Brunching with the Borgias or Money Laundering in the Art World

There was a time when the top art buyers in the world were also its cultural leaders.  Popes, emperors, kings, and the aristocracy were the patrons of the art world, its trendsetters, and its critics.  At the top of the socio-economic ladder, they were also the most educated and sophisticated members of society.  Their tastes ruled what was fashionable and their ideas decided what was good art.  Art was once a symbol of culture and wealth.  Buying art showed you had arrived or moved up the socio-econmic ladder.  Consequently, people once bought art the way people buy new cars today.  The Medici family in Florence is the classic example of education, wealth and culture combined in art buyers and patrons during the Renaissance.

Today the highest priced work of living artists looks like no one has ever looked at it on purpose.  It's junk.  It's impossible to imagine a connoisseur of stainless steel balloon animals.  No education, culture, thought or sensitivity is necessary for the consumption of this art.  It seems incomprehensible until you understand what's really going on.  The fastest selling, highest priced art isn't bought by art lovers.  It's bought by criminals and criminal organizations to launder money.  The opacity of high level art sales is ideally suited for money laundering.  Anyone can buy a million dollar painting in complete secrecy, no questions asked.  The buyer plunks down the cash, and buys the art.  There's no oversight, no safeguards.  And apparently, that's what's going on.

The buyers of all that bazillion dollar art probably never even look at what they just bought, because it's all sold again almost immediately.  Instead of the benevolent guiding influence of cultured art patrons like the Medici, what we've got instead are the Borgias, poisoning everything before we even get to the table.

What this means for actual, living artists is that you better hang on to your hat.  None of this has anything to do with you or being an artist or making art.  Just do it.  Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.

Deborah Dendler website
Deborah Dendler Facebook page

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/13/arts/design/art-proves-attractive-refuge-for-money-launderers.html?_r=0
http://www.widewalls.ch/the-art-world-money-laundering-february-2015/
http://mileswmathis.com/launder.pdf
http://www.hopesandfears.com/hopes/culture/art/214699-guide-to-laundering-money-art

Short artist statements and other haiku

Drowsy Cat

I can't believe how much computer time goes along with being an artist today.  If you'd told me when I was in art school more than thirty years ago how much time I would spend now every day on my laptop, looking up stuff, futzing with digital photos and writing (oh, excuse me, word processing), I would haven't have believed you.  I'm doing it and I still don't believe it.

For me, the most onerous and least enjoyable parts of being an artist is writing artist statements.  I just don't see the point.  I'm a visual artist, trying to communicate visually.  Why does anyone need a written explanation?  Plus, for me, it's insulting.  It's like an admission of failure.  If I have to explain it, my work hasn't communicated whatever it was that compelled me to make it in the first place.

Right now I'm wrestling with three separate statements for three completely different things, so I can't just use one statement for all three.  Each has to be 50 words.  This is a relatively new and pernicious form of the artist statement:  the 50 word statement-as-sound byte.  What am I supposed to get across in 50 words?  I've got grocery lists longer than that.  I have one 50 worder almost finished, but the blasted thing sounds like some kind of constipated haiku translated badly from the original Sanskrit.  I'm better with a few more words, but not too many.  A hundred is good.  Five hundred starts to sound like blather.  A thousand gets really grandiose.  And then there are the places that want statements that are 1,000 characters or less.  What's a thousand characters between friends?  Well, it's about 300 words and somewhat blathery.  But manageable.

The horrible truth is that it's probably all about search engines and search algorithms.  Google searches text, so the artist statements add some words to an image so Google knows how to sort it.  The crazy thing to me is that none of this is real.  I mean, yes, the show is in a real gallery and it is really taking place, and yes, there will be cards stuck to the wall with artist statements printed on them.  But what's that got to do with anything?  Who cares, and what difference does it make?  I hate to get all existential about this, but none of it is as important as, for instance, what's the best kind of chocolate.


“An artist cannot speak about his art any more than a plant can discuss horticulture.”                                   Jean Cocteau


Deborah Dendler website
Deborah Dendler Facebook page

Am I famous yet?

Violin Soloist Rehearsing with Conductor

Where I went to art school, sculpture students were not allowed to save any of their sculptures for the first year.  Every day you sculpt a clay portrait and/or figure; every Friday, you take it apart and put the clay back in the clay cans.  After an entire year of study - making figures and portraits every day, and saving none of them - the second year sculpture student is allowed to fire or cast a "good one" every now and then.  The older I get, the more I see the wisdom of this.  The goal is learning, not cranking out a finished product.  It's lethal to an artist to be focused on a goal other than bringing a work out of your imagination and into the real world.  If you're focused on selling, that will be reflected clearly in your work, which will be commercial art, not fine art.

Commercial art has to be zappy and attention grabbing enough to stand out from the crowd.  Being advertisement oriented, it has to get its point across immediately.  Flashy photos and CGA are everywhere; they're a dime a dozen.  They make sense to people who are increasingly living their lives on a screen.  Fine art is a whole other thing.  For one thing, it takes longer to appreciate and understand.  The finer it is, the more is appreciated with every viewing.  Fine art also takes longer to create than commercial art, usually a LOT longer.  That's why there's so much less of it.

The cultural obsession on celebrities is really odd.  Celebrities and their fame are fodder for the media and promoted relentlessly.  It's as though people think that if you're famous, you must be rich, or happy, or both.  Our culture is big on instant gratification.  The world view promulgated by popular culture is that money is all you need:  buy your way into success, health and happiness.  The instant gratification idea is antithetical to really learning how to do something, because really learning how to do anything takes years of delayed gratification.  Practice, practice, practice.  Everything really worth doing in life takes discipline, hard work and usually some self sacrifice.  And practice.

deborahdendler.com

www.facebook.com/DeborahDendlerSculpture