A Brooklyn Culture Mafia

[padraig (u.s.)]

LOL! that's not the art world, that's just a bunch of nitwits!

I know it struck me as very strange

like gus is giving the impression - and perhaps it is true, I can't say with 100% certainty that isn't - that there's a whole network of visual arts-related events - and so necessarily content-producers, spaces, some kind of promotion of events, etc - of this kind of thing

 

[sus]

my gf has worked for MoMA, The Kitchen, and the Whitney; I've worked as a researcher at the Guggenheim Museum and lived half a decade in Brooklyn. I went around at the Whitney biennial all anyone was talking about was colonialist activities by board members of the Whitney. This is the essence of what the NYC vizart culture is about and up to these days.

Whether that extends to other major American cities I can't say, but there's New York and then there's everywhere else in the world, in VizArt terms

 

[sus]

This absolutely is the organizing logic. There were week-long blackouts of Instagram by almost every major NY art institution when protests started up late spring/early summer. This isn't 8 or 12 people, this is the very zeitgeist of the scene. That someone like Hannah Black, who calls for artworks to be burned, is given Artforum covers speaks for itself.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

well yeah talking about colonialist activities by board members of the highest end art museums on Earth - who I have to imagine are mostly very terrible very rich old white ppl - makes sense

a network of events devoted to what you're describing makes less sense

 

[sus]

There's no sense of aesthetic mission, purpose, or values—zero agreement on what art is doing, many artists don't even believe in their work, will talk openly in interviews about "scamming" investors—and this is what you get.

 

[Leo]

sad state of affairs, if so.

 

[sus]

@Padraig I'm just tellin ya what it is boss, I lived it for years. I have friends working at galleries, museums who had to vet grifter consulters who the institutions paid tens of thousands of bucks to come into their galleries and tell all the employees they were racist and needed to confess. "Employees" here mostly being overeducated liberal uni grads in their 20s and 30s. The most frequent topic of discourse is marginalization, and the next-most frequent isn't even close, I can't even think what it is, I'm not even sure if there is one.

I'm even saying this believing that this can be a net good thing or something, you'll always get bad apples in with the good, Sturgeon's law etc etc—but marginalization/inequality as the dominant topic of interest/discussion? Inarguable.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

There's no sense of aesthetic mission, purpose, or values—zero agreement on what art is doing, many artists don't even believe in their work, will talk openly in interviews about "scamming" investors—and this is what you get.

leaving aside the racial dynamic for a moment, that's not any different than how art has always been

art is in addition to whatever else it is, a hustle, always has been and always will be as long as "art" is a thing

 

[sus]

Other moments in contemporary art had names based around formal developments—minimalism, conceptualism, expressionism. This decade will go down as Activism, no question.

 

[sus]

Naw I don't think that's true. Without getting nostalgic for centuries past, there's not much bullshitting you can do around realist portraits. You have the skill or you don't.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

as far as the consultants and all that, all I can say is, I've never heard of anything like that here

and I'm tapped into the art scene enough that I would have heard about it even if I didn't know the details

so maybe it's a New York thing idk, but it ain't a here thing

 

[sus]

David Graeber actually talks about this at length—contemporary vizart as grifting, scamming.

 

[sus]

as far as the consultants and all that, all I can say is, I've never heard of anything like that here

and I'm tapped into the art scene enough that I would have heard about it even if I didn't know the details

so maybe it's a New York thing idk, but it ain't a here thing

Are you sure? It's probably a half-billion-dollar industry that typically happens behind closed doors.

 

[sus]

It's pretty much consensus in VizArt critical scenes that we're in a "post-critical" moment where tractable, baseline merits/values are completely absent. There's no agreed-upon frame to proceed from/ground yourself in. Hal Foster talks about this a lot.

 

[vimothy]

interesting, as a non-American, to consider to what extent the rest of the world is converging on / diverging from this, what seems like, weird scenario in the states

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

Other moments in contemporary art had names based around formal developments—minimalism, conceptualism, expressionism. This decade will go down as Activism, no question.

I don't see how that's a less real development

it may or may not align with yr or any individual's politics

but art - cultural production - is both the what and the how

and the main thrust is revealing dynamics in the production and distribution of art that have been invisible until very recently

which is different from saying everything done in nominal service of that thrust is productive or a good idea

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

Are you sure? It's probably a half-billion-dollar industry that typically happens behind closed doors.

I am, I know/have been invovled with ppl that work in galleries and museums

it's conceivable it could've happened in a single place and I'd miss it but if it was a sweeping trend I'd have heard something

 

[sus]

Like early I was trying to ground my lack of interest in Basquiat and it's just impossible, the system is "everything goes if people think it's interesting," so ultimately all you have is this subjective sensation of interestingness (or lack thereof). You can't criticize his form, or his use of color; anything that seems like a flaw could be intentional, or subversive, or "question our existing sensibility." This is the way that the entire project bbecomes primarily a language game—you spin a "conceptualization" of your work and people roll with it or they don't. More often, you have a small army of PR people—gallery interns, artworld journos who are friends of the artist—who do that spinning for them, create a narrative that gets traction. That's all it is.

 

[sus]

I don't see how that's a less real development

it may or may not align with yr or any individual's politics

but art - cultural production - is both the what and the how

and the main thrust is revealing dynamics in the production and distribution of art that have been invisible until very recently

which is different from saying everything done in nominal service of that thrust is productive or a good idea

And I agree! As said in a previous post, pointing out this is the dominant sensibility coming out of New York art (which, for better or worse, still commands the majority prestige of the artworld) is separate from whether it agrees with my politics or not, tis what tis.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

a "post-critical" moment sounds like more of a problem for critics than for artists