As the spring auctions begin, it looks as if there’s never been a greater demand for art, says Evgeny Lebedev. But despite a booming market, the art world itself is stagnant
If one was to commission a sculpture that depicted the woeful state of the British art market, then it would be difficult to improve on what Boris Johnson is proposing for the London Olympics. The Mayor’s venture represents the fusion of everything that is wrong with the system: a steel billionaire, a £19 million price-tag, a world-famous artist and 1,400 tons of metal in the shape of crashed pylons. And the end result? That the contraption will be used as a mega funfair. Publicity for the so-called ArcelorMittal Orbit speaks of its size, price and persona. There is no majesty, no mystery. No art.
In recent years, art has become — as never before — a trophy for the wealthy. Auctions of the most expensive artworks are followed every bit as closely as the stockmarket by financial advisers who are dealing with just another commodity. Small wonder: while property prices are falling, art prices keep going up, up, up. The Damien Hirst model — of getting rich quick by becoming a brand — is now studied at the London Business School. More people than ever before (as Oscar Wilde might have put it) know the price of a work of art, but not its value.
Art auctions, of modern art in particular, have become testosterone-driven contests to discover who’s got the biggest wallet. Just look at the spring art auctions in New York. On Wednesday, a Picasso painting set a new record for the most expensive work of art sold at auction. An anonymous millionaire paid $106 million for ‘Nude, Green Leaves and Bust’, smashing the previous record of $104 million for a Giacometti. So much for the financial crisis.
The stage for the next such battle will be set at Sotheby’s, where they’re offering a self-portrait of Andy Warhol for around $15 million, and a simple red canvas from Mark Rothko for up to $25 million. There is no surer sign that bonuses have returned to Wall Street.
Yet despite the artistic genius going under the hammer, these contemporary art fairs have all the soul of business conventions. Artists joke that the word ‘Art’ has become an acronym for Arid Retail Trade. The great works, created more often than not to be admired by the masses, in fact rarely see the light of a public gallery. Instead they move from basement to basement, judged by their resale value almost regardless of artistic merit. How often do the billionaires who buy these paintings ever even bother to admire them?
The art market may be booming but this does not mean an artistic revival. Far from it. We may as well watch financial data on a screen. We are in the era of Portfolio Art where investors buy a Francis Bacon alongside BP shares as an investment.
On the whole, art tends to reflect its time. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, for example, a generation wanted to break free from burdensome artistic traditions — so pop art, conceptualism and minimalism were born. An era of overindulgent aestheticism had catalysed an art that was clean, clear and accessible. Every movement is either a reaction against or a continuation of what went before. In the early 1990s came the Young British Artists, with a style that reflected contemporary Britain. Damien Hirst’s diamond-encrusted skull was a powerful comment on these times: love of wealth and fear of death. But worryingly, the process seems to have stopped. We have not since then seen an emergence of the next group of young artists. No wave of art has emerged which reflects these new recessionary times. The news from the art world has been commercial.
We have to ask why this is so. Perhaps as art became more commercial, it has become increasingly difficult for non-commercial artists to make their mark. The abundance of wealthy individuals prepared to pay exorbitant prices for trophy art has not encouraged bold new upstarts. The inflated prices have narrowed the minds of art buyers. Artists seeking to sell their work are having to adhere to the demands of a prosperous, superficial elite. The artists have become slaves to the demands of these impatient, uncultured consumers.
The result is that we have ended up with commodity art, for commodity-obsessed clients. The auction houses are processing works that demand no emotional engagement, which can be viewed fleetingly and then promptly forgotten. The Hirst-Saatchi school of art was a perfect fit for the boom years: clever, witty, indulgent and occasionally shocking. It produced works which people could view at the same fast pace with which they lived their lives. Art might have become more accessible — but also crude and unsubtle.
This is not a criticism of any contemporary artist: no movement has ever been a truer reflection of the society that spawned it. But the ideas and icons that flourished during those years of global prosperity now seem hideously dated. Artists have often eerily foretold social change — for instance, in the way the surrealists harnessed our thoughts about the 20th century’s most terrible wars. Today, too much in the art world collides with fame, fortune and celebrity — thereby severing the link with reality. This presents an opportunity — for younger artists in particular — to break out of the materialistic mould and capture the new zeitgeist. But where are they? We’ve had enough of bland, monied nihilism. We need more art simply for art’s sake — and we need it now.