{"id":131,"date":"2007-11-30T12:31:50","date_gmt":"2007-11-30T10:31:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.worldofart.org\/aktualno\/archives\/131"},"modified":"2017-02-07T20:16:19","modified_gmt":"2017-02-07T18:16:19","slug":"contemporary-art-in-a-neoliberal-climate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.worldofart.org\/arhiv.worldofart.org\/aktualno\/archives\/131","title":{"rendered":"Julian Stallabrass: Contemporary Art in a Neoliberal Climate"},"content":{"rendered":"

Survey lecture derived from Retort talk, May 2004
\nJulian Stallabrass
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

Predavanje, 15. november 2007 ob 19.00
\nProjektna soba SCCA, Metelkova 6, Ljubljana<\/p>\n

\n
\n

\n\"Andreas<\/a>
\nAndreas Gursky, Stock Exchange, Tokyo<\/em>, 1990<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\n\"Arnold<\/a>
\nArnold Schwarzenegger in Commando<\/em>, 1985<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n

At first sight there seems to be no system against which art is currently more differentiated than the global neoliberal economy, founded on the ideal if not the practice of free trade. The economy functions strictly and instrumentally according to iron conventions, imposed unequally on nations by the great transnational economic bodies (the World Bank, the World Trade Organisation and so on); it establishes hierarchies of wealth and power; it enforces on the vast majority of the world\u2019s inhabitants a timetabled, and mechanical working life, while consoling them visions of cinematic lives given meaning through adventure and coherent narrative (in which heroes make their lives free precisely by breaking the rules), and with plaintive songs of rebellion or love. This is the nerve pressed on by Johnathan Richman\u2019s deceptively saccharine song, \u2018Government Center\u2019. Here are some of the lyrics:<\/p>\n

\nWe gotta rock at the Government Center
\nto make the secretaries feel better
\nwhen they put the stamps on the letter\u2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The song ends with the dinging of a typewriter bell. It tells its listeners what pop songs are (mostly) for.<\/p>\n

\n

\n<\/a>
\nEyestorm.com site; details of Matthew Barney soundtrack<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

\n\"Christian<\/a>
\nChristian Jankowski, Point of Sale<\/em>, 2002<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n

<\/a>
\nArt appears to stand outside this realm of rigid instrumentality, bureaucratised life and its complementary culture. That it can do so is largely due to art\u2019s peculiar economy, founded in the manufacture of unique or rare artefacts, and on its resistance to mechanical reproduction.1<\/a> That resistance can be seen most clearly in the tactics used by artists and dealers to constrain artificially the production of works made in reproducible media, with limited edition books, photographs, videos or CDs. [Eyestorm\u2019s Barney soundtrack; ed. of 700, $90; that Barney\u2019s work also now sold in ordinary stores may be beginnings of breakdown, as we shall see; Christian Jankowski\u2019s gallery-sold videos to viewers, in a large edition of 500 for \u00a3200 each; and museum quality DVDs with licence to show publicly for \u00a310k; for Point of Sale<\/em> a management consultant interviews an art dealer and an electronics dealer about their businesses, each giving the others\u2019 answers\u2014point being about the distinctiveness or otherwise of the art business]<\/p>\n

\n

\n\"Bill<\/a>
\nBill Viola, Threshhold<\/em>, 1992<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

\n\"Owada<\/a>
\nOwada (Creed, Keiko Owada, Andrew McEwen)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n

The art market is regulated by dealers who control not only production but also consumption, vetting the suitability of buyers for particular works; the \u2018who are you?\u2019 question to buyers. There is less regulation in the so-called \u2018secondary market\u2019 of the auction houses, but even there the market is hardly free, being subject (aside from the recent scandals about systematic price-fixing) to reserve prices below which a work will not sell, and the manipulation of prices by owners buying up their own pieces. This small world (which from the inside can appear autonomous, a micro-economy in which market feedback is produced by a few important collectors, dealers, critics and curators) produces art\u2019s freedom from the market for mass culture. To state the obvious, Bill Viola\u2019s video pieces are not play-tested against audiences in the Mid-West, nor are producers forced on art bands like Owada to ensure that their sound will play inoffensively in shops. So this cultural enclave is protected from vulgar commercial pressures, permitting free play with materials and symbols, along with what has become the standardised breaking of convention and taboo.<\/p>\n

\n

\n\"Hans<\/a>
\nHans Namuth, Jackson Pollock<\/em>, 1950<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The freedom of art is more than an ideal. If, despite its great insecurity, the profession of artist is so popular, it is because it offers the prospect of unalienated labour in which artists, unchained from the division of labour, and like heroes in the movies, endow work and life with their own meanings. Equally for the viewers of art, there is the possibility of a concomitant freedom in appreciating the purposeless play of ideas and forms, not in slavishly attempting to divine artists\u2019 intentions, but in allowing the work to elicit thoughts and sensations that connect with their own experiences. The wealthy buy themselves participation in this free zone through ownership and patronage, in part because such participation is a genuinely valued good; the state ensures that a wider public has at least the opportunity to breathe for a while the scent of freedom that works of art emit.
\n<\/a>
\nYet there are reasons for wondering whether free trade and free art are as antithetical as they seem. To begin with, the economy of art does closely reflect the economy of finance capital, if not capital as a whole. In a recent analysis of the meaning of cultural hegemony, Donald Sassoon explored patterns of import and export of novels, opera and film in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Culturally dominant states have abundant local production that meets the demands of the home market, alongside much exporting of cultural goods and few imports.2<\/a> In this way, France and Britain were dominant in the production of literature in the nineteenth century. Currently, for mass cultural products, it is clear that the US is by far the dominant state, exporting its products globally while importing very little. As Sassoon points out, this does not mean that everyone consumes American culture, just that most of the culture that circulates across national boundaries is American.3<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

\n\"Friends<\/a>
\nFriends<\/em> publicity shot<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

\n\"Titanic<\/a>
\nTitanic<\/em> publicity shot<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

\n\"International<\/a>
\nInternational Auction Art Market by Turnover,
2003-4 (Art Sales Index)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Sassoon rules fine art out of his account on the sensible grounds that it has no mass market. Trade figures are in any case hard to interpret in a system that is thoroughly cosmopolitan, so that you may have a German collector buying through a British dealer the work of a Chinese artist resident in the US. We can, however, get an idea of the volume of trade in each nation, and, given the high volume of international trade in the art market, this does give an indication of global hegemony. Here there are striking parallels with the distribution of financial power. As one might expect, the US is dominant, accounting for a little less than a half of all global art sales; Europe accounts for the great majority of the rest, with the UK taking as its share around a half of that. France is a major source for art-dealing, while Italy and Germany also have significant markets.4<\/a> Art prices and the volume of art sales tend closely to match the stock markets, and it is no accident that the world\u2019s major financial centres are also the principal centres for the sale of art. To raise this parallel is to see art, not only as a zone of purposeless free play, but as a minor speculative market in which art objects are used for a variety of instrumental purposes, including investment and tax avoidance. <\/p>\n

\n

\n\"Art<\/a>
\nArt Index 100 compared to MSCI World<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

(MSCI leader in equity tracking; Example of instrumental uses of art; Japan before the recession; and property scam; the divergence of art and stocks.) [graph] Scam in Japan in which works of art were used to launder huge slush funds to benefit corrupt politicians and organised crime: government curbs on profiting from real estate were stepped around by sellers \u2018buying\u2019 a painting on the understanding that it would soon be bought back from them at perhaps ten times the original price. The damaging thing here was not merely that secret deals were being made or tax avoided\u2014standard characteristics of the Japanese art market\u2014but that the scam distorted the market. Suddenly it seemed that the Japanese penchant for paying large amounts of money for undistinguished Impressionist and post-Impressionist paintings was less a matter of naivet\u00e9 than unscrupulous calculation.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n
\n

\n\"Antonio<\/a>
\nAntonio Muntadas, Giardini<\/em>, 2005<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\n\"Biennial<\/a>
\nBiennial world map<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n

Two main features of 1990s art may at first sight seem to cut against this picture. If the US is so dominant, how is it that contemporary art is made and exhibited all over the globe, particularly in the rise of the global biennales? And if the market is so important, why the renewed rise of installation art, which at least in its origins resisted saleability?<\/p>\n