14 Oct - Jerry Saltz, Peregrine Honig, and reality TV

LAUNCHPROJECTS - Ben and I went to the opening of Peregrine Honig's exhibition LOSER at Dwight Hackett Projects this past Saturday. The show was called LOSER because on August 10, with nearly 1.5 million people tuned in to watch, Peregrine ended up the runner up in the final episode of Work of Art: The Next Great Artist -- the reality TV show aired on Bravo.

Beyond the standard and ongoing debate of whether the reality TV show (now entering its second season) is intrinsically good or evil, I am most intrigued by Peregrine's reaction to the experience (overall very positive) and the experience as described by one of the show's judges, art critic Jerry Saltz. Saltz, frequently labeled a LOSER in his own right for participating in this reality pageantry, commented in New York Magazine that "Bravo had me at hello. The show appealed to my belief that art only got better once the boundaries between high and low culture were relaxed, most famously by Andy Warhol, then by countless others. It also satisfied my hunger to try new things; my demons that demand I dance naked in public; and my desire to see if art criticism is supple and porous enough to be practiced on a wider stage-even if this stage distorted that practice."

Saltz found that people wanted to talk to him about the show - by the thousands - following its airing. Blogs were created, as were fan and hate clubs. It got people talking about what makes "real" art, how art functions as a commodity, and how art can and should be approached, marketed, sold, and promoted. "Work of Art reminded me that there are many ways to become an artist and many communities to be an artist in. The show also changed the way I think about my job. Over the ten weeks it aired, hundreds of strangers stopped me on the street to talk about it. In the middle of nowhere, I’d be having passionate discussions about art with laypeople. It happened in the hundreds, then thousands of comments that appeared below the recaps I wrote for nymag.com. Many of these came from people who said they’d never written about art before. Most were as articulate as any critic. I responded frequently, admitted when I was wrong, and asked others to expand on ideas. By the show’s end, over a quarter-million words had been generated. In my last recap I wrote, “An accidental art criticism sprang up … Together we were crumbs and butter of a mysterious madeleine. The delivery mechanism had turned itself inside out.” Instead of one voice speaking to the many, there were many voices speaking to me—and one another. Coherently. I now understand that, like us, criticism contains multitudes."

Maybe it is through pushing beyond the bounds of our complex and highly ritualized current art structure that we can find a new function for art in every day life. Or maybe Work of Art really is a bastardization of the art world and its meaning for art lovers and artists. Either way, it became an interesting social experiment. And it clearly got us all talking.

Pictured above: Honig and Saltz, Me & Ben at the opening, detail of our latest art acquisition - Peregrine Honig's Birdsmilk.

11 July - Dave Hickey in Albuquerque & Air Guitar

LAUNCHPROJECTS - Today I was re-reading Dave Hickey's book of essays, Air Guitar, in celebration of his move with wife Libby Lumpkins to Albuquerque, New Mexico as professors in the Department of Art & Art History at the University of New Mexico. Air Guitar is a must-read for anyone interested in art, Liberace, Flaubert, Las Vegas, Chet Baker, Lady Godiva, Luis Jimenez, and Perry Mason (to name but a few divergent topics). One of the essays, Dealing, gives one of the most articulate and unique descriptions of how art, money, and the relativity of the value of art function in the contemporary market. And the importance of risk.

"So you pay a grand for a painting from an unknown artist's studio. If you are a serious collector, taking a risk, you increase the value of the work just by buying it. If you are a cheap serious collector, you try to get a discount on account of this, but this is really bad form, because if you wait until that artist has a dealer, you are going to pay more. If you wait until she has good reviews, you are going to pay more still. If you wait until Paul Schimmel down at MOCA notices her work you are going to pay even more than that, if you wait until everybody wants one, of course, you are going to pay a whole hell of a lot more, since as demand approaches "one" and supply approaches "zero," price approaches infinity. But you are not paying for art. You are paying for assurance, for social confirmation of your investment, and the consequent mitigation of risk. You are paying to be sure, and assurance (or insurance, if you will) is very expensive, because risk is everything, for everybody, in the domain of art...

The greater your risk, the less you pay and the more you receive. This is or should be an incentive to participate, to take extravagant chances, to execute daring acts of faith of your beliefs and in advocacy of your particular marriage of desire and esteem. Try to think of it as a dynamic system, a chaotic flow generated by the perpetually negotiated interplay of two simultaneous but totally distinct domains of value. Or forget all that and remember that art is cheap but priceless--and blessed assurance very dear."