a personal profit.

14Dec07

I’ve spent the last few months delving into issues revolving around the contemporary art scene.

Granted, the terms money and art have a longstanding and incestuous love-hate relationship. While galleries play an important role as filters, determining what will ascend into the mainstream, many artists operate outside and find ways to show their work. And, money is not always the motivation behind the art.

Read on.

A Richard Prince cowboy print sold for $3,401,000 at Sotheby’s last month in New York. The lot was initially listed between $1.5 and 2 million. Jeff Koons’ Hanging Heart surpassed the cap of $20 million as the hammer price reached $23,561,000 at the same Contemporary Art auction. These are just two examples of art created in the past decade that are raking in millions. “It’s not what’s good or bad anymore,” said emerging artist, Elisabeth Py. “It’s what’s pricey, and there are a few people deciding the future of art.”

Committees have long governed the art world. From the Salon days in Paris when the academic jury decided which art was acceptable, and therefore which art sold, to today’s contemporary art fairs, like the Armory Show, and last week’s Art Basel Miami, the committees play an important role in determining the future of art. Kate Loughlin, a representative for The Armory Show, expressed that the five-member selection committee looks to auctions as a precedent for judging the value of new art. Auctions have long been not only arbiters for pricing art, but they also play an important role in fueling trends within art. In addition to buying and selling, auctions reinforce the popularity of an artist, which inevitably translates into the financial value of an artist.

Since last February when Sotheby’s sold seven works by controversial graffiti artist, Banksy, his oil, enamel, acrylic and spray-paintings have been selling at auctions like wildfire. Other auction houses like Bonham and Bloomsbury kept the pace selling Banksy works by the dozen. Despite maintaining his anonymity, refusing interviews and publicity events, Banksy often responds to the commercial art world. Following an April 2007 Sotheby’s sale of his work, he posted on his website an auctioneer presiding over a rapt crowd, with the caption “I can’t believe you morons actually buy this shit.” Yet, buy they do. The October sale of The Rude Lord at Sotheby’s in London was the highest selling of Banksy lot, grossing 322,900 pounds (roughly $660,000) and sparking many to speculate whether tastes were shifting, money ruining art.

Granted, the terms money and art have a longstanding and incestuous love-hate relationship. This is especially evident with the globalization of the art world. “The art market is more global then ever before,” said Armory’s Loughlin. “Most galleries have buyers from all around the world and I think we will not evaluate cities’ markets individually anymore because people are buying from everywhere.” While galleries play an important role as filters, determining what will ascend into the mainstream, many artists operate outside and find ways to show their work. And, money is not always the motivation behind the art.

Iris Arnaud smiled, her voice quivering, “is my English alright,” she asked before inhaling from a half-burnt Marlboro Light. She stands just over five feet tall. Her blue eyes glowed, despite their emptiness. A strand fell from her loose blonde ponytail. She was distant, yet direct as she described her reality. She took four prints from a large manila envelope; a woman resembling Arnaud haunted each image.

“She loved the singer Serge Gainsbourg,” said Arnaud, pointing to scribbled song lyrics and portraits of the French musician that framed the woman’s central position in one of the pictures. The words “Forever Gainsbourg” in bold, black font formed a tangent line from the woman’s head. In another image, the woman stood in the street, a layer of thick, red graffiti transposed the word, “YOU” over her legs and finer, black script read, On t’aime. All four images contained the name, “Lola,” the years “1957” and “2006,” and a thin, red line running from top to bottom or left to right. Arnaud explained the concept of fil rouge, the binding thread. “It is like her pulse,” Arnaud said.

The woman known to most as Lola, was simply Maman to Iris Arnaud. “This project is really personal to me because it’s about my mum,” Arnaud said. “She was really sick and actually now she’s dead.”

Laurence Arnaud’s life mimicked the artificial laughter of her beloved Gainsbourg’s song about poor Lola. After struggling with bouts of depression and alcoholism, the “Pauvre Lola,” took her life in June of 2006. “It wasn’t easy,” Arnaud hesitantly admitted. Iris Arnaud fled Paris and moved to New York City soon thereafter. “I just could not stay in that place that reminded me so much of my mother,” she said. “I want to thank her, since she’s the reason I am here in New York today.”

Arnaud sought to express her emotions following her mother’s death, and LolArtistik was the result. The 26-year-old did not peruse the family albums, but rather chose photographs from when her mother worked as a print model in her mid-20s, immortalizing her at an age similar to Iris’s own. She created the images not thinking where they might end up one day. They represented a collage of her life. She layered notes that maman would leave her as a young girl with photographs of street graffiti that she discovered when she first moved to New York. Another image contained Lola’s death announcement. Arnaud graphically fused these elements and transposed the enlarged compilations on Plexiglas. “I don’t know why, but the destiny helped me do my art, though it caused hurt,” she said as she kneaded her hands.

Work from LolArtistik will showcase in the exposition, Don’t Call It Street Art!, which opens on December 15, 2007. “My mother was the only person who supported my art,” said Arnaud, “and she would have liked this kind of event.” This opening marks Arnaud’s début outside the university sphere and her first exhibition outside of France.

Arnaud is one of ten artists who redefine the definition of “street art” by bringing elements of the urban streets into the visible, white cube. Taking place at Virginie Sommet’s Studio/Gallery 173 on Canal Street, the group show is curated by urban expressionist artist, Thibault Sandret. Since moving to New York in 1998, Virginie Sommet would open her home once a month to feature her own creations, as well as the work of other artists. Studio/Gallery 173 is Sommet’s newest alternative art space that exhibits contemporary artwork for emerging artists, providing visibility outside the world of Chelsea galleries. Yet, Chelsea remains synonymous with art gallery. Built largely from abandoned warehouses from 1996 to 1999, approximately 200 galleries comprise the west hip of Manhattan.

Amidst Chelsea white boxes, 508 West 25th Street is a vacant garage, left empty on purpose. It has become an open haven for experimental art.

Among cutout, plywood trees that were strewn throughout the unfinished space, Ragnar Kjartansson strummed variations of two notes – A and E minor – on his glossy, cherry guitar from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. without break. Black wayfarer sunglasses, recalling those worn by Tom Cruise circa Risky Business, shielded his eyes from the single spotlight that encircled him for the show’s 10-day run. Breathy oohs and aahs accompanied the repetitive, yet never identical tune. Passers-by paused when crossing the garage’s entryway; some entered.

It was neither his first exhibition, nor was it the Icelandic artist’s inauguration into the international art scene. Yet when Kjartansson arrived in mid-October for his latest show, Folksong, the rumors surrounding his future were mere hearsay. Since graduating from the Icelandic Academy of the Arts in 2001, Kjartansson has presented over a dozen solo shows in five countries. “Art is for me like the Blues,” said Kjartansson. “I use it to purify my soul. Maybe I’m a romantic on a hungry pursuit for the ultimate art kick.”

From the time Kjartansson was a child, he lived in his own fantasy world. He did not fight to study art. “I was surrounded by art my whole life,” he said recalling his parents’ endless theater rehearsals where everything and nothing happened. “It was very organic.”

It is hard to classify the 31-year-old artist as his art combines performance, video, music, sculpture and painting. Art is both life and an escape from life for Kjartansson. Kjartansson continually reinvents his character, transforming his identity and reality while he maintains a sense of authenticity to himself and his work.

The German word, magenschmerzen, is his favorite. Translating as “stomachache,” he consistently strives for the awkward tension. “It’s about the unexplainable, all-surrounding pain, and the beauty in that pain,” said Kjartansson. “You know that constant feeling the moment right before you sneeze, or orgasm, and it never really happens?”

A self-professed egomaniac, Kjartansson is often physically present within his pieces. He likes being front and center as he’s also the lead singer of the chart –topping electric-rock band, Trabant, which he formed with friends while in art school. Kjartansson loves the element of show. He keeps a recording of a 2006 exhibition sponsored by Galerie Adler in Frankfurt, Germany on his MacBook Pro. It opened to a pink, satiny backdrop with a Big Band stationed sur scène. Ragnar Kjartansson stood behind the vintage stand-up mic, his dirty blonde hair slicked à la Buddy Holly. It was almost an image from a Lawrence Welk broadcast; however the constant, eerie droning prevailed, explaining the title, “Sorrow Conquers Happiness.”

Markús Thór Andrésson is a curator at Bard College’s Center for Curatorial Studies where Folksong débuted prior. The fellow Icelander expressed the cultural implications of Kjartansson’s piece that represented a European’s bona fide vision of Americana, rife with clichés. Despite its avant-garde nature, the mise-en-scène suggested a familiarity with traditional themes of landscape painting and neo-classical dramatic stage setting.

Taking inspiration from body-minded performance art of the 1970s, the physical presence of the artist within the art gave the illusion of exhaustion. “But it’s fake,” said Kjartansson who claims that it’s all, “an honest workingman’s day.” He doesn’t work for the money, but instead for the bliss of the moment. “It’s scary to talk to kids in art school who are just worried about success,” he said. “That is not art. You can strive for success, but in your heart you have to go for something else and then it gets interesting.” Money creates boundaries in art. However Kjartansson is a businessman. “It’s totally business-like to be true to yourself.”

Upon returning to Iceland, he learned that he would become the youngest Icelandic artist to ever participate in a Venice Biennale when he exposes in the 2009 show. Perhaps it’s the thrill of the unknown that maintains Kjartansson’s indefinable intrigue. “I think painting is so uninteresting because it sets a net value,” he claims. “That’s why I like performance art; it’s not possible to buy or rent.”

Truthfulness for Kjartansson directly includes the spectator – striving to leave them at least some feeling of, “what the hell was that?” Feeding directly off his viewers, he recognizes the different audiences, especially within the art ‘chop shop’ of Chelsea. He intentionally placed this piece in the open, keeping the spectator guessing about its meaning – whether it’s art or music; street artist or beggar. “You don’t know until you look at the sign – I like that feeling,” he said with a chuckle.

Wotjek Ulrich is another artist who does not set boundaries. Instead the Polish artist believes life is a never-ending misunderstanding, “an illusion of results.” He does not attempt to answer questions in his art, but rather to examine possibilities.

Ulrich comes from the southwest of Poland where scars of World War II have not fully healed. The Sowie Mountains, home to the cavernous underground complex called Der Riese, belonged to Germany before becoming Polish territory after the war. When the Nazis invaded, they forced prisoners to finish constructing the labyrinth of tunnels even after the War ended. Ulrich comes from a place where any semblance of hope was a mere illusion; hopelessness was the only reality. Although Ulrich has lived in New York City for 15 years, he remains shrouded by the past.

Ulrich crouched down to grab his pliers and swept the unkempt hair from his forehead. He preferred to handle the wires of his video installations himself. “No one knows how to do it right,” he claimed.

Through a doorway that resembled the lightproof entry to a darkroom, the adjacent room had three large movie screens forming a U-shape. Each screen featured a different segment of the non-linear, wordless script. “My work deals with illusion,” said Ulrich. “It’s a representation of a three-dimensional world and a play on that world.” His main influences are the short stories of Samuel Beckett and a single paragraph of Neil Postman’s, “The Great Symbol Drain,” yet Ulrich’s work is universal. “You just need a basic understanding of life and the status of life,” he emphasized.

He filmed the triptych, “Scumdance,” in the Der Riese caves, without referring to their sordid past. Instead he created a mythological journey. Seventeen minutes in total, the three screens were not in synch and repeated much like a video game, the hero constantly searching in vain.

Despite employing the traditional formula of a tableau, Ulrich substituted slow, close pans for the energy and detail that brush strokes once conveyed. “The problem is still the same,” he said. “The tools are just changing. That’s it. I’m not afraid to change.”

He does not rely on others – from the conception, creation, placement, installation, disassembly, and especially schmoozing – Ulrich prefers to do it alone. “It’s just how I work,” he pronounced with a discernable Polish accent. “I decide it all by myself without thinking of what’s going to sell. If you’re thinking about commercial success, you can forget about art.”
He believes that money makes trouble. “I’m just looking for the best kind of place for my art,” Ulrich said. He believes that most focus on how to sell and make a profit. If it weren’t for wanting to place his art publicly, Ulrich would avoid any form of contact with art institutions. His exhibition, Scum, opened at White Box (The Annex) in early October and extended two weeks past its initial end, running through mid-November.

An offshoot of the not-for-profit White Box, (The Annex) is the Gallery’s space usually reserved for lesser-known artists. (The Annex) is located amidst artist studios, designers, other small galleries, and the headquarters of Martha Stewart Omnimedia. Ulrich was disillusioned to discover that he wouldn’t be in the main location on 10thAvenue and 26th Street, but rather on the 14th floor of a converted Chelsea warehouse on 11th and 26th Street. “In general it doesn’t make any difference whether it’s non-profit,” he said, expressing frustration.

Historically not-for-profit spaces distinguish themselves from the art market (galleries, auction houses, museums) by consciously refusing to make profit off art and artists. “One has to be careful today about the non-profits which are no longer not-for-profit even though they operate in that way,” said Natasha Becker, a curator who worked with White Box last year. Although non-profits, like White Box, do not buy and sell art, Becker disclosed that they buy and sell the idea of ‘an alternative non-profit art space.’

“The contemporary art world likes to pretend that it’s not ALL about the market,” said Becker. “So having a few token non-profits around is good for business.”

It’s no wonder why artists stick to art.

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Tags: art, auction, contemporary art, gallery, money, New York City, profit