Paid liars.

In my racket, this is the not-so-flattering nickname for public relations types. Flacks. Mouthpieces. Bagmen.

It’s a term that should also be applied to those of us who have toiled away in the critical field. The truth is, many of us – under the guise of “discourse,” or whatever jargon you wish to use – have helped create a system that has fundamentally changed the relationship between artwork and its audience.

In doing so, we helped change artwork from communications to commodities. We enabled a system that rewarded immediate production, and generated reams of nonsensical justification.

And now we’re all going to pay for it.

Recent events have thrown fierce light on a world where art became a luxury “good,” an “asset” as tangible as stocks or bonds, and where auction figures were gleefully bandied, talismaniacally, in the Wall Street Journal.

This created a world where values, like Derridean signs, were “unfixed,” so to speak. Artwork no longer had to meet Tolstoy’s bare standard of communication. It just had to sell. Art no longer had to have technical grace or acumen (See: Elizabeth Peyton.) And most damningly, art no longer was required to provoke thought or interaction to gain currency; its value was fixed by a marketplace. Even some of the most severe critiques of art-as-commodity have become sought-after collectibles. This would be funny if it wasn’t so nihilistic.

The corrosion this caused cannot be understated.
Some examples:

- In February’s Art in America, critic Dave Hickey finally had the guts to voice an open secret; that editors had asked their reviewers to avoid criticism of their major advertisers. “So there it was,” wrote Hickey. “The editor of a major art magazine reigning his traditional power as an advocate of cultural value . . . for fear of damaging his precious advertising revenue.”

- Contemporary artist Damien Hirst rode the commodity wave to a widely-reported $200m dollar sale at Sotheby’s, an event that changed the entire economy of the art world. He cut out his longtime dealers, Larry Gagosian and Jay Jopling, and took his work directly to auction, in a move widely seen as an attack on the tight-knit gallery community. The summer prior, he had auctioned off a diamond-encrusted platinum cast skull – called “For the Love of God” – for $100m… and was subsequently revealed to be one of a consortium of new owners. In effect, Hirst had bought his own work to inflate its value. (Hirst also has been buying back his old work from collectors like Charles Saatchi.) But despite the press these events received, precious little was said about the works’ real value. Case in point: What exactly was Hirst trying to say with his garish piece of bling? Should his fiscal maneuvers be taken as conceptual art or base commerce? Who knows? Even such facile questions have been left fallow.

And for what now seems to be a chronicle of the ancien regime, look no further than Sarah Thornton’s Seven Days in The Art World, a recently-released and well-reviewed book that offers little information on the artistic process alongside 270+ pages of dish about the people who ply it. Thornton has easy, predictable shots: One collector who sheepishly admits that “it is about being rich, privileged and powerful,” and her visit to Art Basel makes a burlesque show look deep. But the real damage is done with her take on a CalArts school crit; she shows, perhaps unintentionally, how fraudulent the whole exercise is. The costs to the students: $50,000, all spent in pursuit of the art-world gravy train.

With our world’s economy in free-fall, the “value” of these “assets” is about to be sorely tested. Major collectors, such as the Mugrabi family, have gone on the offensive, with a press blitz to advance the viewpoint that artwork will always retain intrinsic value. Said Jose Mugrabi in a largely hagiographic New York Times magazine piece, “When the empires fall – Roman, Greek – all that is left is the art.” This is of course, false, as speakers of romance languages know. (Roman and Greek statues are also bit more durable than video tapes and conceptual art.)

The truth is, collectors such as the Mugrabis have a vested interest in keeping the bubble aloft. Alberto Mugrabi was at least honest, admitting that, “We’re market makers…We want inventory. It gives you staying power.” (That inventory is about 3000 pieces long, few of which are on display, to anyone.)

The art bubble produced a lot of money, and made some artists rich. But has it produced good art? It’s impossible to know. What is clear is that it has made producers of fads – Roberto Longo’s once iconic Men In The Cities series comes to mind – rich, while eliminating any critical distance.

Now that money has vanished, the debts remain. Even the best-known artists are taking hits – photographer Annie Liebovitz was recently forced to hock her entire life’s work to a glorified pawn service for $16.5m. And MFA candidates who once saw that degree as something tangible will soon find out that the interest on those loans is a bit more durable.

The question is: Can a better system emerge from the wreckage? Can the art world return to making art instead of making inventory? And will any of us be able to afford it?

by Jamie Trecker