Advice For Living Authors 2024. Acrylic on loose canvas 20 x 23"
Finishing up my book Making Friends With Wild Dogs: Reflections on the 25th Anniversary of Stuckism. Here is a secret excerpt, (please take with a grain of salt—more proofreading in store):
Dear Stuckists,
The bad news:
No institution is coming to save us.
The good news:
We don’t care.
In the current art market, billionaires are losing on their investments, or will be soon. There is only so much historical art that can be hoarded and traded solely among artificially rich morons until the art’s “market” value decreases. At some point Bob the rich guy is gonna say to Bill the rich guy, “Bill, I sold you the same painting last year. How stupid do you think I am to buy it back?” Apparently, pretty stupid because it’s been going on for 75 years. If no more art movements are forming organically among contemporary artists, and the rest are repeats of old art stories fading away, with nary a real connection being made in today’s world, and if those stories are locked up and guarded by a minuscule fraction of human beings whose only mission is life is to master the wrap-around oh an ascot, then irrelevance is inevitable. Sure David Geffan’s heirs can take turns playing art dealer with Elon Musk’s creepy boy child, but no one else on earth will care. And the majority of museums that haven’t already come to this conclusion are destined to die alongside all but a few big “galleries” acting like used Rolls Royce dealers to the rich. Painting isn’t dead, far from it! However making a living from it probably is. Living, breathing art is getting made all over the place. It’s just that art institutions aren’t in the business of seeking it. Are there any 21st century painters that every day folks with even a mild interest in the visual arts can name off the top of their heads? Ones that are not only a personal interest, but universally well known? Like the names Picasso or Pollock? Try it. Close your eyes. Name a single world famous painter or painting movement (other than Stuckism of course) that has gained world renown in the last 20 years. I don’t think even the art history professors can. Now why is that I wonder?
Throughout modern times artificial control of the market has reinforced by kindergarten to PhD education across all strata of society. My daughter is an administrator at a charter elementary school. They teach mostly black students about the “great” artists of the 19th century. A favorite lesson plan for 1st graders is on van Gogh. The little angels copy their favorite painting and hang them up in the hallway for all the other kids to see what a painting is supposed to look like—not just specific art made by a single Dutchman in 19th century Europe, but all art, even what’s getting painted in downtown Big City.
I believe it to be more than coincidence that Jackson Pollock and Philip Guston attended (and got expelled) from the same high school at the same time, and became rich and famous, more or less at the same time. I think about the rise of Joan Mitchell. Her mother was the editor of Poetry magazine. Her father was a rich doctor in Chicago. She went to Smith College and was quite the athlete, yet decided to get her Masters in painting, move to France, marry a rich publisher, and retire as a recluse in France getting richer with her paintings. Needless to say, the art of famous modern painters is inspiring—experimental, beautiful, practiced… But why are the billionaires still getting rich off them? Why are the art museums marketing dead paintings owned by billionaires, if not already purchased and housed in the museum collection? I mean, there are thousands of prolific painters working today. Or is that the problem? Is ubiquity the death of high art?
No, it’s just that the wealthy and bored aren’t looking for something new, or if they are, they’re being led astray by bottom line feeding shyster gallerists who are desperate to make a sell, and not interested in risk. The latter pay and pray to remain relevant via cherry-picking work from painter CV’s (Latin for “correctly vetted”). Certainly high art galleries would be thrilled if they could pull off a sham consolidation of several of these posing artists into one or two recognizable movements. I’m sure they try all the time. But damn the Internet! In 1999, it released into cyberspace the Stuckist Manifesto, a virus to infect, weaken and eventually destroy the middlemen. Their false market still survives, (there are a million more Masters of fine arts graduating each year to fill institutional positions), but its days are numbered. They will continue to pretend to separate the wheat from the chaff, though eventually will have to contend with the higher power of democratization in art. There never were any naturally occurring art critics, though people got fooled into thinking so. Imagine the power of being human after the mass equalization of our “betters”. We will apply our reborn right to subjective opinion. It won’t take much self-coaxing to know that I have better taste than Larry Gagosian.
Is the process of commoditizing art neurotic?
Yes, I think so. Art business is an art-killing oxymoron, and in modern times has reached its zenith, turning humble painters into desperate money-makers.
There is not a single billionaire out there championing the avant-garde. The inherited wealthy are still bored, but with an art intelligence that has sunk proportionately with the decades-long dumbing down of our culture. And those pretend self-made autistic bozos, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, make little state-of-the-“art” rocket ships to play pee-pee in the tub with. One look at Bezos on the red carpet with his silicone spouse, and it’s obvious where art must never be allowed land again. The perfect poster couple to represent abstraction blown out of proportion. Perfect fake man with gobs of perfect fake money buying perfect fake breasts.
(Un)fortunately, the democratization of art will block the modern painter’s path to riches, either in the present or post-mortem. And that is how it should be. Art is made by artists. Art market is not. Commercial art is made by commercial artists. Michelangelo was a commercial artist. A good one for sure, and adamantly non-Stuckist. He was a Christian advertiser. The Vatican paid him and saved him. If Michelangelo was our contemporary, he’d already be an atheist by the time he reached the position of Senior Graphic Designer at Anheuser-Busch®. Today the Pope could be a closet Taylor Swift fan, and we already know the Dalai Lama licks little kid lips. Painters must get it through their thick, VOC-gassed skulls. There is no money, no real money, to be had. Yet one can still work hard and make a living at art. It wouldn’t hurt to earn a business degree. Maybe there are some free classes to take on Youtube.