Art Market Conundrums

I am not writing this blog because I'm fiscally hurting, in fact I may be doing better than ever, rather I am writing this because there is a trend which irks me greatly in the vast overarching Art World. You see these days it seems artists fall into one of two categories, post collegiate brooklynites or elite highbrow conceptualists. Of course there are plenty of exceptions, but those are always key in proving a rule.

The post college art students living crammed into small brooklyn lofts working meager jobs as waiters or movers or selling shoes, whatever. They are working hard to survive so that they may pursue something they truly love, a noble venture, one which I embark upon from my own direction, and salute those who sail these stormy seas parallel to my own voyage (did I jump too quickly into that metaphor?). However the second group, the high-art cognoscenti (as Juxtapoz Magazine founder Robert Williams would call them) are playing a very different game. The art being produced at the Chelsea-gallery level is generally so devoid of craft and so interwoven with complex symbolism and meaning and metaphors and conceptualism that the lay person finds it to be almost a mockery (and I will reiterate that many exceptions exist). It seems that the only people who understand the complexities of this post-modern art, are the ultra sophisticated and highly pretentious art critics . These critics, as well as the gallery owners themselves, directly inform the very aged community of art collectors as to which artist they should be buying. So essentially, art is being broken.

Craft is so downplayed that they try and train it out of us in school ( I know, I went to one), consist with drivel you see being produced at the highest level in our current backwards Art World ( I like that, the Backwards Art World, it has a nice ring to it). It used to be the best artist was the best craftsman. He was held as nobility and spoke to kings and popes on an intimate basis. And he didn't just stumble upon his position, it wasn't some windfall because his uncle wrote a column for Art in America, he went through a rigorous training process, apprenticed for many years until he finally could break out on his own and show how talented he (it was fairly male dominated back in the day) was, and then he could make his mark. Now its almost a stigma to try and break out as an artist. It's as if the positions are stagnant, and though the younger generations is teeming with talent, for the most part it goes unnoticed. I think the only way that art markets will be fixed is some grand global collective eye-opening...