POST #123: RECYCLING ART

Projector Art,  2016

8'x10' (does not need to be sold or stored)

Everyone is familiar with art created from detritus, cast-off, unwanted industrial material, the waste of a throwaway society. Artists have been creating work out of “garbage” for over a century beginning with the Dadaists and Kurt Schwitters’ scrap paper collages in the 1920s to Rauschenberg’s Combines and John Chamberlain’s crushed automobiles in the ‘50s and ‘60s. Many years ago, I guest curated an exhibit at the Stamford Museum and Nature Center that consisted of nothing but art work culled from a local scrap yard called Vulcan Scrap Metal,where all sorts of wonderful things can be “found by the pound.” The show was a huge success, the biggest draw the Museum ever had.

Projector Art,  2016

8'x10' (does not need to be sold or stored)

But what about all the new art being created today by hundreds of thousands of so-called artists all over the country, piling up in attics and storage spaces If you multiply a half million would-be artists in America, each creating at least twenty works a year (most of it unsold), that means there’s at least 10 million excess pieces produced every year. You would think that without a market, people would stop turning the stuff out (the way any manufacturer in his right mind with unsold inventory does), but artists aren’t business people and they irrationally love what they do. They wait on tables, work at any job they can get, allow themselves to be unhappily supported by others, just for the joy of being able to create. Some need audience approval, but mostly, they do it for themselves.

Projector Art,  2016
8'x10' (does not need to be sold or stored)

The problem is that the art “market” is saturated; I don’t know a single person whose walls aren’t cluttered with art.  I recently insulted a friend by turning down a print (framed even) she wanted to give to me. She’s a well-known photographer and her work is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art. It used to sell for thousands of dollars. But I walked her around my (large) house and showed her that there wasn’t a single inch of available wall space. No one I know has available wall space, even my non-artist friends. What’s going to happen to the ten million (rough estimate) works of art (most of it ranging from mediocre to truly dreadful) produced each year by all those would-be artists? Nobody can even give the stuff away!

Who/What’s to blame? Well, first, as I mentioned, being an artist is more fun than having a real job, but I also point the finger at the proliferation of art schools who turn out huge numbers of poorly trained young people, burdened by debt and deluded into thinking they can somehow break into the art world and become rich and famous.  Galleries, even the "pay-to-play" variety, are deluged by submissions they routinely return unopened. Living in the hottest new art ghetto like Red Hook sometimes helps, but not a hell of a lot. The truth is, there’s too much art being produced, and, given all the growing numbers of artists-in-training, no end in sight. And now that the computer can churn out “masterpieces” in seconds, the problem of oversupply is going to get even worse.

Projector Art,  2016

8'x10' (does not need to be sold or stored)

I recently picked up a book of essays by Robert Hughes from 1993 called “Culture of Complaint.” I like him because he avoids Artspeak; he’s erudite but intelligible. In one essay he described an experiment in the sixties I believe, in Holland where the government set up a fund to buy art by living Dutch artists. About 8,000 artists were represented; none of the work was shown and according to Hughes, everyone involved thinks it’s all junk (except the artist’s own work).  Storage expenses are huge (climate control, etc.) and efforts to get rid of it to local institutions, have been unsuccessful. No one wants it. Even for free. They can’t give it away!

So that brings me to my own attic full of artwork. What’s to become of it after I’m gone? If  I’m fortunate, I’ll have a “posthumous retrospective” (although I’d really prefer one while I’m still around.)  I might even get a dealer to agree to take it on as a collection. Otherwise, my offspring and friends can pick out what they want and take the rest to the local recycling center.  New canvas is awfully expensive and a coat of gesso primer should give someone else a chance to experience the joy I had when I created the original work. Sic Transit Gloria Mundi.