Resistance: Art strategies against the bubble
First published in Sleek magazine
“One always tries to play an evasive strategy, you’re always popping up in some place that is not quite absorbable at the moment. it is a conversion of the power of shock. Artists have a tendency to identify an opposition. There’s a lot of crap, everywhere and all the time, I think that one just has to play strategic games” – Martha Rosler, Panel discussion, art berlin contemporary book fair, September 2013.
A NEW BUBBLE
Seeing art that doesn’t it the conines of the market these days is quite easy – just wander down to the project spaces in the Berlin districts of kreuzberg, neukölln and beyond. Makeshift installations share space with performance remnants, art supper clubs and 24-hour pop-up exhibitions. in the German capital one can gain the impression that art is there to be seen, touched and eaten, but not sold, and that there is still the possibility of vanguard spaces and niches. art pour l’art, then – just the way the Modernist pioneers intended it. But an EasyJet light to Art Basel in June reverses the impression. slick dealers rub shoulders with Gucci-clad collectors, Kanye West performs, and everyone has the hot new artist’s name on their lips, whoever they may be: celebrity- meets-fashion-meets-art in one hot champagne-fuelled bubble, and the apotheosis of Warhol’s dream of business art and celebrity culture.
Art is oficially hip, spectacular and, in more ways than one, “money”: everyone wants a piece of the action, from pop stars to rappers to film stars and, of course, running not far behind, the assorted coterie of investment bankers, hedge fund managers and venture capitalists. Karl Lagerfeld had his models wield portfolios on the catwalk for chanel’s ss14 show, while in a seemingly epochal event at new York’s Pace Gallery Jay Z commandeered performance artist Marina Abramović and a myriad of other art-world luminaries (Diana Widmaier Picasso, painter George condo, critic Jerry saltz and so on) for his six-hour “Picasso Baby” performance. the song itself was either a critique of the racism inherent in the art establishment, or yet another roll-call of hip-hop tropes, depending on your point of view, name-checking art world institutions from Picasso to art Basel and the MoMa: “Oh, what a feeling, fuck it, i want a billion / Jeff koons balloons, i just wanna blow up / condos in my condos, i wanna row of / christie’s with my missy, live at the MoMa / Bacons and turkey bacons, smell the aroma” …the hip-hop mogul intoned, circling condo and others.
For the online magazine Hyperallergic, this moment marked “the death of performance art”; for others, including auctioneer simon de Pury, it heralded the beginning of a new era. De Pury wrote that protagonists such as Kanye West (who has compared himself to Picasso on occasion) were effecting a “rapprochement” between the art world and other art forms including hip-hop and fashion, in new and refreshing ways. collaborations between artists, designers and musicians are hardly new, from Picasso’s work with the Ballets russes to Warhol’s machinations with the Velvet Underground. Nor is the concept of the artist as celebrity particularly novel: since the 1980s Warhol’s “in the future, everyone will be famous for 15 minutes” pensée has expanded to include artists, curators, critics and dealers, as Jay Z’s video suggested. But while earlier collaborative efforts were irmly focused on creating novel forms of art, contemporary collaborations have a different focus and the newness of the art created is of little concern. What was the net outcome of “Picasso Baby” in artistic terms other than the brief moment in which Marina Abramović and Jay Z paced around each other, an interactive reprise of Abramović’s MoMA piece “The Artist is Present”? Which boundaries were crossed, lines redrawn and new genres fomented? From one perspective, what takes centre stage in these collaborations is the mutual congratulation of having been in the right place at the right time to participate in this mega-event – a symptom, if you will, of contemporary event-driven celebrity culture, and part of the “experience economy”. i
Filming Jay Z’s “Picasso Baby” video at Pace Gallery courtesy Pace Gallery, new York Photo: Joe Schildhorn / BFanyc.com