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Crossroads! Back before you know it.

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.