Netflix recently released a movie called Velvet Buzzsaw that can’t decide quite what it wants to be. It begins as a spoof of the contemporary art world, with its high-powered dealers, mega-galleries that dwarf museums, and art consultants on the take. Then it becomes a horror flick about vengeful murders committed by the spirit of a dead outsider artist whose last wishes were ignored by an unscrupulous young dealer. The only part that has stuck with me is the character played by Jake Gyllenhaal.
Morf Vandewalt is an all-powerful critic who has the ability to make or break an artist’s career. A favorable nod from him will send big name collectors in a stampede to buy a young artist’s work, but woe to the artist who falls afoul of Morf’s rigorous standards. In a scene at an art fair, a dealer fawningly asks Morf his opinion on what the dealer considers ground-breaking work and is crushed by Morf’s withering verdict that the work is an imitation of another artist’s work done a few years before. There is now nothing else for the dealer and his artist to do but commit hara-kiri.
The satire is very broad, of course, but it made me wonder if there is actually anyone who plays the Morf Vandewalt role in the contemporary art scene. In the 1950’s, Harold Rosenberg and Clement Greenberg were seen this way. Their advocacy could be a major boost to a young artist’s career. But who today has their imprimatur?
Of course, the New York scene was much more concentrated then. There were fewer galleries, and the outlets for art criticism were also fewer. Most attention was paid to the verdict of critics in the New York Times and the Big Four of art magazines – Arts, Artnews, Art in America, and later Artforum. A review in one of those publications meant an artist was someone. Even a bad review was publicity – reviewing an exhibition for Art in America, I once slammed an artist for what I considered to be sloppy work. A few years later, the artist had an exhibition at another gallery. I went to see the show and was leafing through the binder at the front desk that had the artist’s curriculum vitae. There in the bibliography was a listing of my review. The gallery knew that no one, in those pre-internet days, was going to take the trouble to dig through five-year old issues of Art in America and actually read the review. It was just another line on the CV. It was also a reminder of how little power I really had.
That aside, critics these days have far less influence than in the glory days of Abstract Expressionism. There’s an old saying by A.J. Liebling that freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one. With all of the platforms available today – Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, you name it – everyone owns a press, and everyone can be a critic. Some “presses,” however, are more equal than others. Mega-galleries such as Gagosian and Zwirner publish what are essentially online art magazines as an arm of their operations. They can hire top talent to write about the art they sell. But where does the line exist between public relations copy and actual criticism?
A hundred years ago, the robber barons might vie for social status by collecting paintings by artists such as Rembrandt or Titian, who were already part of art history. Today’s wealthy collectors, however, are playing a riskier game, since today’s Wunderkind may become tomorrow’s embarrassment. (See my blog “It’s Worth What Now?”)
I asked my friend Buzz Spector, who teaches studio art at Washington University in St. Louis, whether there are any critics today with the power to anoint new masters. Buzz sees a more diffuse set of name-makers — “a rising class of curatorial professionals, librarians, and archivists, whose own career aspirations are fueled by research into readings, friendships (and rivalries) among artists and their commentators. Critics are still part of this association, whether in print or as bloggers and associated social media posters.”
Buzz goes on, “Culture buying as performance art necessarily includes rituals of entry to an inner circle, apparently for the artists being collected, but perhaps more importantly for those locking arms around them, and the gazes of that circle are directed inward, towards each other, rather than outward toward the world. I think that something of performing the artist’s life is related to this process of anointing.
“Auditioning for the role of anointed artist is inseparable from the parallel auditioning of collectors for a position in an inner circle. The artist has got to be smart (but not too smart) and ambitious. Being good looking helps (sometimes), but above all the artist must be productive and yet not overeager to sell the work just anyplace, thus softening the margins of a potentially exclusive market. Essentially, your question is about who are the matchmakers that identify both the artist for anointing and the collecting circle to witness the ceremony — they are younger dealers, older artists, ambitious curators and scholars, and (perhaps, still) art critics.”
All of which may come down to another iteration of “It ain’t what you know, it’s who you know.” (See my blog “Michelangelo, Taxi Driver.”) The circle of the all-powerful is difficult both to break into and to be a part of. Varying combinations of smarts, panache, and a willingness to spend money all play their parts in being a tastemaker. Morf Vandewalt, like the all-powerful Wizard of Oz, is a fictional character, but there is a more nebulous and yet powerful group that serves his function.
History, however, does eventually sort things out. And since journalism is the first draft of history, I’ll end with a tip of my hat to those underpaid critics who are still out there, calling ‘em like they see ‘em. Even when writing for one of the national publications, critics rarely receive more than a few hundred bucks a review. But their fragile contribution starts the process that will end with a painting on a museum wall.
