““Their desperate voluntarism says something about the generally exploitative conditions of the art world such that people are willing to become victims of a celebrity artist in the hopes of somehow breaking into the show biz themselves. And at sub-minimal wages for the performers, the event verges on economic exploitation and criminality.”
“Artists and curators work together in increasingly business-like ways: by commission and assignment, prompted by invitations to write up proposals and produce work responding to a certain exhibition theme, venue, sizes of art-fair booths, budgets, deadlines and the local context. Artists, curators and gallerists, independent institutions, biennial and art fair founders, critics, art publishers and conference organizers form a kind of supply and demand relationship that gives rise to a hierarchy. In other words, art has fallen victim to the paradigms and power structures of an industry. The art world has evolved in its ability to function within the values of a capitalist society, and the ‘professionalization’ and industrialization of art and artists have driven both to become symbolic and performative. It is paradoxical that as more institutions surface within the art industry, increasing numbers of artists share a desire to create personalized systems that can be logistically, artistically and even theoretically autonomous. In China, more and more artists are avoiding conventional gallery structures by curating their own exhibitions, publicizing their work online and even writing their own art criticism.”
Maurizio Cattelan retrospective at Guggenheim this fall….
“At its most facile, Sierra’s work can be reduced to an unchallenging intervention in – and almost customary allegation about – the privileged, self-legitimising value accorded to art in a capitalist economy. Filling an emptied gallery space with tonnes of mud; closing up a fashionable London gallery with corrugated iron across its street frontage to leave its VIP guests homeless and unfed for the evening; bricking up the entrance to Spain’s pavilion at the Venice Biennale; or converting a Caracas gallery into a car showroom, with four idling luxury cars pumping their exhaust into the street just outside. These admittedly slick satirical gestures have the wry mockery of a sophomoric prank, at the expense of a market that can easily and happily pay for it.”
“As politicized work, aesthetic interventions and politicized gestures are shadow-theater battles that fail to address the new realities of capitalism. Furthermore, contemporary art thrives on what Mark Fisher calls the aesthetics of demise, taking up the ethico-political task of showing the horrors of capitalism in the most realistic manner, turning spectators into stupefied, passive contemplators.”
http://www.artandeducation.net/paper/art-under-the-new-world-order/
My picks. Probably the most recognizable, due to most press I’ve seen and most whisperings going about.
