The Brooklyn Rail

For over a half century, art produced by living artists has been referred to as “contemporary,” an open-ended box into which anything circa now is casually tossed, like art into storage. Contemporary is an extended span of time with no end in sight, meaning—what exactly? Forever? 1970 to present, and onward? To present, an elastic temporal point. Onward, forward motion, in an amorphous space, even if what occurs there often slips backward—culture in retrograde. This is not a matter of moving the goalposts. There are none. As in a vast desert, with pointless vanishing points as far as the eye can see, why is everything made now considered contemporary?

Our notion of the contemporary, when it was yet resonant, particularly in architecture, challenged traditional form. Within the immediate vicinity of Philip Johnson’s Glass House, built in 1949, in New Canaan, Connecticut, for example, are structures dating back to the 1700s, a contrast that couldn’t be more striking. Even unto itself, the Glass House still looks contemporary and always will. The same cannot be said of contemporary art since the designation became expedient, with much 1970s work looking dated today. Although “contemporary” doesn’t mean the same thing in art and architecture, modern architecture has commonality with modernist sculpture that challenged traditional form, and appears “timeless,” an Endless Column, for example. Sculpture has inherently what eludes most painting: object integrity. While some art historical categories are only fleeting, certain periods encompass major movements and styles. Can the same be said of contemporary art? It isn’t a coherent period. It is a flow within which all is continuously swept onward. Timelines, periods, and the bridges in between are useful in making sense of where we are, and how we got here.

Impressionism covers a period of about twenty years, followed by movements of equal or lesser duration, though consequential: Post-Impressionism, Fauvism, Expressionism, Cubism, Futurism, Constructivism, Dada, and Surrealism. The art that came after, in terms of its initial appearance and unfolding, can be placed within the frame of overlaid decades: Abstract Expressionism in the forties and fifties; Op art in the fifties and sixties; Pop, Minimal, Conceptual art, Arte Povera, earthworks, and feminist art in the sixties and seventies (a period marked by premature, even gleeful claims for the “death of painting”), and then post-time, the 1980s, with all its neos (though what was truly new, what was challenged?), Neo-Expressionism, Neo-Geo, Neo-Surrealism. And last but not least, as a matter of necessity with the erosion of modernism: Appropriation, considered an end of the line—endgame. Unlike a game of chess, however, in art the show must go on. The market has seen to that and will not be denied. As primary and secondary markets became increasingly entwined—artworks seemingly on a conveyor belt moving swiftly from studios to galleries and fairs and on to the auction block—the line between them wasn’t so much blurred as erased. This had to affect the art that was made, especially by artists at the beginning of their careers, those in a hurry, more careerist or practical-minded. Is there a temptation to make art that looks like what’s selling at any given moment? (Phillips auction catalogues from the past twenty years may answer that.) Are impatient artists tempted to make a version of what has risen above the average collector’s price range? And if they do, are they making the art they themselves want to see? That’s a question answering itself in the asking.

In the early 1970s—October 18, 1973 to be anecdotally precise—when the collectors Robert and Ethel Scull auctioned major works by artists such as Pablo Picasso, Willem de Kooning, and Andy Warhol at Sotheby’s with record prices achieved, considerably more than was originally paid, the market for contemporary art had arrived. Subsequently, its needs would have to not only be met but surpassed. More than fifty years later, we have “flippers”: those who acquire work speculatively, selling for a quick profit. They aren’t collectors; to collect is to keep. They are buyers, and buyers are sellers. They can’t help themselves. This is an affliction for which there may be no cure. Flippers are to be pitied rather than despised. Newer players in the market don’t believe there’s anything wrong in parting with a work bought just months prior, unless, that is, they take a loss or only break even. Possibly they were ill-advised? Or they are new to a game they don’t realize has rules—or maybe rules are a thing of the past? The actor Brad Pitt, who has been collecting art for almost twenty years, has said he doesn’t consider himself to be a real “collector.” Why? Because he doesn’t sell. (It may have been an article in the Wall Street Journal some years ago that suggested art might not be the wisest investment because it is “an emotional asset,” meaning harder to part with.) The Scull auction set the stage for what was to come, a stage comprised of many trap doors, and the performers are the artworks themselves. Going, going… gone. Do most collectors buy what they love, or what they hope will appreciate? There used to be three key reasons why works were sold from collections: death, divorce, or a business that was going badly. Surely, lives and marriages still end, and the economy can wreak havoc on livelihoods. But something significant changed, possibly influenced by trading in the stock market: buying art and selling for a quick profit ahead of an anticipated drop in value, when the selling itself precipitates the fall—a loss of faith in the artist. With art there is also the possibility that resale, especially when hyped as a story, can increase value exponentially. Today, anything can be bought and resold, even a banana Although it’s never the same one. A certificate passes hands as with the title to a house or a car. You can live in a house and drive a car. The banana bought by Justin Sun for 6.2 million dollars was subsequently eaten and expelled. Down the drain. And what's left is the certificate. A different piece of paper entirely. Proof of ownership. Instructions. What more? And how was the certified work paid for? With crypto, of course, which makes absolutely perfect sense. When art is a matter of speculation, why shouldn’t it be acquired with speculative currency?

Contemporary art may now be an empty category, but it’s filled to the brim. An infinity-pool art world, if you will. And you don’t need to be an economist to grasp the basic concept of supply and demand: inverted global warming, with sales having cooled considerably. In December 2024, Sotheby’s announced it was laying off more than a hundred members of its staff—happy holidays to all, and to all a goodbye. Big news in the relatively small world of art; a drop in the bucket compared to the tens of thousands who’ve lost jobs in the tech industry, axed by Google, Amazon, et al. With layoffs, a company claims that it needs to increase productivity—at a gallery, one person may do the work of three—when its actual aim is to raise profit margins and maintain inflated compensation for its CEOs. Where gallery owners once discussed business in terms of the market, they increasingly refer to it as the “art industry”—to attract deeper-pocketed investors and clients, possibly? Since when did mega-galleries begin hiring Chief Financial Officers? Since the corporate model took hold. We may wonder, is this a structure to which artists are attracted or repelled? The mere fact that there can be almost no discussion about contemporary art today outside its economic parameters and perversities seems proof enough that it may be nearing the end of the line. Where once galleries were built on vision and personal sensibility—though this continues today at mid-level, with dealers who are art-focused, their programs infinitely more surprising and alive—galleries helmed by “industry leaders” are set on a more pragmatic course: showing primarily what can be promoted and sold. Is the same true for artists? When demand is high and an artist is selling consistently, is their output ramped up for more of the same, with studio assistants humming right along? Unfortunately, the unspoken mantra “more, faster” inevitably leads to the production artist, perhaps the most contemporary of all. And don’t so many look-alike artworks cancel one another out? Contemporary art has become a production line, and not one of happiness.

A quote popularly attributed to Hunter S. Thompson comes to mind, with the art industry, or “government efficiency” for that matter, seamlessly replacing his subject, punchline firmly in place: “The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side.”

With contemporary art, some may say the problem lies with the word itself. Its greater part may be temporary. But after more than a half century, and counting? You have to at least grudgingly admit that we don’t actually know what’s happened since 2000. This is a long time to have been adrift, sailing without an anchor. Has contemporary art become a cruise to nowhere? We know about the myth of progress, but regress is not a myth. Regress is real. If there was nothing especially new about all the neos of the eighties, we could see with the wearing down of modernism that the need to look back offered a way forward. And yet, in retrospect, they were the first sign that contemporary art was no longer contemporary. No surprise that the market then was especially receptive to art that looked like what was already known, having its place in the museums and in the history books—those relics of the past.

Most art movements and -isms have been invented by critics rather than the artists themselves. Only one in recent memory made sense: “Zombie Formalism,” by way of the late Walter Robinson. At present, the future is looking rather grim. Ever since the pandemic, much of the art succeeding in the market has a palliative function: terminal cuteness, cartoons, bright colors, flowers, teddybears—all sorts of nonsense, and in proliferation. Just when did galleries become daycare centers?

Recently, an artist friend and I wanted to make a gallery tour. We considered options in Chelsea, but ended up going to see two shows at the Met: Siena: The Rise of Painting, 1300—1350 and Mandalas: Mapping the Buddhist Art of Tibet. This reminded me of another detour a few years earlier, when a planned visit to the Whitney lost out to Hans Holbein at the Morgan Library. With a number of museum re-openings on the horizon, is there really more excitement for the Frick Collection than the New Museum? Lately, friends who teach art have told me that their students are focused on the compelling and overlooked figures of the sixties, seventies, eighties, and nineties: the cut-off point today. How is it that we are increasingly drawn to the art of the past, to other centuries and cultures, to prior decades, more so than to the art of our time? Except, of course, for what we do for ourselves and one another.