Required reading
Yo, if this is your first time stopping by you should think about subscribing to my shit. It's the best on the web fo'rils.RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
Woman in a Tub by Jeff Koons
This week’s New Yorker arrived today and it has a must-read article for all of us toiling away toward art-world relevance: a profile of gallerist/dealer/patron extradonaire Jeffrey Deitch of the ubiquitous Deitch Projects by author Calvin Tompkins. Through Deitch, Duchamp biographer Tompkins paints a comprehensive (and terrifying) picture of the art world today and I feel smarter having read it (photograhs by Lisa Kereszi).
Unfortunately, it’s not available online. Later, if I’m feeling it, I’ll make a pdf of all ten million pages and put them up here. But we’ll see.
The piece charts the trajectory of Deitch’s career, explaining the provenance of today’s hyperactive act market, fueled by hedgefund managers, and new buyers in Russia, Asia and the Middle East. Today’s art market is global, with records set for the sale of contemporary art every time there’s a major auction.
With Impressionist and Post-Impressionist almost completely snatched up by museums, collectors and whoever else, how long before this market, ravenous for contemporary art, collapses on itself? Also, and way way more importantly, how do I get a piece of the action?
I’m half-kidding about that last thing, but seriously, my tiny incramental progress towards whatever in the past months seems massively insignificant compared to Damien Hirst or Jeff Koons or whoever. Obviously, I have no business comparing myself to either of those artists or really anyone else for that matter (hear that Lavalette? In a duel, I’m pretty sure I’d win) but, of course, I can’t help myself. I don’t mean to sound grandiose, either. My work reflects exactly who and what I am: a 22 year-old with modest talent trying to figure our what the fuck I’m doing.
In the past couple weeks I’ve been grappling with the work I’ve been making. So many of us coming up have work so similar it would be impossible to tell us apart in a lineup. What makes me different from the legions of other twenty-something snap shot photographers? Nothing really, except I’m better, probably, though Brad Treomel is cut from stone.
So, before my work can sell for hundreds of millions of dollars, before I should worry about the art market or greater American economic collapse, I should probably put some serious thought into what it is I intend to say with my work. Pretty people doing pretty people things is only going to carry me so far.
November 7th, 2007 at 11:27 pm
Hey,
Fuck Deitch, Holmes. Young artists should not give a rat’s ass ’bout Deitch. Just do what you do, you know? Oh, and you’re 22 years old?! Shit…Give yourself 10-20 years. Seriously.
Dynomite,
J.J.
November 7th, 2007 at 11:41 pm
listen, I saw it and I’m going to read it next, I loved the picture with the balloons. Also, when you first showed me the block rectangle solid color header for this sight, I thought it was stupid, but it has grown on me.
November 16th, 2007 at 8:51 pm
i agree with jj, dude. deitch is a load of shit, for reals. just do your thing. getting caught up in how much your work will “matter” just clouds your true ambitions. run with it.
p.s. where’s the film from royal oak eh?!
December 2nd, 2007 at 2:35 am
please post the article, greg! i’m super interested
December 5th, 2007 at 4:51 pm
totally forgot! i’ll dig it out!
December 7th, 2007 at 5:09 am
let me know when you do, bro