happening and his argument could only be strengthened. "Unsentimental Education: The Professionalization of the American Artist" by David Deitcher. He discusses an economic environment in post-war America that provided time, space, and money for people to pursue careers in fine arts. The G.I. Bill was issued in 1943 which provided American men leaving the service with money to get educations. Painting became macho with Pollock and dudes alike. The art world changed because of issues of supply and demand much like the car industry.

I'm not sure I appreciate the passionate ending about the world of high art including "a bunch of tight-assed, puritaical, haut bourgeois intellectuals" but leave it to Hickey to speak forever boldly and finish with a splash of glitter. Like Kate, I was struck by his statement about "visual defamiliarization as a prelude to delight" (along with the famous Ruscha expression about acheiving "Huh? Wow!" instead of "Wow! Huh?"). It's really hard to do! On a perhaps unrelated note, this text got me thinking about a lovely group of friends struggling as artists in NY and working on the oh-so-hip displays at Urban Outfitters to make a living. Where silkscreens of fawns and arabesques of lines are installed in a chain only a few avenues away from very similar artworks in Chelsea galleries. Such a smart move on their part to keep up with, and affordably commodify, a contemporary aesthetic.

Wondering if anyone happened to see all the cars parked on Library Walk yesterday. All safely modified, slightly souped up little zippy cars with their hoods up and parked on the diagonal just so like a used car lot. I didn’t have time to investigate so it’s unfair to judge, but something tells me that Wolfe and Hickey would have cringed had they seen it. Or perhaps just nodded with that 'I told you so' kind of look.... Lots of gems in Hickey’s article: The shift in production and advertising from what things could do, to what they mean..... The further stripping away of the constructed differences between high brow art and low, or more precisely, the separation between art self-consciously made in the name of art from stuff made for very different reasons..... The business of art and the aesthetization of commerce..... Wanting to achieve “that subtle jolt of visual defamiliarization as a prelude to delight”, invoking Ruscha’s expression is such a great succinct summation (Huh? Wow! vs. Wow! Huh?) of reactions to creation.... And of course the great dilemma we face -- how quickly “Huh? Wow!” becomes “Duh! Ow!”..... Although clearly not the focus of his piece, but I couldn’t help but want more substance and length in his criticism of academic art education.

I found myself interested in the comparison that Hickey made between the marketing of car designs and the marketing of artwork, particularly when he pointed out that "like artists in the nineteenth century, these [car] manufacturers began designing visual obsolescence into their products by institutionalizing style change." It is interesting to consider to what extent the development of what could be termed a "personal style" could lead to the quick "visual obsolescence" of one's artwork. Of course, I know that it can be argued that any artist will necessarily develop a style, but in pondering recognizable "style," there does seem to be a marked difference between, for example, Richard Serra and Tom Friedman (I know there are probably better examples than this). This is something I have mulled over quite a bit in the past in consideration of my own work and in discussion with fellow artists.

Also, I cannot help but think of the world of "graffiti" or "street" art while reading this essay, because it seems to present a number of parallel concerns. It originated with the desire for dissent and/or customization, and its increasing contemporary prevalence corresponded to an increasing fetishization of an individual's personal "style." Now the general trend of "urban-ish graffiti-ish" design has been co-opted by advertising, etc. to the extent that it has become more difficult to see someone spraypainting a wall as a genuine act of creative dissent. The saturation of this type of imagery becomes annoying (and, I suspect, will soon be described as "dated") despite its interesting origins.

This is a refreshing text. It is interesting to consider this “first hand” take on the art market in relationship to the market of cars or any artistic impulse outside of mainstream that later becomes eaten up and commodified. One would like to think of art making outside of this system, but to be produced at all there is an impetus to exist and belong to something larger. Even without this, something produced independently and then "discovered" will find that it wont take long for the “outsider artist” to be taken in on some levels and produced, bracketed, as well. (the life and work of Henry Darger for example). I would have liked if Dave Hickey had gone in to more detail and presented examples at times where he references the “dirt art work” I can gather what he is referring to but it would be nice to be given more details in how that specifically functioned in the art market, as well as towards the end, page 70 to the end, he speaks generally and it would have been nice to receive more details.