The average work was a work produced more or less cynically: that is to say the values it was nominally expressing were less meaningful to the painter than the finishing of the commission or the selling of his product. Hack work is not the result of either clumsiness or provincialism; it is the result of the market making more insistent demands than the art. The period of the oil painting corresponds to the rise of the open art market. And it is in this contradiction between art and market that the explanations must be sought for what amounts to the contrast, the antagonism existing between the exceptional work and the average.
John Berger, Ways of Seeing, 1972, p.88
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2 comments:
According to art history, great artists were never too concerned with what the market expected. Correction: maybe artists like Rembrandt did:)
They painted for high society for money. Still they paintings are considered master pieces.
In the last century it might have begun with artists like Jeff Koons and Andy Warhol who were quite calculated about what they did and what they had to do and make that would bring them money and fame. I guess there is no rule for art to be regarded as high art or sell out whether you work for or aside from market expectations.
Your first line is exactly one of the author's points.
Interesting that you mention Rembrandt. The quote was pulled from a chapter/essay on oil painting, and Berger uses Rembrandt as an example, contrasting an early self-portrait with one late in life, and points out the striking difference, moving from quite conventional (satisfying the market) to clearly his own vision as he matured.
While Rembrandt, Warhol, Koons all made art in the system of commerce, they did not let the demands of the market prevent them from realizing and asserting their individual visions. In the case of the latter two, the marketplace became part of the thematic content of the art, which is quite apart from blindly succumbing to market demands for the familiar and conventional.
It's the artist that makes art for marketplace at the expense of her/his own inspiration that churns out average/mediocre work. And over time this practice retards the development of the individual sensibility that is the source of strong, clear vision--it's entirely counterproductive to the intention of artistic growth.
If art is a process of self-discovery, going deeper and deeper to reveal what is most real to the artist, how can one expect to progress if the work is only made to satisfy external demands? The time and energy spent mindlessly churning out product supplants the honest, direct creative experience in the studio that leads to self-awareness and artistic sensibility.
The contrast between the work of Warhol and Koons with that of 99.5% of the work at SF Open Studios is due to precisely that difference, the sacrificing of one's artistic integrity for a notion of success based not on the creation of ever more meaningful work, but the banality of sales and branding.
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