Innocence Blog

Your taste determines what kind of art you like to look at. Taste is intuitive, and also learned. You just know what you like. But when you are asked to explain why you like, say, a Salvador Dali over a Stephen Prina, you are hard pressed. “It’s more beautiful to me,” you reply. The key phrase here is “to me”.

As some of you know, I’m the editor of Escape into Life, arts and culture webzine. We publish art reviews, feature articles, and interviews. Most of the writers have a background in art history, and are familiar with many different schools of art.

Most of our readers, however, do not have art history backgrounds. As a result, they tend to respond more viscerally. There is less intellect involved and this is not always a bad thing. For example, when Aurelio Madrid published a review on Stephen Prina entitled, “Difficult Art”, one reader replied:

I must be stupid, unaware, not intelligent and extremely uncultured because I don't get this thing you're critiquing. When I'm looking at it ... I want to see the intelligence behind it but I only see the naked-reality that there is an unattractive, un-engaging, un-organized collection of dots simply dirtying up someone's perfectly good white wall.

Maybe the reader overlooked or had simply forgotten Aurelio’s description of the work's origin at the beginning of his review:

The general idea for the project is that Prina will recreate each of the 556 Édouard Manet paintings, as recorded by a (now obsolete) 1960’s catalogue raisonné. Prina does not recreate the works as direct copies; rather he uses only the actual size & title of the original Manet. Each work in the series is a diptych. One ½ of the diptych contains a “legend” of the whole of Manet’s output, represented by thumbnail outlines of each painting (with a number). This is a monochrome (ivory colored) lithograph printed on white paper (in a black frame, under glass). The “legend” is coupled with Prina’s re-painting. Prina’s re-paintings are painted using an ivory colored ink wash on white paper (black frame, under glass), with no visual reference to the original (the size & title are the only similarity). And so the project continues until Prina paints the 556th Manet.

Most likely, the anonymous commenter drifted off at about the third or fourth sentence (as I nearly did myself the first time I read it!). That’s not to say Aurelio should have excluded it; rather it’s essential to understanding the context of the work. Without this context we merely see dots on a canvas, some lighter some darker.

Where Aurelio sees a tradition of minimalism, conceptualism, and “institutional critique”, the anonymous commenter sees, in his words, “fartwork.” He goes on to say, “When I see this ‘Fartwork’ I get sick from the fumes of it's own arrogance.”

Another word commonly associated with taste and art: arrogance. Art critics are arrogant buffoons, declares the anonymous commenter, because they deem that a work of art has value when in truth it has none. Art critics resort to making up ridiculous stories about the “meaning” of the art; art critics fall back on jargon and intellectual babble to justify their impressions. For if the work had value, then at least it would be aesthetically pleasing.

And here we find ourselves in a delicious paradox. “Value” in the art world does not seem to correlate at all with “value” in the people world. Let’s take a look at the most expensive Post-War painting sold at an auction . . .

Mark Rothko’s White Center, which was created in 1950, sold at Sotheby’s New York auction in 2007 for $72.8 million.

Who can explain this price tag?

Don Thompson can. Thompson’s book called, The $12 Million Stuffed Shark: The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art, explores the concept of branding in art and skillfully reveals the complex relationship between marketing, mystique, and influence.

“Art professionals talk about Impressionist art in terms of boldness, depth, use of light, transparency, and color,” he writes, “(and) they talk about contemporary artists in terms of innovation, investment value, and the artist being ‘hot’.”

Okay, so our value code changes with contemporary art, and the new value code makes critical judgment slippery at best. At least with Picasso we have some ground to stand on when we declare a Cubist painting as beautiful, appealing, or interesting. But what happens when we’re given Andy Warhol’s Green Car Crash (Burning Car 1), which was created in 1964, and sold for $72.7 million at Christie’s New York auction in 2007.


And so—not unlike the anonymous commenter—I rely on my aesthetic sensibilities. And my aesthetic sensibilities tell me that this work by Andy Warhol is not beautiful. My gut tells me, “It’s too green.”

Does my opinion of the work change when I discover that:

Between the years 1962 and 1964, Andy Warhol created a fantastically morbid series known as Death and Disaster. These serigraphs were all based on grainy, black and white tabloid images of race riots, suicide, fatal accident scenes and instruments of death including electric chairs, guns and atomic bomb blasts. The arguably best-known and most gruesome component of this macabre lot is Warhol's set of Car Crashes, of which the five "Burning Cars" are extremely highly prized.

Here we see Green Car Crash (Green Burning Car I), created by Warhol and his newly-hired assistant Gerard Malanga (b. 1943) in 1963 from an image taken by photographer John Whitehead and published in the June 3 issue of Newsweek. Whitehead's shot captured the aftermath of the fiery conclusion of a police chase in Seattle. The car that had been pursued overturned at 60 m.p.h., ejecting its driver at a speed sufficient to impale his body on a climbing spike in a utility pole.

Green Car Crash was the only Warhol "Burning Car" painting of five (all based on Whitehead's photograph) to utilize a color other than black and white. It had been privately held for 30 years and generated a tremendous amount of interest in potential buyers. (About.com)

I must say that with this knowledge I have a slightly greater appreciation of the work. Like with Aurelio Madrid’s elucidation of Stephen Prina’s methodology, at least now I understand the context. But on the whole, Green Car Crash does not provoke me to tears and I surely wouldn’t hang it on my living room wall unless Andy Warhol did it and it happened to be worth $72.7 million.

Which brings us to money. Or maybe we’ve been circling around money all along, like a hungry shark in search of prey. Thompson’s masterful thesis gives a perfectly rational explanation for why contemporary art is priced the way it is. There are two major reasons.

1.) Non-contemporary work is becoming an endangered species.

The recent surge in art prices is driven by a shortage in non-contemporary work. While new museums are being built, existing museums expanding, and private collections growing, the availability of masterpieces becomes scarce. Thompson sees a direct correlation between this shortage and the price explosion of contemporary art. He writes, “Contemporary art has achieved its current importance in resale markets in part because the best examples of other schools of art are disappearing from the market, and are never again likely to appear for sale.”

2.) Branding rules the art world.

“You are nobody in contemporary art until you are branded.” (Thompson)

Branding in contemporary art works in much the same way that it does in consumer products, or for that matter, luxury goods. People tend to buy branded products over generic ones because they offer a sense of security. I trust Colgate. I do not trust the toothpaste at the Dollar General, especially after I discovered that a Chinese-made toothpaste contained trace amounts of a poison used in some antifreeze.

Luxury goods offer a different kind of security; they give the reassurance of "prestige" or “elegant fashion.”

Contemporary art seems to need a lot of branding because even “art schools and critics can’t agree on the merit of a work” (Thompson). Furthermore, branding adds personality and distinctiveness.

When Thompson talks about the 25 major contemporary artists, he is mainly talking about artists whose work is represented by branded dealers such as Larry Gagosian, bought by branded collectors such as Charles Saatchi, and sold in the auctions of Christie’s and Sotheby’s, which are brands themselves, and by extension, brands of paintings.

“In the end,” he writes, “the question ‘what is judged to be valuable contemporary art’ is determined first by major dealers, later by branded auction houses, a bit by museum curators who stage special shows, very little by art critics, and hardly at all by buyers.”

I mentioned that I’m the editor of Escape into Life, arts and culture webzine. What I didn’t tell you is that I’m introducing a new dimension into the site in less than two weeks.

I have asked a select group of artists to auction their work on my site for the first time. I hired a designer and artist in his own right, named Christopher Cox, who designed the popular site ChangeTheThought. He was commissioned to redesign Escape into Life with an auction/virtual arts gallery. The purpose of the auction is to draw attention to the art.

To bid on a work, viewers on the auction page will click on a bid link that will take them to eBay. Bidding on eBay gives us a larger pool of bidders, combined with the readership of Escape.

Those works that don’t sell in the first round will be moved to the online store. The store will give us more flexibility than the auction—we can set fixed prices for artwork and hold a larger inventory--but I suspect the auction will be more of an attraction.

What are my criteria for choosing the “select group of artists”?

Let me quote an article from the New York Times, “Maybe we can once and for all stop defaulting to easy categorical boundaries between high and low, and discriminate instead between the well made and the shoddy.”

Well-made art is my sole criterion. I'm looking for visually appealing art and essential quality. Let the frenzied mind, fixated on inventing something new and different, rest for awhile.

More essays by the author can be found at Escape into Life

Image Credits:
Turquoise Marilyn (1964)by Andy Warhol
Exquisite Corpse: The Complete Paintings of Manet, 208 of 556 (2004) by Stephen Prina;Partie de Croquet (The Croquet Game), 1873
White Center (1950) by Mark Rothko
Green Car Crash; Burning Car 1 (1964) by Andy Warhol

Nearly three months after we had broken up, my ex-girlfriend and I continued to see each other. Both of us were dating, but neither of us had found anyone we liked. You could say we were happy, not as a couple, but as two people who enjoyed spending time together. And the sex, well, you get the point . . .

Before we broke up, she lived with me in my house. In the beginning, it was exhilarating and rife with possibilities. This was the stage of the relationship when you picture living in Europe together, or on an island. But then, the novelty wore off and I wanted more and more time to myself. I started to say things like, "I want to be left alone tonight." By the end of the relationship, it seemed like we hated each other. That grim statement by Sartre, "Hell is other people," echoed in my mind. It wasn't going to work . . .

My difficulty was loving her. But love shouldn't be difficult at all. I've loved before; love is the easiest thing in the world. Love is effortless, a joy.

Maybe if I would have fallen in love with her, then I could have effortlessly loved her. You know, the romantic, feverish feeling, the tingling, anxiety, and butterflies--that never happened to me. We even talked about this. "I'm not head over heels for you," I told her bluntly on one of our morning walks, "But I do have feelings for you."

What were those feelings? I never really examined them. The feelings I did examine were the ones I didn't have. I was obsessed with the void, the emptiness, the missing piece, and I constantly brought it up, as if to safeguard myself from the tidal wave of her affections.

Despite my weirdly anti-social behavior, we grew together as friends, as partners, and I believe she accepted my shortcomings. We argued and disagreed on many things, but in truth, we were hopelessly entangled, psychologically, emotionally, and physically. Whether it was love or something else, stuff just happened, and Ariel and I were bound in some mysterious way.

Now that she has another boyfriend, I guess you could say I'm coming to terms with what I lost.

I remember one day in particular. We were spending the weekend in Chicago. At night we had plans to go to dinner and then to the movies. During the day, I wanted to take her to the Art Institute. It's the largest collection of art in the city, and my mother graduated from the School of the Art Institute. So, I loved being there. It reminded me of my mother.

Ariel wanted to be close to me. She loved me . . . I can't deny her that! I kept pulling back from her, though. I narrowed my focus, or I distracted myself with my obsession . . .

Did I tell you about my obsession? I have many, but on this day, I felt as though I did not love her. The entire day felt like a sort of pantomime, an act, and the mere thought of faking it was beginning to disturb me. What was worse I gazed at the couples who appeared all around us, radiantly attractive in their picture-perfect worlds.

We walked through the cold, granite park that day,
ice-skaters breezed by in merry furies, loops upon loops,
maddened by the wind,
with bright shining faces and bright shining eyes,
and everywhere I looked
couples burrowed in each others’ arms.

This was January, and our faces were red from cold air. That's when I noticed all of the couples wearing knit hats and gloves. I stood by the ice rink and Ariel took a picture of me. It was too cold to smile.

I suggested the museum,
the first floor was empty
except for two high school kids who played hooky
and jested beside the glass of Renaissance art;
I stared at them meekly, as if I envied their sweet
adolescent rebellion. They were drenched in
whatever I wanted.

The high school kids. I was jealous of them for being so blithe and carefree. They were oblivious. But I saw them, I peered into their self-contained world. The boy wore a jean's jacket with a chain hanging out of one of the pockets, and the girl had a seductively sweet face. The slightest thing the boy said made the girl laugh. Sulking, I continued through the museum with Ariel.

You lingered in the early art periods;
I approached a Grecian bust, once perfect,
now broken,
scuffed forehead, damaged nose and some dust.
A security guard paced the length of a wall,
I asked what exhibit was showing,
“de Kooning just left,” said the Chicago accent.

We walked through the galleries, and I noticed more couples in love. But I must have stopped noticing them because I was suddenly engrossed in art. It was Edvard Munch's, The Girl by the Window, which commanded my attention. The colors, a mixture of shades of blue, seemed to emanate from the canvas. Ariel was standing right next to me and we were both transfixed.

On the second floor, Munch’s bedroom girl,
we both agreed, “a mystery of emotion,
haunting, beautiful, a dream . . .”
That brief instant was gone forever, like the day,
and the next, dominated by a hunchbacked curator
who lectured to the floor about floating blocks and cubes,
“both subject and
object moving,” (a preacher
went to see his lover, a dancer in a midnight club)
amorous obsessions, I thought.

In the next gallery, a large crowd was gathered before a giant canvas spanning the entire wall. A hunchbacked curator gave a short lecture mostly in anecdotes about the abstract masterpiece. To me, the painting looked like so many random lines and squares with splotches of color. But apparently, it was a painting of a nightclub, and the story involved a preacher who came to the nightclub to see his mistress perform.