die now; paid later

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In Renaissance Italy artists started defining themselves as a distinct group worthy of recognition by the rest of society. In 1563, Michelangelo Buonarroti and Giorgio Vasari helped found Accademia e Compagnia delle Arti del Disegno, the first “academy”. It was established as a professional association that helped visual artists move up a notch above artisans and their guilds.+Dictionary of Art & Artists, Sir David Piper, General Editor, 1988 At the time most artistic projects were begun when a patron gave an artist money or an offer.

A century or so later, during Rembrandt van Rijn’s day, academies were often sweatshops where artists cranked out portraits and religious or history paintings. For the most part, Dutch artists were the first to produce “unsolicited works in their own studios”+The Cult of Art ~ Against Art and Artists, Jean Gimpel; 1969, P. 72 which were then sold on the open market. According to historian Jean Gimpel: “Dutch burghers had no inhibitions about treating pictures like any other merchandise.”+The Cult of Art ~ Against Art and Artists, Jean Gimpel; 1969, P. 72 Even Rembrandt bought and sold other artists’ work,+Rembrandt’s Portrait ~ A Biography, Charles L. Mee Jr.; 1988, P. 85 although he seems to have bought dear and sold cheap. His business acumen apparently didn’t match his brilliance as a painter and etcher.

In Holland, which was a democracy at that time, professional art dealers made an entrance. They became

a major force in the market and, acting as intermediaries between the painter and the public, influenced the behaviour and outlook of both. ... The contemporary situation in France was rather different. There existed an active market in paintings [but] it was confined to a limited number of interested individuals or connoisseurs recruited from the country’s ruling class. It was a market for an elite ...+The Cult of Art ~ Against Art and Artists, Jean Gimpel; 1969, P. 75

Louis XIV, for example, was an avid art collector.

Many of the works, so collected by the aristocracy in the rest of Europe, were first produced on commission. But with a general economic downturn in the early 1700s, secular and religious rulers were no longer awarding commissions in great numbers. Artists had to find new sources of income. Easel painting and scaled down sculptures provided the means. Gimpel describes the shift:

At this stage the academicians discovered the importance of public exhibitions which had been started by [French statesman Jean Baptiste] Colbert and [director of the Academy Charles] Le Brun in 1667 as a means of establishing contact with prospective buyers. In the eighteenth century the Salon Carré in the Louvre was used for the purpose, and painters were described as exhibiting ‘at the Salon’. ... Up to 1748 academicians were free to send any — and as many — pictures as they wished, but in this year a jury was appointed to accept or reject the works presented.+The Cult of Art ~ Against Art and Artists, Jean Gimpel; 1969, P. 79

These “public exhibitions” became synonymous with official exhibitions which were crowded showrooms of art. Paintings were hung side by side up to high ceilings; great rooms were filled with sculpture. Rather than working primarily on commission for wealthy patrons, visual artists producing their own work for an anonymous market became the norm.

By the end of the Industrial Revolution (mid 1800s) acceptance into the Salons by the academies’ juries generally secured an artist’s sales and reputation.+Dictionary of Art & Artists, Sir David Piper, General Editor, 1988 Once “experts” established who to look for, art connoisseurs — private collectors and speculators — bought works. “By the late nineteenth century,” comments essayist George Woodcock, “patronage was replaced by accumulation; the noblesse oblige that might lead eighteenth century princelings to insultingly patronize artists ... was replaced by the many-sided avarice of tycoons who collected as commodities the work of recognized artists, sometimes living but usually dead; ... ”+Strange Bedfellows: The State and the Arts in Canada, George Woodcock, P.; 1985, P. 25 Art dealing, as we think of it today, became standard practice at a time when “[the] most prosperous segments of society, those for whom the new order worked most advantageously, were the businessmen and the speculators.”+Impressionist Dreams, John Russell Taylor; 1990 As Robert Pirsig points out:

[The Victorians] really had no guidelines for what to do with themselves. The possibilities of steel and steam and electricity and science and engineering were dazzling. They were getting rich beyond their wildest dreams, and the money pouring in showed no signs of ever stopping. ... The only wealthy models available were the European aristocracy.+Lila ~ An Inquiry into Morals, Robert Pirsig; 1991, P. 227

At the outset art dealers were generally well-to-do socialites; they augmented their fortunes by selling works from their respective artistic retinues. These middlemen could give artists entrée to clients of wealth and distinction. The dealers intercessions allowed artists to concentrate on making art while someone else handled the sales; however this practice formed a barrier between visual artists and public. Once art dealing became the accepted way of doing business, the go-betweens were in a position to dictate which subjects artists should treat, a practice which limited the public’s choices and restricted artists’ options.

In the nineteenth century, dealers bought art from artists and sold it for whatever they could get. Today, most work by living visual artists is sold on consignment. Individuals without independent means got into the business and the cost of carrying inventories became too great. By the mid-1990s, dealers generally charged 40 to 50% (sometimes as high as 60%) of the selling price for their service, a cost borne by both artist and client. Or, in the underhanded two-price system, clients pay one price while the dealer attempts to get away with paying artists their percentage on a lesser amount by advising that the work sold for less than it did. For example, former Winnipeg dealer, Brian Melnychenko, was sued (successfully) by painter Andrew Valko for an “unpaid contract” in February 1995. That entrée to clients can be expensive to keep up.

While not the standard per se, shady business practices have not been rarities either. U.S. artist Julian Schnabel writes:

Just before my February show in New York, Mary Boone was bringing prospective buyers to my studio, including Doris and Charles Saatchi, collectors from England. [T]he day before they arrived in New York Mary brought over a woman named Vivian Horan.

Mary told me she was a collector of impressionists. It turned out she was an art dealer. ... Vivian immediately said she wanted the green plate painting named “Divan.” ...

The Saatchis arrived [the next day] and they of course wanted the green painting. I got really confused when Mary told them they could have it; I guess she thought she could convince Vivian to take a different painting. It turned out she couldn’t. ... Mary told me she would take care of everything.

... She told the Saatchis that I was giving the green painting to my mother, and not to talk to me about it because I was paranoid and people were bothering me. I was supposed to be skittish. (This I found out later.) ... Two weeks after the opening [at Mary’s gallery], I got a call from Annina Nosei, at that time a private New York art dealer; she asked for a transparency of the green plate painting for her friend Vivian. ... Why would Vivian need a transparency of a painting that she just bought? The only time people ask for a transparency is when they want to sell something. ...

Mary didn’t know that Annina was actually Vivian’s silent partner in the deal. But Charles Saatchi had found out and traded ... the [painting] he had bought, with Annina and Vivian for the “Divan” painting — paying them an extra $2,000 commission. ...

All of this happened without the paintings’ ever leaving the gallery. ... Vivian and Annina doubled their money in a month. [Emphasis added.]+The Business of Art, Julian Schnabel, “Entering the Mainstream”, compiled by Lee Caplin (Published in Cooperation with the National Endowment for the Arts); 1989, P. 176

The court case known as “The Matter of Rothko”, from the early 1970s, brought to light just how far an unscrupulous dealer would go in exploiting an artist. U.S. painter Mark Rothko died in February 1970. Within less than a month of his death, Frank Lloyd (Rothko’s dealer) had bought 100 paintings for $1,800,000 from the Mark Rothko Foundation. Bernard Reis facilitated the sale. (Reis was not alone in this. He had the cooperation of Rothko’s friends, anthropologist Morton Levine and artist Theodorus Stamos, who coincidentally sought representation by Marlborough).+The Legacy of Mark Rothko, Lee Seldes; 1978, P. 129 Reis had been Rothko’s friend and accountant and was both a director and an executor of the Foundation. Unknown to Rothko, Reis had been quietly employed, for some time, by Marlborough Art Gallery in New York; the gallery which was owned by Lloyd. At the same time as the purchase was made, Marlborough also gained exclusive consignment rights, for twelve years, over an additional inventory of almost 700 Rothko paintings.+The Legacy of Mark Rothko, Lee Seldes; 1978, P. 97

Regarding the outright sale, journalist Lee Seldes writes:

[The] deal was with Marlborough A.G. in Liechtenstein, $200,000 would be paid upon signing, the rest paid out in instalments over the next twelve years without interest. ... The fact that the total paying of $18,000 per painting extended over twelve years without interest meant that the paintings’ average value was only $12,000 each.

... [Yet during] the next year and a half, ... Rothko’s oils averaged $75,000, ranging from $58,500 to ... $250,000... +The Legacy of Mark Rothko, Lee Seldes; 1978, P. 129

In her 1978 exposé of the scandal, Seldes reports that Herbert Ferber (who was acting as guardian of Rothko’s daughter Kate) began legal proceedings against Marlborough, in November 1971. He charged the gallery and its owner with defrauding the Rothko Foundation. Rothko had set up the foundation in order to ensure the promulgation of his work to sympathetic museums: Institutions which were willing to display his paintings in select groupings. By orchestrating the sale, Reis had given Lloyd carte blanche to dispose of the entire body of work, however and to whomever he chose; this utterly violated the artist’s intentions.

When the class action suit was concluded in December 1975, Judge M.L. Midonick “decided to ... cancel the contracts with Marlborough.” Lloyd and Marlborough were fined: They either had to return the paintings or pay $90,000 to the Foundation for each one that had been sold. Midonick also ruled “that Reis had a ‘serious conflict of interest’ and ‘divided loyalty’” in the matter. While the case was before the court, Lloyd engaged in all manner of hijinx to either sell or hide the surreptitiously acquired works, mostly in Europe. This was in spite of an injunction restraining Marlborough from selling Rothko’s paintings until the case was closed. Fortunately, in May 1976, following one further attempt by the dealer to get some of the paintings out of the U.S. — which included hiding them in a warehouse owned by Marlborough-Godard Gallery in Toronto — the bulk of Rothko’s work was returned to the Rothko Foundation. By this time, the foundation was under the directorship of his daughter Kate Rothko. Having also been ordered to hand over cash for paintings which he had already sold, Lloyd eventually paid $3,900,000 to the foundation.

Oddly, during the court case involving scores of lawyers — who ran up tabs well into the millions — the Art Dealers Association of America kept mum. Seldes comments that:

After the decision, the pressures from member dealers finally forced the Art Dealers Association from its ostrich-like position. Ralph Colin ... administrative vice-president of the ADAA ... issued a public statement. It was his first about the lawsuit since late 1972, after the injunction when, speaking for the ADAA, he had publicly supported Marlborough (also his client) and said that there was “no merit to the case.” He reported that discussion of the case at meetings of the association had been banned by ADAA directors “so long as litigation was pending in the courts.” Now Colin stated that the board was “following the developments, and frequent discussions of the developing situation have occurred at board meetings ... Now that the court has rendered an opinion containing findings and views which are most disturbing” there would be an emergency meeting of the board. ...

[Frank Lloyd then attempted a peremptory move and quickly resigned from the ADAA, but the board refused his resignation and] two days later Marlborough was formally expelled. ...

[But Clyde] Newhouse [the ADAA’s president] went on to say that the Rothko case would not set a standard for future conduct of dealers. ... Later the board determined that [gallery owner] Daniel Saidenberg’s complicity in signing ... false appraisals [used as testimony on Marlborough’s behalf in the court proceedings] was not unethical enough to merit expulsion from the association.+The Legacy of Mark Rothko, Lee Seldes; 1978, P. 324

As much as Lloyd and Reis were the obvious villains here, it’s important to note that they had the complicity of several collectors and other dealers around the world, some of whom helped Lloyd hide paintings during the deliberations. And while the ADAA treated the attempted pillage as one-of-those-things, there is no indication that visual artists did anything to protect themselves against such piracy in the future; in fact most were unaware of the travesty. (I was in art school when this case played itself out. Yet I didn’t learn about it until I happened across Seldes’ book while researching for this essay more than 20 years later.)

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During the same period in which art dealing got its start, public art museums appeared. The aristocracy had maintained private collections since the Renaissance but these were housed in palaces, villas and government offices, far from the sight of the masses. The Basel Museum, constructed in Switzerland in 1849, was the first to offer such collections for public viewing. It “is not only the oldest of its kind now in existence, but very much the prototype of today’s average American big city institution.”+Palaces for the People, Nathaniel Burt; 1977, P. 16

Initially museums provided storage for art works which had survived wars, vandals, and the elements. These institutions also made art from antiquity and art created for recently deposed aristocrats accessible to a broader public; staff displayed what they adjudged the best. More people than ever before could see what had served the aims and delighted the fancies of the wealthy and powerful. Meanwhile, art kept coming in as new, wealthy and powerful donors contributed, charitably or by government incentive, to the collections the states had seized or acquired. Historian Douglas Mannering writes:

Michael and Sarah Stein bought Matisse’s work steadily for more than a decade; ... Thanks to [Sarah Stein’s] enthusiasm Matisse acquired new American patrons, notably Harriet Lane Levy of San Francisco and the sisters Etta and Claribel Cone who, like the Steins, came from Baltimore; their outstanding Matisse collections can now be viewed in the art museums of their respective native cities.+The Art of Matisse, Douglas Mannering; 1982, P. 31

Albert Reynolds and Eleanor R. Morse collected works by Salvador Dali which form the backbone of the paintings on display at The Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida, said to be the world's most comprehensive collection of Dalí’s works.

As museums extended their influence, curators (from the Latin cure, a priest’s assistant) were needed. Choices had to be made about which works to admit into the canon. Permanent collections had to be culled. Pieces had to be packaged for travelling shows. And catalogues, designating what to look for, were needed to instruct the uninformed public.

In time, curators developed specialities and cultivated territories while the institutions they worked in turned their collective attention to high points in art history. These pinnacles were generally informed by the labelling of periods by art historians. Sometimes, with contemporary art, a critic’s slur stuck, such as the term les fauve (wild beasts) used by [Louis] Vauxcelles to ridicule the work of Matisse, Derain and Vlaminck, who have since been called the Fauves.+Dictionary of Art & Artists, Sir David Piper, General Editor, 1988 Under the blanket label of modernism, which followed closely on the heels of romanticism — which was a reaction to classicism — were added more isms: expressionism (abstract and figurative), constructivism, cubism, cubo-futurism, et cetera, et cetera.

“To classify is to embalm,” wrote Mark Rothko in a 1957 letter to the New York Times.+The Legacy of Mark Rothko, Lee Seldes; 1978, P. 88 Labels are handy, but they can also be misleading. “Although he exhibited at all but one of the Impressionist exhibitions [Edgar Degas] differed from his colleagues in the stress he laid on composition and drawing and in the fact that he did not paint out of doors.”+Dictionary of Art & Artists, Sir David Piper, General Editor, 1988 Experts, however, have affixed stylistic or thematic labels to groups of visual artists as a convenient means of acknowledging them. Some artists have played to this tendency by coming up with their own handles: Dada and surrealism, among others, were self-proclaimed “movements”.

With museums displaying art from their era or movement of preference, and a flood of reproductions, the public has become familiar with what amounts to an art file cabinet. Studio visitors are apt to be miffed if living artists can’t suggest a well-known folder. But, as I said above, labels are often misleading. Plein air painting — a French term for two dimensional works executed outdoors instead of in the studio — is what the “Impressionists” were doing. This type of work got its start with British painter John Constable during the early part of the nineteenth century+Dictionary of Art & Artists, Sir David Piper, General Editor, 1988 and has precursors in the work of Dutch artist Rembrandt and Canaletto from Italy. It continues today.

Historians tend to flog the stylistic twist given to outdoor painting by a handful of French dandies. (Most "Impressionists” were of independent means.) According to Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe:

Impressionism altered painting irrevocably. What one thinks of when one thinks the word “painting,”what that word may or does imply, is a different thing since impressionism ... What is more the revolutionary nature of impressionism resided ... in the impressionist painters’ shared involvement in a technique. It was a technique which sought to eliminate from the palette colors ... which were unlike those which are actually present to the eye in vision. Underpainting was eliminated in favor of the direct application of paint.+Beyond Piety: Critical Essays on the Visual Arts, Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe; 1986 - 1993; 1995, P. 13

This is, to some extent, true. However, “under-painting” was a shared technique — which some visual artists still use — and the Impressionists often used colour which went beyond what was “actually present to the eye”. What’s significant, historically, is that these artists made a point of going outside and painting pretty much what they saw. For centuries most artists had recreated the “real” world from the relative cosiness of their studios. It’s also worth pointing out that historians rarely mention (as noted above) that most of the so-called Impressionists had independent incomes; they had the luxury of not having to satisfy dealers and their clientèle.

Today, most cities in North America have an art museum or public gallery. Smaller cities have all-purpose museums, while larger cities have two or more, each with its own speciality. “One reason for the health and growth of Houston’s art scene is its museums, university exhibition spaces, commercial galleries, and non-profit spaces,” writes Houston art dealer Janie C. Lee. “Each institution has a different goal and/or set of tastes, which contributes to the variety in the community.”+The Business of Art, Janie C. Lee, “Houston: A Dealer”, compiled by Lee Caplin (Published in Cooperation with the National Endowment for the Arts); 1989, P. 24 The Winnipeg Art Gallery, incidentally, is the first civic art gallery in Canada.

Art museums and public galleries reflect the purchasing power of the region and the artistic judgement of their directors and curators. They wield great influence. To no small degree they have determined who will be contemporary art stars. About this process, one former museum director, Tom Freudenheim, says:

[Museums] range widely through the history of art and may have little or no interest in the work of living artists (this is extremely rare). Other museums specialize in modern and contemporary art. In between lie as many variations as there are museums. And in these museums there are people working ... who may also vary in terms of personality, interest in living artists, time to spend seeing artists or slides or studios, even ability to make judgements. ... It is a field of human relations and personal choices (we would hope informed choices, but nonetheless personal ones); it is not a field of litmus paper tests for quality or eventual impact on the history of art.+The Business of Art, Tom L. Freudenham, “The Artists and the Museum - How to Crack the Sight Barrier”, compiled by Lee Caplin (Published in Cooperation with the National Endowment for the Arts); 1989, P. 24

Pablo Picasso was not so circumspect. In a 1933 interview, he said: “Museums are just a lot of lies, and the people who make art their business are mostly imposters.”+Picasso on Art: A Selection of Views, Pablo Picasso, “Two Statements by Picasso”, Dore Ashton; 1972, P. 3

And the experts had to be careful. Hoving says:

In the decade and a half that I was with the Metropolitan Museum of Art I must have examined fifty thousand works in all fields. Fully 40 percent were either phonies or so hypocritically restored or so mis-attributed that they were just the same as forgeries. Since then I’m sure that that percentage has risen. What few art professionals seem to want to admit is that the art world we are living in today is a new, highly active, unprincipled one of art fakery.+False Impressions: The Hunt for Big-time Art Fakes, Thomas Hoving; 1996, P. 17

Forgeries, in fact, have been a commonplace in the art world for centuries. Writing about one seventeenth century French artist, Gimpel comments:

[Nicolas] Poussin was the one painter who was a good buy in his own lifetime. He thrilled the connoisseurs. ... This craze for Poussin was a stimulus to forgers who inundated the Rome and Paris markets with fakes. Connoisseurs were understandably worried. Whenever possible they asked the artist to authenticate his paintings ...+The Cult of Art ~ Against Art and Artists, Jean Gimpel; 1969, P. 77

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Would it be out of line to expect that museum staff seek advancement to higher ranked institutions? Economist William D. Grampp observes:

A curator who makes a recommendation no doubt thinks of what others in his profession will say about it. A collector of course may wonder what other collectors think of his pictures. But his standing in the world where he makes his income is not likely to be affected by their opinion.+Pricing the Priceless, William D. Grampp; 1989, P. 33

With acclaim or notoriety being good for institutions and for curators’ careers, artists can be mere counters in a game of art world Monopoly, especially since, as Grampp points out, serious collectors and dealers pay close attention to what museums are doing:

The last kind of evidence that bears on the consistency of values has to do with living artists: with the standing they have in the art world and the prices of their work. This information was brought together in the 1970s by the late Willi Bongard of Cologne, an economist, art journalist, teacher, and man of parts. He made a judgement of the standing of an artist by noting the recognition the artist received in such ways as being in the permanent collections of museums, by one-man shows, group shows, by the notice received in periodicals and television, and by other marks of esteem. Dr. Bongard boldly assigned numerical values ... 300 points for each work in a major museum ... and 200 for each in a museum not quite as major. ... This was done for a large number of artists, and the 100 having the greatest number of points were ranked according to their totals. Dr. Bongard then obtained the current price of a representative work of each of the 100 and added it to his compilation. The two numbers invite a statistical analysis because the point value of each artist is an indication of the aesthetic value of his work, and the price of a representative work is of course its economic value. ...

With the help of a colleague, I did a regression analysis of the information in order to see if the price of a painter’s work was consistent with the points assigned to him and I found it was. ... the results [showed] that as the number of points increased by 10 per cent, the price of the representative work increased by 8 per cent.+Pricing the Priceless, William D. Grampp; 1989, P. 37

Writing about a 1969 exhibition “New York Painting and Sculpture: 1940-1970” at the Metropolitan Museum in New York (which included Rothko), Seldes says:

[Curator of contemporary art Henry] Geldzahler neglected to mention [in his catalogue] ... that many of the 408 art works [by 43 artists] he had chosen were actually merchandise for sale from what he called “important” collectors and “far-sighted, blue-chip dealers.” ... while [Metropolitan director Thomas] Hoving’s preface claimed that the entire exhibit was “loaned from museums and private collections around the world,” actually this was far from true. ... Geldzahler was serving new status, both social and financial, to his friends. It was the beginning of the dowager museum’s transformation into a “bordello,” as one important collector termed it.

Seldes goes on to say, “The show angered Rothko ... It exacerbated his self-doubts, his hatred of the marketplace, and his fears for his stature in that fickle, artificial world.”+The Legacy of Mark Rothko, Lee Seldes; 1978, P. 96 Such practice in the stock market is called insider trading.

While some visual artists have fared well financially during their life times, art dealers and some collectors — particularly in the late 1980s when the art market peaked — reaped huge profits. Commenting further on the show at the Metropolitan Museum, Seldes quotes from a monograph by Geldzahler:

While the total self-interest of New York’s real estate industry, for example, is contributing to the destruction of the city, this same self-interest in the economics of the art world may finally benefit the public. A work of art often makes its way from the privacy of the artist’s studio, through the gallery to the collector, and finally to the museum. The general public is excluded from purchasing and living with much of the best art being produced in our society, for it is in short supply in relation to the number of potential owners, and because it is expensive. Ironically enough, these very factors, scarcity and price, inevitably help speed paintings and sculptures into museums and other public institutions where they become available to the widest possible audience. Our tax laws make it sensible for the wealthy to give works of art to museums, and our social structure makes it attractive to be associated with a museum. ... While works of art are sometimes bought cheap and sold dear, or are accumulated in the drive toward upward social mobility, there are also many collectors who love art and are willing to share it with others.

“Share it with a tax write-off,” Seldes adds. “In other words, the higher the prices, the better for everyone — except perhaps the artist, from whom art is ‘bought cheap.’”+The Legacy of Mark Rothko, Lee Seldes; 1978, P. 95

Curators and art historians don’t usually play the art market; they work in salaried positions in a variety of institutions, from public galleries to universities. While they may occasionally open doors for a dealer or two, it’s their “colour commentary” which contributes to the value of certain visual artists’ work. Their exegeses can be of value, yet art pundits often get carried away. I recall reading that we could tell Rembrandt’s mood that day from a particular drawing of his. (I had the flu when I produced a few of my pieces. I dare anyone to tell me which they are.) Well, sales training manuals advise selling the sizzle, not the steak: “The Master’s mode of seeing was one of the greatest suavity and elegance, and his imagery of feminine beauty, though a bit hearty, is persuasively lovely.”+The Art Institute of Chicago, Catalogue of permanent collection, Director John Maxon; 1970, P. 34 Now that’s sizzle! “[It] was Michelangelo who endowed humankind with a godlike beauty and noble, transcendent soul.”+Italian Painting, Keith Christiansen; 1992 Ka-ching!!!

The art world is full of hyperbole. Hoving writes:

[Monet] is known to have placed ads in local newspapers in the late nineteenth century offering for sale works of haystacks, poplars, and the façade of Rouen Cathedral that he guaranteed to make different by changes in light and shading. And all the long we thought Monet was dutifully recording the subtle variations in light and hue for the grand experiment of Impressionism!+False Impressions: The Hunt for Big-time Art Fakes, Thomas Hoving; 1996, P. 75

The myth of Monet’s haystacks is, in fact, a staple in art history classes.

Much is made of Rembrandt’s self-portraits. Meanwhile, Rembrandt painted portraits for a living; his self-portraits were largely "promo" pieces used to demonstrate what he could do for potential clients.

The recent cleaning of the Sistine Chapel Ceiling, in particular, has called into question the grasp many celebrated experts have on art. Charles Baudelaire and H.W. Janson explained why the artist painted the ceiling using muted colours and subtle modelling:

Michelangelo, who from a certain point of view is the inventor of the ideal among the moderns, is the only man to have possessed the ‘graphic’ imagination in its supreme degree without being a colourist. Pure draughtsmen are naturalists endowed with excellent perception; but they draw by the light of reason, whereas colourists — that is, great colourists — draw by the light of temperament, almost without knowing it ... A draughtsman is a would-be colourist.+Art in Paris 1845-1862, Translated & Edited by Johnathon Mayne, Charles Baudelaire; 1965, P. 82

Michelangelo has been called a poor colorist — perhaps unjustly. If he here restricts his palette to ‘stony’ colors, it is to give his figures the quality of painted sculpture and integrate them with their architectural setting.+History of Art, H. W. Janson; 1986, P. 360

The ceiling, now seen as it was when it was first painted, shows that Michelangelo painted in a high key palette, used colour boldly, and presented his figures in a vibrant light. Historian / critic Waldemar Januszczak, who had a chance to go up on the platform during the ceiling’s cleaning, puts it this way:

The last frescoes to be painted, the lunettes [ring of figures on the wall just below the ceiling] were the first parts to be cleaned. ... Their cleaning produced shocking results. No one, no scholars, no restorers, no American Modernist admirers of Michelangelo, expected them to be so full of outrageous color. Art historians who had grown up on the dark myth of the Sistine Ceiling had been doubly convinced of the darkness of the Sistine lunettes.

Scientists ... claimed the lunettes were so dirty because the walls of the Sistine Chapel were colder than the roof and some five hundred years of soot, dirt and candle-gunk ... found it easier to accumulate there.

Scholars ... claimed that Michelangelo deliberately painted the lunettes darker than the ceiling for various complicated reasons. “The sphere of shadow and death” is how the grandest of twentieth century Michelangelo scholars, Charles de Tolnay, described the world of the lunettes, contrasting it with “the sphere of light and eternity above it.”

What actually seems to have happened is that for five hundred years nobody thought the lunettes worthy of much maintenance. They grew darker and darker because the various cleaners ... during the Vatican’s intermittent restoration campaigns inevitably ignored them.+Sayonara Michelangelo, Waldemar Januszczak; 1990, P. 43-44

Art know-it-alls — who don’t like seeing one of their grandiloquent balloons popped by cleaning staff — often belong or cater to ruling classes. It’s to be expected, I suppose, that some attributed Michelangelo’s (and the period’s) greatness to abusive Borgia and Medici Popes. According to historian Kenneth Clark:

Michelangelo’s ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and Raphael’s frescoes in the room known as the Stanza della Segnatura ... we owe entirely to Julius II. For centuries writers on Michelangelo have criticized Julius for taking him off the tomb ... and putting him to work on the painting of the Sistine Chapel Ceiling, although he always said he hated the act of painting. I think it was a stroke of inspiration.+Civilisation, Kenneth Clark; 1969, P. 126

Yet, after the cleaning, it appears that Michelangelo enjoyed his work and had an impish sense of humour. Januszczak writes, “You see it obviously enough in some of the caricatures of Christ’s ancestors. But it is also evident in minor details and the witty use of paint.”+Sayonara Michelangelo, Waldemar Januszczak; 1990, P. 47

Though he lived in the era when visual artists took a step up society’s ladder, patrons still dictated the projects and the terms. Michelangelo was barely paid a subsistence wage for painting the Ceiling. Yet, even from a business point of view, had he received every ducat in the papal coffers, the Vatican would still have come out ahead on the balance sheet; the Sistine Chapel attracts millions of paying visitors a year. Had Michelangelo been able to make the art he wanted to make for most of his life, and been paid for doing that, he would still have been a genius. Whether he hated painting or loved it, Michelangelo was a contractor commissioned by popes to heighten their prestige and/or to serve the political needs of the Church. While often called the period’s summation of belief in and experience of God, the Sistine Chapel Ceiling is an extraordinary piece of advertising art. That “stroke of inspiration” was politically motivated: The Reformation was taking shape at the same time; Martin Luther’s 95 Theses were published in 1517, just five years after the Ceiling was completed. Dominican monk Girolamo Savonarola was coincidentally wreaking havoc from within. The colour commentators should credit the dissidents. The church needed a monumental piece to put doubters in their place. Michelangelo was pressed into service.

False as it is, that “dark myth of the Sistine Ceiling” served as an inspirational for many a yarn about visual artists.+Artistic Theory in Italy, 1450-1600, Anthony Blunt; 1968, P. 80 Michelangelo is the hero, Vincent the martyr.

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When I read van Gogh’s letters to his brother in the book Dear Theo, I couldn’t help but wonder: Was Theo exploiting Vincent? The artist begs and cajoles his art dealer sibling to keep the money coming, often assuring him (correctly, as it turns out) that his work would one day sell. The latter’s support may have been due to the love between brothers but it was not uncommon practice for dealers of the day to gamble on artists of their choosing. Early in his career, a dealer gave Picasso a long term stipend which allowed him to mature in his work. Many other artists have received similar assistance. Theo must have seen that Vincent was on to something. Had both van Goghs lived longer, they might have reaped a reward; often visual artists reached their latter years before their work started to move in a serious way. Emily Carr was in her 50s when she was “discovered”.

In fact, about Vincent’s much proclaimed poverty former museum director Thomas writes:

Researches made especially by Alain Tarica, the French mathematician and former art dealer and fake buster, indicate that contrary to accepted mythology, Van Gogh did have pupils, and did sell a number of pictures during his lifetime.+False Impressions: The Hunt for Big-time Art Fakes, Thomas Hoving; 1996, P. 249

Some artists have been fairly well paid in their own lifetimes. French painter Eugene Delacroix lived a life of great luxury from the sale of his work; so did Italian artist Titian who “was rich and famous in his own lifetime, and has never been out of fashion in the four centuries since his death.”+Great Masters of World Painting - Botticelli, Canaletto, Watteau, Cézanne, Titian, Nathaniel Harris; 1974, P. 58 Today, Alex Colville makes a living from his art, going to his studio in a white shirt and tie and working the same hours as office workers. These visual artists are presented as anomalies, not as role models.

There’s a reason for this. Writing about the mid- to late-eighteenth century, Gimpel observes:

Dealers and middlemen were always hovering around artists’ studios trying to make themselves indispensable. [Philosopher / critic Denis] Diderot hit out against them: ‘It is these people that interpose themselves between the man of wealth and the indigent artist; that make the man of talent pay for the protection they give him; that open and close doors to him; that snatch his best products from him for a measly price; that lie in wait behind his easel; that have secretly condemned him to beggary in order to hold him enslaved and dependent; their constant theme is that a modest income is the necessary stimulus to the artist ...’+The Cult of Art ~ Against Art and Artists, Jean Gimpel; 1969, P. 85-86 [Emphasis added.]

Many people still believe that hungry artists make better work. I wonder how safe an air plane would be if it were designed by needy engineers and fabricated by crews living on a diet of macaroni and cheese? “Poor, starving brain surgeon” has a truly frightening ring to it.

Tales of visual artists as tortured, alienated souls confirmed dealers’ importance: They’re brave enough to risk contact with the wild, temperamental misfits the rest only glimpse at openings. The sizzle supersedes the steak when people buy the hype as much as the art. Journalist David Van Biema comments:

Previously [artists] had been pigeon-holed only as craftsmen ... But the Renaissance elevation of man’s importance, expressed so well by Michelangelo in the Touch, had also inspired philosophical speculation that certain extraordinary artists, who imitated God by creating something out of nothing, might themselves aspire to descriptions such as ‘divine’.+LIFE, “A Clear View of Heaven”, David Van Biema; November 1991

Presenting visual artists as demigods was good for curators and historians. Gods can fend for themselves. Art priests — being merely mortal — must eat. As Januszczak says, “Before Michelangelo, artists worked for their art. After Michelangelo, they suffered mightily for it.”+Sayonara Michelangelo, Waldemar Januszczak; 1990, P. 97

But, so what! Artists aren’t utterly helpless. Michelangelo went on to fame and fortune. And, on a few occasions, artists broke through the later ranks of juries and speculators. In 1863, Napoleon III initiated a Salon des Refusés because artists, among them Edouard Manet, protested the number of innovative works rejected by the official Salon. In 1884, the Société des Artistes Indépendants (Georges Seurat and Paul Signac were at the heart of this group) challenged the official Salon’s selection committee by holding their own exhibitions called the Salon des Indépendants. These had no selection committee and the rules allowed any artist to enter a painting on payment of a fee.+Dictionary of Art & Artists, Sir David Piper, General Editor, 1988 It took some doing but these exhibitions managed to catch the public’s attention. The collectors / dealers of the day eventually started buying the newer work and called themselves daring.

About 30 years later, just before the market-driven art establishment parked itself in the art world, visual artists took matters into their own hands again. First at the Armory Show (New York 1913) which was seen by about 300,000 people. Then, four years later, the Society of Independent Artists put on a show.+Dictionary of Art & Artists, Sir David Piper, General Editor, 1988 At this latter exhibition Marcel Duchamp provided a pivotal piece in the chess game between visual artists and the self-appointed fiduciaries of the discipline:

Fountain (a urinal turned on its back and placed on top of a black pedestal) was the only work refused for the 1917 exhibition of 2,200 works by 1,300 artists. Duchamp, a director of the Society of Independent Artists staging the show at the Grand Central Palace in New York, lived in New York. He submitted the piece under the pseudonym Richard Mutt and had it shipped from Philadelphia with Mutt’s $6 membership fee — all that was required to have a work shown. But his associates thought it was sent as a joke and refused to exhibit it. Duchamp resigned from the society in protest.+Marcel Duchamp Work and Life, Edited and introduced by Pontus Hulten, texts by Jennifer Gough-Cooper and Jaques Caumont; 1993

Duchamp was a Dadaist, a group which “aimed to destroy art as an aesthetic cult and to replace it by anti-art and non-art, by definition meaningless and shocking. They therefore rejected the artefact ... [In fact, the] most notorious Dada statement was Duchamp’s Fountain ...”+Dictionary of Art & Artists, Sir David Piper, General Editor, 1988

Today, Edward de Bono, who developed the concept / practice of lateral thinking, might describe this piece of anti-art as po:

You pose something quite preposterous to yourself (or the community) then get your mind(s) to take it seriously for the purpose of creating a new pattern of perception. Then you throw it away.+I am right, you are wrong, Edward de Bono; 1991, P. 15, 91

Duchamp, who made his living as a librarian, shares this view: "[Dada] was a way to get out of a state of mind — to avoid being influenced by one’s immediate environment, or by the past: to get away from clichés — to get free."+“Painting ... at the service of the mind”, by Marcel Duchamp, Theories of Modern Art ~ A Source Book by Artists and Critics, Herschel Chipp; 1994, P. 394

But Duchamp, in taking a shot at staid thinking and pretensions in the art world, didn’t count on another possibility. Had he submitted Fountain under his own name it would have been accepted as another one of those “ready-mades” he had been proffering since 1912. But, because of the fuss (which he set up) it was later acquired as an “artefact” by Galleria Schwartz in Milan+Dictionary of Art & Artists, Sir David Piper, General Editor, 1988. Because of that third-party endorsement the piece has sparked many theories.

In fact Fountain became an iconic piece in the art world canon. In a March 1995 lecture at the Winnipeg Art Gallery, University of Manitoba ethics professor Arthur Schaefer, played back what he had learned to an audience of visual artists. He advised that “art is profoundly useless” and “the essence of art lies in its lack of utility.” He used Fountain to underscore his point: Viewing an object “aesthetically — which means in a non-utilitarian way,” he said, “we imbue it with some kind of meaning.” Meanwhile, Justin Schorr, one of Dada’s interpreters, has this to say:

... Duchamp ... vehemently insisted Dada’s chief emphasis lay not in demonstrating that every-day objects could be sources of aesthetic delectation if taken aesthetically ... ; Duchamp’s “Fountain”, a urinal, was not presented to make that point. Rather, Dada demonstrated the more important point that the give-and-take for an object can be altered; it is not fixed by the object’s membership in a category; for example a thing usually regarded as being under the category tool can be taken as art, and a thing usually regarded as being under the category art can be taken as a tool. This challenges the very ideas of categories and categorization; for it means that we can not say categorically that a shovel is a tool, or a statue is an art object. +Towards the Transformation of Art, Justin Schorr; 1974, P. 21

Duchamp — who Deitch says “may in fact have been the most influential art adviser of our century”+The Business of Art, Jeffrey Deitch, “Art Advisory Services - The Age of the Art Advisor”, compiled by Lee Caplin (Published in Cooperation with the National Endowment for the Arts); 1989 — along with his Dada colleagues railed against third-party endorsement of art as aesthetic objects. They had the right idea: Drop the capital “A” and integrate visual artists into society. Unfortunately, because their work required outside endorsement to elevate it to "art" status, their actions served to strengthen the pariahs’ grip on the art world. His gesture backfired. Since the 1920s expert endorsement became more important than the work itself. And, as fictional collector Bertram Stone says (in the movie The Moderns): “This is art because I paid hard cash for it. I could have Natalie’s mutt shit on a canvas and if I paid $5,000 for it, you critics would call it a work of art.”+The Moderns, Alan Rudolph and Jon Bradshaw; 1988 The art world became a commodity exchange where intermediaries manage visual artists’ perspicacity to their own fiscal advantage.

Writing about the background to the Armory Show where Duchamp made his début and which featured many of the precursors of abstract art, historian Martin Green gives us the origin of modern art protocol:

[Gertrude Stein] made ... a distinction between art and official art so absolute it amounted to an opposition or antithesis between them. And she declared that emotion must not be the cause of painting. From these two principles most of the laws of twentieth century taste can be deduced. ... Indeed it was generally said that the cubists, especially Picasso and Braque, were highly intellectual painters, engaged in “research”; this idea was blended with a sense of how difficult it was to understand their pictures. It is clear that Duchamp ... was attracted to cubism because of this aspect — though he immediately became anxious to cast off the shackles and to burst out of the straitjacket of being a mere follower. ... This was another aspect of modern art, the constant competition in authenticity and originality, in prestige conflicts and power-plays, an aspect with which Gertrude Stein was well equipped to deal.+New York 1913, The Armory Show and the Paterson Strike Pageant, Martin Green; 1988, P. 70-71

Picasso, in fact, refuted that he was “engaged in research”:

I can hardly understand the importance given to the word research in connection with modern painting. In my opinion to search means nothing in painting. To find, is the thing. ...

Among the several sins that I have been accused of committing, none is more false than the one that I have, as the principal objective in my work, the spirit of research. When I paint my object is to show what I have found and not what I am looking for. +“Picasso as quoted by Christian Zervos in “Conversation avec Picasso”, Theories of Modern Art ~ A Source Book by Artists and Critics, Herschel Chipp; 1994, P. 272

But then, what does an artist know about what he or she is doing? Anthropologist Marvin Harris shines this impartial light on the art world:

Painting, sculpting, making music, singing, and dancing are activities that occur in every society. ... In Western civilization a particular performance is deemed artistic or not by a group of authorities who make or judge art and who control the museums, conservatories, critical journals, and other organizations and institutions devoted to art as a livelihood and style of life. ...

It is taken as normal that art must be interpreted and explained by experts in order to be understood and appreciated. Since the end of the nineteenth century the greatest artists for the Western art establishment are the individuals who break with tradition, introduce new culture styles, and at least for a time render their work inscrutable to a large number of people. Joined to this de-emphasis upon tradition and continuity is the peculiar notion of artists as Faustian figures, people struggling in lonely isolation against limitations set by the pre-existing capability of their audience to appreciate and understand true genius. Thus modern Euro-American art is dominated by an unprecedented concern with novelty. ... Modern aesthetic standards decree that originality must take precedence over intelligibility. Indeed a work of art that is transparently intelligible automatically invites condemnation by the art establishment.+Culture, People, Nature ~ An Introduction to General Anthropology, Marvin Harris; 1975, P. 572-578 [Emphasis added.]

The presenters cater to their wealthy confederates and spurn all but their own choices, capricious as they may be. As biographer Mark Cheetham observes:

Colville’s unsolicitous attitude toward art experts has led to criticism of him and his work. ... the piece that stands out is an opportunistic, ad hominem attack that substitutes sensationalism for thinking. John Bentley Mays, reviewing Colville’s 1983 retrospective in the Globe and Mail, fumes ... that:

Whatever interesting things may be said of the eccentric, garrulous artist himself, the art he has made is of virtually no creative consequence. ... Its widespread popularity and potential as a crowd-pleaser apart, Colville’s art is worthy of inclusion in a small, didactic group show of realists from Canada’s Atlantic region, nothing more.

Mays isn’t one to pull punches, but he’s also capable of insight. Why, then, is he so riled about Colville’s success? We sense that his popularity is the main reason ...+Alex Colville The Observer Observed, Mark A. Cheetham; 1994

Popularity, which Colville earned, in spite of a lack of endorsement from the art establishment.

Then there’s the notion of artists’ creative freedom. Joni Mitchell, responding to hecklers calling for her to sing an old hit on her live album Miles of Aisles, said, “Nobody ever said to van Gogh, ‘Paint A Starry Night again, man.’ He painted it; that was it.” On the contrary, dealers frequently expect artists to produce the same or variations of the same image over and over. Like any merchant, they find out what sells and request more. Van Gogh rarely repeated himself. Picasso — who was financially successful — churned out countless mother and child motifs and a similar volume of nice village scenes.

Establishments, of course, don’t spell out their motives. John Ralston Saul observes:

The specialists tend now to be pariahs of art, trained and graded by the specific criteria essential to contemporary education and, if anything, frightened by the potential power of the image. Their relationship to creativity is rarely one of love or obsession. They are salaried to it ...

... since these experts controlled the major galleries, it was not long before they were able to apply their standards to the Western definition of what was art. New generations of painters — cut off from the reverberations which their predecessors had felt, thanks to their integration into society — instead found that the only sustained reverberations came from the experts. In the ensuing confusion many painters began producing directly for the museums ...+Voltaire’s Bastards ~ The Dictatorship of Reason in the West, John Ralston Saul; 1992

Without knowing the touchstones of those in-the-know, most people have trouble grasping results. After a century of visual artists having to upstage each other in order to break through the art market’s filters, the public is increasingly cynical. Museums now mount shows like the Barnes Exhibit (at, among other places, the Art Gallery of Ontario in the fall of 1994) or the Norman Rockwell retrospective show (at the Winnipeg Art Gallery in the spring of 2012) to bring John and Jane Q. back. Interesting that the “Impressionists” (whose work, among others, comprises much of Dr. Albert Barnes’s collection), who burst through the stifling conventions of their day, are so much in vogue today. And, while he was still alive, Rockwell was dismissed by the art establishment as an illustrator. His work is celebrated posthumously; museums can now cash in on his popularity.

As committed as they may be to presenting diverse art to the public, museums seem equally interested in profiting from spreading their appropriated points of view. The Museum of Modern Art in New York has wholesale catalogues chock full of art product — umbrellas, blossom wells, print portfolios, cards — and features Frank Lloyd Wright, Matisse, Miró, Monet, Lichenstein, Warhol, and Picasso. In 1995 the attached letter said, “This year’s Holiday selection is the largest we have ever introduced. ... We have been working hard to make this line the most exciting interesting in the Holiday line marketplace. ... Products developed and distributed by the Museum of Modern Art reflect the Museum’s commitment to modern art and good design.” But that’s great, you might say. They’re spreading art around, making it available. Keep in mind, though, royalties to dead artists are much lower (non-existent) than what institutions would have to pay for reproducing living artists’ work, and saturating the secondary market with old work leaves little room for up-and-comers.

Art museums are in direct competition with artists, a group which they ostensibly represent. Their boards are often comprised of society’s elite. As money hungry institutions they resemble corporations intent on turning a profit. Mays writes: “In the last 12 months, I’ve decisively lopped off [my list] the Art Gallery of Ontario. That’s after watching its top brass dumb it down from one of the country’s most impressive art institutions into a huge, nifty gift shop with an occasional blockbuster attached.” +The Globe and Mail, John Bentley Mays, “Me and My Museum”; 1995

— o —

In September 1993, in response to public outcry regarding the purchase of Mark Rothko’s Number 16, (Winnipeg radio station) CJOB’s Richard Cloutier opened his phone-in show by calling National Gallery assistant director and head of communications Helen Murphy. The first thing Murphy said was: “Major museums that have a collection of contemporary and modern art have a Rothko. He is probably one of the most important painters in the school of art called Abstract Expressionism ..” Murphy went on to elaborate, “This is a pivotal work in Rothko’s career. It was painted in ’57 when he was beginning to look at the darker side of life.” Yet, art historian Dore Ashton — a friend of both Rothko and the artist’s shady dealer(s) — says that in 1958, during his last public statement regarding his work, “Rothko had listed as one of the ingredients of a work of art the presence of irony — the ‘modern’ ingredient.”+About Rothko, Dore Ashton; 1983, P. 167-186 In her book About Rothko she implies that much of his oeuvre constitutes portraits of irony. They are based on a fundamental human truth: We are all born to die.

A little later in Cloutier’s show, one caller said, “It’s a painting of nothing.” Maybe so. What I picked up over the years was that Rothko was painting the Void. Critic / historian Robert Hughes, who seems to think Rothko has been overrated, tells us:

It is hard to enter the Rothko Chapel without emotion, for its huge obscure paintings, almost monochrome in their blacks, tarnished plum reds, and stygian violets ... represent an astonishing degree of self-banishment. All the world is drained out of them, leaving only the void. Whether it is The Void, as glimpsed by mystics, or simply an impressive theatrical emptiness, is not easily determined, and one’s guess depends on one’s expectation. +The Shock of the New, Robert Hughes; date1980, P. 323

In 1957, Rothko himself said:

You might as well get one thing straight. I’m not an abstractionist. ... I’m not interested in the relationship of color or form or anything else. I’m interested only in expressing basic human emotions — tragedy, ecstasy, doom and so on. And the fact that a lot of people break down and cry when confronted with my pictures shows that I can communicate those basic human emotions. ... The people who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience I had when I painted them.+Conversations with Artists: quoted by Seldes, Sheldon Rodman; 1957, P. 38

Yet public outrage was more over price than the work itself. Canada’s National Gallery had paid $1.8 million to acquire just one piece of this "important" artist’s work. Why is he important? “Because Rothko was so well known and much sought after, this painting was in a big European tour in the ’60s,” Murphy intoned, “and when it came back to New York it went into his dealer’s warehouse. ... It’s definitely worth it, because, as I said, if you look at the recent prices at auction, we’re looking at 3.6 million, 2.3 million, 1.25 million for a very small painting, 1.8 million and so on.” How can we be sure? “Now a curator, we can only imagine, whether it’s at the Winnipeg Art Gallery or the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, is an expert in his or her field. You may not like the work of Mark Rothko, ... but you have to give it to the curator. You have to give them — even if it’s grudging respect — a respect for their knowledge and expertise,” she insisted, barely hiding her annoyance. (In fact, Number 16 probably went into the artist’s own warehouse. Rothko was fussy, to a fault, about who owned his work and held onto almost 800 pieces until his death in 1970.+The Legacy of Mark Rothko, Lee Seldes; 1978, P. 66)

In response to Murphy’s assertions, one caller mentioned the emperor’s new clothes. I’ve been to the Rothko Chapel in Houston and his paintings are unnerving. Why the assistant director of Canada’s top public gallery didn’t mention the work itself — beyond her misleading claim that Rothko was painting “the darker side of life” — is a mystery. Instead she esteemed his work because the artist had been shown in “important” museums, cited that other people were prepared to pay similar prices, then thumbed her nose at the (stupid) public by telling them that she and her fellow experts know better.

About such people Hoving says: “I have found through long experience that art experts can be ignorant, unseeing, arrogant, and foolish.”+False Impressions: The Hunt for Big-time Art Fakes, Thomas Hoving; 1996, P. 77 Nothing Murphy said would incline anyone to dispute him.

— o —

Far too many people these days think of art primarily as an investible. As a restaurateur said to me, “I bought your painting because I liked it. I would buy a Picasso because it’s an investment.” Corporate art advisor Jeffrey Deitch writes:

Several economic, demographic, and cultural trends began to converge in the late 1970s. ... First, there was the coming of age of the heralded “baby boom” generation. There were thousands of well-educated young professional people who had studied art history at college, and who had benefited from the popularization of the art museums. American society in general was becoming more “Europeanized,” more conscious of fine cuisine, fashion, and fine art. However, it was the inflation panic of the late 1970s - early 1980s that was the real economic fuel behind the new vitality of the art market. This newly prosperous, aesthetically oriented generation, and their parents as well, saw their cash eroding in value and rushed to put their money into ... assets such as art. Business magazines began to promote the booming art market, and auction houses began their remarkably successful marketing blitz. ... Buying art was no longer perceived as a pure luxury. It actually made business sense. A whole new generation emerged, who perceived of buying art as buying solid assets, not merely an indulgence.+The Business of Art, Jeffrey Deitch, “Art Advisory Services - The Age of the Art Advisor”, compiled by Lee Caplin (Published in Cooperation with the National Endowment for the Arts); 1989, P. 286

This had occurred before. According to Gimpel:

The marquis de Coulanges wrote in 1675 to Madame de Sevigné: ‘Pictures are as good as gold bars, there has never been a better investment. You will always get double for them if you want to sell. ...’

Even Louis XIV was aware of the possibilities of the picture market. Like the abbé Louis de Fouquet, he knew works by contemporary painters would increase in value after the artist’s death.+The Cult of Art ~ Against Art and Artists, Jean Gimpel; 1969, P. 78

For some people investing in art is serious business. Part way through his testimony during the Matter of Rothko, the aforementioned Frank Lloyd said:

... a great part of art buying is done by some — they are called Art Funds. Private collectors cannot afford any more to buy expensive paintings, and it’s usually banks which buy art portfolios and sell these art portfolios to their clients. There are many banks in Europe that have art funds, ... If you go to ... let’s say the Union Bank of Switzerland, and say, “I would like to invest some money,” they would ask you, “Don’t buy any miracle shares. Buy some gold and buy some bonds, and we have something very special for you, we have an art fund. These art funds outperform everything ...”

... all the banks in Switzerland, and in Belgium and in Italy, are potential art buyers and if you go to the Union Bank of Switzerland, and in the basement there you will see 200 pictures on the walls. ... This is our problem in the art business, that there is too much speculation going on, and not enough collecting, but we can’t change that.

As Seldes concludes: “It was a dizzying prospect Lloyd presented. Was this where all art was headed? Had artists struggled over the centuries to have their unique contributions to culture held in Swiss bank vaults until anonymous Liechtenstein entrepreneurs determined the time was ripe to pop them onto the market?”+The Legacy of Mark Rothko, Lee Seldes; 1978, P. 237

To be sure, not all artists have had their work turned into investibles. But as Hughes points out:

The flight of speculative capital to the art market has done more to alter and distort the way we experience painting and sculpture in the last twenty years than any style, movement or polemic. ... Only when an object is seen as truly useless, it seems, can capitalism see it as truly priceless ... [and] ... art is the only commodity whose price is purely and intrinsically manipulative and has no objective relationship to any social machinery except those of ‘rarity’ and promotion.+Nothing if not Critical, Robert Hughes; 1990

In this scenario, the art itself is incidental or “useless”. And a vast majority of the public is excluded. As Geldzahler so generously pointed out, they can’t afford to play the game.

Regardless of its indiscretions, with all the “speculative capital” floating around the art market you might wonder why any artist would protest. A few years back, U.S. painter Andrew Wyeth sold a suite of his paintings — The Helga Pictures — to a U.S. collector for $6,000,000. Good price. Rich artist. But three years later, the collector sold the same paintings to the Japanese for $46,000,000.+Globe and Mail, “Wyeth collection fetches top price,” Associated Press; November 13, 1989 Great mark up (767%) if you know what you’re doing. And, writes Seldes, “Several times during the last year of his life, Rothko stormed into Marlborough on Fifty-seventh Street and demanded to see their price lists. Somehow he had heard that their mark-up was higher than they had led him to believe. One Marlborough employee has reported that she was told to switch the prices while Rothko cooled his heels.”+The Legacy of Mark Rothko, Lee Seldes; 1978, P. 98

More importantly, treating art as objects designed to delight and/or be hoarded by the well-to-do for purposes of prestige or shrewd financial dealing, perverts what visual artists are doing. In the “world of commodities [Rothko and his associates] so much despised”+About Rothko, Dore Ashton; 1983, P. 131 the insights visual artists are capable of offering become, far and away, secondary, even tertiary. Hearing that a Picasso or a Monet or a Rothko just sold for so many millions makes art seem way out of reach for most people. The fallout? Often people shun or despise what they cannot afford.

It would be wrong to say that art dealers, historians and curators are, by and large, a bunch of crooks concerned only with the lowest common denominator: greed. “But,” as Hughes says,

there is no agreement in the ... art world on how critics, museum curators or dealers should behave. What are the limits of cupidity and influence-peddling? How far do they mask themselves as normal? The question of where self-dealing and conflict of interest begin is very rarely asked: the boat must not be rocked.+Nothing if not Critical, Robert Hughes; 1990

Art experts (and I use the term loosely) have placed a few dams on an elaborate network of canals which feed a main stream that gurgles only when gatekeepers want it to. Often times visual artists are celebrated primarily because they or their works spark controversies, which isn’t that hard to do. Further, and perhaps worse, the market driven art establishment’s preoccupation with originality (sic) novelty has prevented a coherent relationship between visual artists and public from developing. Deeming certain visual artists over others to be “collectable” has turned forgery into a lucrative practice. Huge chunks of art-cash each year go to charlatans; adept fakers who have figured out how to bilk the system. Much of the rest lines the pockets of people with no real interest in the stuff, people like Frank Lloyd who candidly said, “I collect money, not art.”+The Legacy of Mark Rothko, Lee Seldes; 1978, P. 61

In a market driven art world, visual artists are not providing a service to humankind, they are producing baubles that the well-heeled can squabble over. Baubles which are then, eventually, presented to the public as marvellous works of art. Visual art has a purpose and a function in society, but this isn’t it. Rather than fostering a healthy artistic ecosystem, if you will, the art market’s legacy is an aesthetic framework hitched to arbitrary points of reference. Like camouflaged ships and tanks in World War I (which art professor Roy Behrens says was inspired by cubism+Art & Camouflage: Concealment in Nature, Art and War, Roy R. Behrens; 1981, P. 37-46), the razzle-dazzle makes it difficult for challengers to hit targets.

Visual art is a precursor of human awareness and knowledge. As G. W. F. Hegel said almost two centuries ago, “art makes actual what is essentially real and true.” Visual artists are able to give the intangible tangible form. This function is invaluable to our species; parcelling it off, to be sold to the highest bidder, is detrimental to the whole, not just to visual artists.

Obliging visual artists to render their artistic “finds” inscrutable, so that only alleged experts can interpret them, is patently absurd. Artists being “discovered” by a dealer or curator before being taken seriously by a host of collectors — with an eye primarily on how much money they can make — is worse than just superfluous, it’s debilitating. People are right to be cynical of the visual art world. It’s little wonder that artists who play to museums and the market are often accused of selling out. Third-party endorsement is a cataract on the discipline of visual art.

Robert G Mears