Now this is a meditation on art. Robert Hughes clearly sees the bigger picture, but with an immersion few of us can know. Something about it reminds me of the Tulip Wars of the late 16th-17th c. Netherlands, and perhaps an economy running its course? Anyway it is very good, and a must see. Long, but do watch it all.
What are your thoughts?
2 comments:
Good report. I haven't always agreed with Hughes, but his reasoning is consistent, and I think he has a great bullshit detector. Sometimes he comes off as a bit stodgy and embattled. His opinions can appear reactionary to some people. Most of his assessments over the years have been soundly reasoned, if sometimes drowned out by the din of the marketplace. You can see a kind of resignation and disgust in the wistful look on his face.
I remember very well Hughes' spat with Julian Schnabel in the late seventies. It got ugly. Schnabel survived the battle, as did Hughes, and Schnabel has been relentless as a businessman, creating his brand. I remember an anecdote from Schnabel...I believe from his film, Basquiat, where somebody says, "It's not how much time you spent making a painting that makes it valuable. It's how much money people will spend on it." I'll just let that speak for itself.
The art market is full of hideous bottom feeders like that couple at the Armory Show. (Isn't that a hilarious bit of irony? Armory Show? Are you kidding?)
Personally, I have removed myself from all of it, choosing what Joyce called "silence, exile, and cunning". I am doing the best work of my life in this place. What other people make of it is beyond my control or concern. What's important is freedom to keep working. I am free.
Cheers.
So poetic-- You are right on Andy. I have had the same feelings about Robert Hughes, but I do find myself considering well his observations. And I believe that Schnabel nearly lost it in this economy so it will be interesting to see how it plays out. I like Julian actually, and he did start out here in Houston and he and Michael Tracy had an association early on, whom I also like a great deal. Some of his work quite honestly one wonders about. But as for the Art Market motion (commotion) this is all the very same BS that eventually killed Mark Rothko, though he fed off that very energy in his process (see Clyfford Still's comments, as he himself moved to CA). I actually love the conversation about Andy Warhol-- because I have the same response to his actual work, though I must admit I have been intermittently entertained by all the 'factory' activities, movies, characters and Interview magazine. It is a great testament and an extreme example of how things are possible in a free market. I was in NY in the 80's when he was still alive and I could see what he was playing off of-- and yeah you could sum it up with drugs and cocaine, free flowing money and 'anything goes' as it did in the city, probably still does. It was an amazing place at that time, though I was expecting/wanted it to be more like it was in the 'good ole' days, in the 50's. That is when artists had a more romantic notion of painting and innocence was not lost.
In the end, True freedom is in the mind, and perhaps that struggle is what is so attractive on canvas, and what is such a mystery to most. Sometimes owning it by those who will not, do not truly understand it, becomes the ultimate quest. I love Hughes' take on Rauschenburg (another Texas btw), and he may very well be right. This was another story of an artist, Carmen Herrera recent article from the NYT http://tinyurl.com/y8hzuy7
Her long-held belief about fame being vulgar was striking to me. (but 94 yrs? I don't know...)
Post a Comment