Vahap Avsar's "Supreme", 2008

SUPREME

BROTHERHOOD

Vahap Avsar's "Brotherhood", 2009

Vahap Avsar's "Brotherhood", 2009

Play/war, evil/good, right/wrong are the perfect set of dichotomies which seems to be a good base for any type of artwork for telling the human drama or conflict. This formula works well even for entertainment and it is often meticulously woven into the storyline of artwork, but that is not how I arrived at this work.

I wanted to show what happens when you are watching your own kids and trying to capture it for the family album and something goes wrong.  The two boys get increasingly frustrated with the game, try to combat the opponent, and end up being entwined in a real and viscous battle where our sets of dichotomies demonstrated when  a couple hundred still images shot for the album put together.

Soldiers swearing of the oath is the title of a series of paintings I am working on since the beginning of the year. These paintings are based on my experience in a training camp of a military in a far away country where every man, unless physically or mentally ill, must serve for 15 months in order to live freely after the age of 20.  The paintings depict the swearing of the oath ceremony where thousands of men caught in the moment of distraught and panic as they fail to walk and run and chant in unison because they are all different even though they seemed to be trained soldiers.

Vahap Avsar's "SEARGEANT" (part of a triptych), 2010

Nikhil Chopra, Yog Raj Chitrakar: Memory Drawing XI. Part of Production Site: the Artist's Studio Inside- Out, (Courtesy: MCA, Chicago) February 9, 2010. (Photographer, Nathan Keay)

Nikhil Chopra, Yog Raj Chitrakar: Memory Drawing XI. Part of Production Site: the Artist's Studio Inside- Out, (Courtesy: MCA, Chicago). February 9, 2010. Photographer, Nathan Keay

If Duchamp’s now infamous Fountain says anything, it is this:  Sometimes art can be as plebeian as taking a ready-made and calling it art.  Fast forward to the last fifty years and the ready-made metamorphoses into Piero Manzoni’s Merda d’artista, Andy Warhol’s Soup Cans, Sarah Lucas’s Au Naturel, and Damien Hirst’s The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, to list just some of the more illustrious of the ready-mades.

In demoting art to the status of everyday commodity, the ready-made has democratized art.  It has provided the comforting illusion that anyone can make art and that anything can be art.  Following this train of thought, it could be argued that the visual ready-made has paved the road for the verbal/emotional ready-made personified in talk-show hosts like Oprah Winfrey and Jerry Springer who have turned the “tell-all” into a billion dollar industry.  Got dirty laundry to air?  Man, have we got a spot for you!

Enter the tell-all’s spin-offs – reality t.v. and bare-it-all art.  Suddenly, stars we once thought untouchable are living their rather pathetic everyday lives in the screens of our t.v. sets.  Suddenly, the answer to the question – How many people has Tracey Emin slept with? – can be answered by simply looking at some of her art.  Curious about Adam Lambert’s liberation?  Check out his risqué  For Your Entertainment.

Like it or not, we live in the golden age of information-overkill.  It is the strange Catch-22 syndrome of art mimics life mimics art mimics life…  So no surprise that the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA), Chicago, should choose to exhibit Production Site: The Artist’s Studio Inside-Out.  After all, if we can be privy to the homes of the stars, why not the studios of our artists?

Nikhil Chopra, Yog Raj Chitrakar: Memory Drawing XI. (Courtesy: MCA, Chicago) (Photographer, Nathan Keay)

Nikhil Chopra, Yog Raj Chitrakar: Memory Drawing XI. (Courtesy: MCA, Chicago) February 9, 2010. (Photographer, Nathan Keay)

Watching the artist is not new.  Many artists have “lived” in museums, but in most of these exhibitions the artist, themselves, have been the subject, not the art studio.  As the title “Inside-Out” suggests, the exhibition is, in a way, an odd reversal of the artistic process – we see the studio as the place where creation begins and not the place where creation is a finished commodity.  Moreover, we see the studio as a source of creative and intellectual inspiration.

Most importantly, however, the exhibition allows us an intimate glimpse into something that is neither about shock value nor attention-seeking exploits.  In many ways, the exhibition is like watching  someone cook or garden.  There is no great secret in this, no great revelation.  Quite simply, it is what it is – an unassuming source of inspiration from which we can all derive meaning.

Where is everybody? And what’s the point in finding them?

Tommi Brem, photo credit Manuel Wagner

When you start collecting contemporary art and happen to do so without being an art professional of some sort before, it can be very difficult to meet people. Not gallery owners, because it is their job to get to know you, in a way. Also not artists, curators, consultants, historians, and the many disciples usually trailing the art circus. All of them are open to meet people, it is almost as if that were part of their job description.

What’s more difficult is to meet other collectors. It does sound absurd, doesn’t it? However, collecting art might be the one hobby you can spend years practicing without ever getting to know too many other people who share the same passion. Music, sports, even literature … in most other fields the “fans” tend to meet like-minded people. A social network for collectors seems to be a rare novelty.

Independent Collectors was born out of this seeming lack of a dedicated, international community for collectors of contemporary art. The idea was to provide collectors not only with a secure arena that excludes promotion by galleries and artists, but also with a set of online tools to manage private collections, to share them with people (if the collector wishes) and to meet like-minded people from all over the world. Despite the preoccupation that collectors actually didn’t want to talk to each other, many welcomed the initiative. Today, over 2,800 members from over 80 countries have joined the initiative.

It’s not only the young collectors, as one might suspect, but all those who wish to exchange insights and who are interested in a more transparent, more dynamic and also more social form of collecting. It’s also not only those buying young artists, as the works uploaded by the members show: Unique works by Kippenberger, Richter and Prince, just to drop a few names, that’s serious stuff, even by the Forbes ranking standards.

Fiona Banner's "Book 1/1", 2009

I personally started collecting in June 2008, when the platform was launched. Basically because I had an interest in art before and because I work for Independent Collectors. I experienced both the difficulty of making contact with collectors in real life and the benefits of a community for these people. At fairs and in galleries I meet the “officials”, and online I get in contact with collectors who like similar things  from all five continents. I don’t have to go to Basel to be inspired. Ten minutes online might give me more great suggestions than I can deal with in a month. And of course, visiting a fair is now also a chance to meet all those “virtual peers”.

Troels Carlsen's "Entirely Imaginable #2"

What’s great about it, from my perspective as a very young collector, is that I have access to  many people who are more than willing to tell me why they love an artist or a certain work, not why I should like it. They don’t recite awards and prestigious names, they share their excitement, not caring whether I agree or not. That’s one reason why I think it’s important and worthwhile to connect with other collectors.

- – -

Tommi Brem (33) is working for Independent Collectors. He sees himself as “young collector” interested mostly in conceptual contemporary art. His growing collection includes works and editions by Karin Sander, Fiona Banner, Kris Martin, Frank Kozik and Troels Carlsen. You can follow his experiences as a collector in his blog “Collecting under public surveillance” (http://blog.independent-collectors.com).

The beginning of transitstation

The idea transitstation, exhibition as event, started with the observation of images alongside the tracks while moving on a train between places and destinations in foreign towns. The fleeting landscapes, cities and homes became the ephemeral and could only be imagined as a foreign every day life. I envisioned an exhibition concept, which is dominated by a multiplicity of images and small event places like huts, wagons, constructed walkways, temporary platforms in different heights, all mounted together within the confines of the Gallery Space. A world within a world within a world.

Chin Ni Hung, London/Taiwan Film Projection - Performance Art based video

The visual impact of different activities, foods, curiosities and superficial challenges for the visitor’s eyes: an overload of impressions and nothing that could stand still.

Gina Landor, Bosnia/USA Theatre - "To Be or Not" (created specifically for Transitstation.

The Gallery space at the time was visualized with different temporary structures. Artists could temporarily occupy places to counter-act with the idea of Live Art and Performance Art. The core question, which preceded the idea of transitstation apart from observing the passing of distant cities, was a very subjective question: what is Performance Art? Knowing that many people are still relating this art practice to Theatre, Live Art, Performing Arts and Entertainment strategies. My understanding and intention with Performance Art is however very different. I felt the challenge to allow this question to be positioned within an exhibition concept. Like in a mirror maze, the viewer and artist alike were imagined to share experiences and time in a dynamic situation, to search ways through different places and actions, walking up and down, passing through doors, climbing ladders, standing on platforms. …

Pauline Plizga, Manufactura, Paris/Poland Fashion Designer- Live catwalk and Film Projection for transitstation 2010: -Nest Fashion Performance

The artist and the work on tour traveling, nomadic and transient as he carries the pack like part of the caravan, is confronted with a restlessness that hides an inward longing for what is known and familiar. The meaning of “home” is indeterminate and temporary. People working and living whilst traveling are in a binary position in regards to the idea of “home”. They are traveling and establishing an alien temporary position: a structure for the moment. “When the caravan passes, the dog barks” and when transitstation stops with its vivid images of either comforting or distressing moments, life just goes on and time passes regardless of the dog’s eternal complaints.

Apart from the initial images of “staging” an exhibition, it became more important to experiment and research the idea of transience and to engage with the notion of “the nomadic artist”: Artists on the road, Artists transporting their work, Artists searching for destinations and places, Artists making their work in foreign countries, Artists facing their identities, Artists meeting different witnesses, Artists meeting Artists, Artists in solitude because their home is not their home. The artist’s orientation is the discovery of new landmarks.

There is an image between stations en route; a train is moving between locations and different cultures whilst moving through the landscapes. Every now and then it stops at a station: a transitstation.

The work transitstation and the exhibition concept developed in the process of production on a transient route involving organization, coordination, and operation.

Kabakov, “the Palace of Projects“ (1995-1998)

“In principle, such a Palace can … be disassembled and assembled in any other place, similar to a traveling circus.“

Kabakov’s work consisted of 65 staged, themed and constructed projects, known, created and invented by the author.

(reference:http://www.artangel.org.uk/projects/1998/the_palace_of_projects/introduction_to_the_palace_of_projects/page_3

Charlotte Merino and Chanh Hang, France/Vietnam, still from "Farine"

Over the years, since 2003, it seems that the process of moving is governed by networking with new artists, regional artists’ organizations, host-city partners, host spaces, accommodation of traveling artists and the organization of funding for each transitstation event. The procedures embrace the methods of synchronized encounters, networking, and most of all an idealism for a systematic sensitivity to meet with interested audiences and people from everyday and professional lives.

transitstation stop Copenhagen 2010 has a total of 72 participating artists performing and exhibiting 57 individual works and actions during a 24-hour weekend. 22 regional Scandinavian and Danish artists are greeting and hosting 50 visiting artists. Artists are coming together to present their artwork within the weekend of April 17-19, 2010. The work of transitstation is seen as  “Gesamtkunstwerk”. It begins to shape itself only in the duration of the entire weekend with non-stop action in art in action as a total exhibition event.

Samantha Sweeting, London/France 'La Nourrice (come drink from me my darling)' performance live. London 2009. (photo by Richard Andersen) Performance Art

The process of nomadic moves between host cities, their partners and foreign spaces and foreign languages require several visits and negotiations. Three production teams conquer communication difficulties in a slow process until they are able to speak a language, which seems foreign to society but familiar to art communities.

The invention of transitstation is dealing with the kind of mastery of chains of situations. Numerous situations occur during the transitstation weekend which defy the rules and boundaries of assumed categories within the contemporary art practise. If the viewer attempts to capture a definition or a category of genre or conventional differentiation, the moment of experiencing Live Action in the process is lost.

Where is the art amidst a space that changes according to perception and interaction?  Even presence, endurance and “the act of witnessing” cannot give the viewer a chance to capture a total image of transitstation as “Gesamtkunstwerk”.  It accepts to stay an ideal.

Artist next to artist next to artist next to viewer next to viewer next to object next to object next to viewer next to artist.

The gravitation code of artistic genre within continuous, overlapping actions has been redefined and apparently the centre of assumed genre is off balance. The project is everywhere, the places are everywhere and the “author” is visiting strange locations and times with his personal, foreign “bundle”. Though the structures are clear and the margins are defined on the outskirts of the transitstation space, which is suggested by the scaffolding sculpture, the space with continuous Actions remains in the constant state of change.

A world within a world within a world defines itself through live experiences, viewers and artists alike: the transformation of ideas, objects and spaces, which are re-directing the expectation level for completeness. A free ticket is offered into the permissiveness for curiosity and surprise. Artists and viewers alike are amenable to possibilities of de-categorization between performing art and fine art, between classical music and experimental sounds, fashion and painted clothes between film and theatre, between projection and speech. The experience itself offers change.

Nanna Lysholt-Hansen DK Performance Art - "Black Breath"- with Sound and Projection

During the transitstation weekend the idea of freedom and the expansion of social or personal opportunity in a mixed inter-disciplinary and inter-active context opens the door to a live experience. The audience-viewer-artist relationship neglects the untouchable distance between work and artist, and creates a platform of immediacy and intimacy in an unpredictable situation.

The viewer’s position is one of discovery.

Follow transitstation train to the next stop Copenhagen 2010 at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts on 17 April and 18 April, 12 – 12 pm both days.

… excerpt from the Brothers’ Grimm:

“I will give you three days, time,” said he, “if by that time you find out my name, then shall you keep your child.”

On the third day the messenger came back again, and said, “I have not been able to find a single new name, but as I came to a high mountain at the end of the forest, there I saw a little house, and before the house a fire was burning, and round about the fire quite a ridiculous little man was jumping, he hopped upon one leg, and shouted –

‘To-day I bake, to-morrow brew,

the next I’ll have the young queen’s child.

Ha, glad am I that no one knew

that Rumpelstiltskin I am styled.’”

Imagine Rumpelstiltskin, after all the people have left: he is dancing alone in the circles around the fire, talking to himself with ironic smiles: hihihi, no one knows how to call the art!

The gates of Government house after the "blood spill", March 16, 2010

Just a thought, but when I heard about the protests going on in Bangkok, specifically that thousands of Thai demonstrators were standing in line so their blood could be collected for an anti-government protest, it made me think about the whole concept of performance art.  The collected blood was later spilled onto the gates of Government house as a protest against Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva and his cabinet.

So the question – Could an anti-government protest by thousands of protesters, be viewed as performance art?

Thai protester on his way to Government house

On the surface, the demonstration (held by the United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship – also known as the red shirts) shares some of the common principles of performance art:  The demonstation and the spilling of blood is temporary – already it has been washed clean by the authorities; the demonstrators, like performance artists, are not actors – they play as big a role in this happening as the event itself;  the public – the audience – becomes part of the “performance” by the sheer act of watching;  the demonstration serves as a symbolic conveyor of a peoples’ statement.

I’m not sure what the answer is, but I do know that the question is worthy of consideration.

What about literature?  In 2006, a Harvard sophomore by the name of Kaavya Viswanathan, wrote How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life. A chick-lit hit, the book landed its author a movie deal.  And then the unthinkable happened:  Kaavya Viswanathan was accused of plagiarizing several books, notably Megan McCafferty’s Sloppy Firsts, Second Helpings, and The Princess Diaries.  Kaavya Viswanathan’s defense: she had “internalized” some of the content from these books.

What about J.K. Rowling and Eva Ibbotson’s The Secret of Platform 13?  Eva Ibbotson’s reaction?  Eva Ibbotson simply stated that writers always borrow from each other which may explain why she never sued J.K.Rowling.

That’s the thing – we all do borrow from each other.  Great athletes borrow moves from other great athletes, great philosophers borrow (and build) from other great philosophers… what makes an already established idea a “new idea” is interpretation.

John LeKay's "Spiritus Calidus", Crystal Skull, 1993

John LeKay claims that Damien Hirst got his idea for “For the Love of God” from his “Spiritus Calidus” series which were, themselves, inspired by Mayan skulls.  The two artists were friends between 1992-94.  They also exhibited together in a 1994 show in New York.

Damien Hirst's "For the Love of God", 2007

A short while later, Polish artist Peter Fuss offers his own “Made in China” version (his made by “cheap Polish labor”).  The Fuss version costs  £1,000 (compared to the Hirst piece for £50 million) and is made of glass polished and cut to look like diamonds.  Plus, there’s a tooth missing .  Oh, and the skull isn’t cast in platinum the way the Hirst skull is.

Peter Fuss' "For The Love of God", plastic and glass, 2007

Computer graphics artist Robert Dixon accuses Hirst of appropriating his “True Daisy”.  The artist claims that Damien Hirst’s Valium is a copy of his “True Daisy” (published in 1991 in the and Penguin Dictionary of  Curious and Interesting Geometry).  Dixon writes to Hirst’s representatives who (reportedly) write back to Dixion.  Not realizing who Dixon is they allegedly state that Hirst got the idea from an image in saw in the 1991 Penguin Dictionary of Curious and Interesting Geometry.

Hirst's Valium, 2000, (on top) and Robert Dixon's True Daisy, 1984.

Irony of Ironies:  Damien Hirst sues sixteen year old artist Cartain (his moniker) for using his skull in a series of collages which begs the question: Doesn’t Kodak want to get in on this?

cartain

Skulls at the Nyamata Memorial Site, Nyamata, Rwanda. Photographer: Fanny Schertzer

Morality is way too subjective and way too dependent on the unpredictable variables of year, country, religion, and gender to be black and white.  What is socially acceptable in one part of the world might be morally reprehensible in another.  While never easy to decipher, the moral question becomes especially murky with respect to the arts.

Over the years, photojournalist pictures such as Kevin Carter’s 1994 Pulitzer-Prize winning photograph of a vulture waiting to feed on a dying Sudanese child have elicited moral outcries that have likened Carter to a “second vulture” who, like the opportunistic vulture depicted in his photograph, takes the opportunity to shoot the picture instead of helping the dying child.  Yet the question here, as is the question with most photojournalists whose subject matter is unnerving, is this:  Is the photojournalist’s moral obligation to the individual or the collective?  In other words, had Carter gone to help the child (who, chances are, would have died) instead of taking the picture, would we, the general public, feel the depth and destruction of the famine in Sudan?  The question is perhaps moot for who can unequivocally say what is right and what is wrong when it comes to documenting disturbing realities (think 9/11 and Abu Ghraib).  Whether  it is related to his decision to take the photograph instead of helping the child, Carter committed suicide a few months following his Pulitzer.

What about familiarity?  Does “familiarity” with a difficult subject breed a certain indifference?  Fanny Shertzer’s photograph of skulls at the Nyamata Memorial Site, although disturbing, are less so than the Carter picture because the image of the skull is one that most of us are familiar with.  Whether it be through early 17th century Vanitas paintings, popular cultural references such as the video game Tomb Raider and the Indiana Jones movies, the infamous skulls of  Damien Hirst, or the array of plastic skulls that resurface every Halloween, most of us have had enough skull exposure to numb any potential indignation.

Vanitas - Still Life, Pieter Claesz, early 17thc.

The question – What is art’s moral obligation – is even murkier when it comes to the visual arts.  It depends, I suppose, on how we define art.  Does art have a social responsibility?  An aesthetic responsibility?  A political responsibility?  Is it the visual consciousness of a nation?  A visual commentary on its world?  The artistic whim of its creator?

Art’s moral obligation came up when I approached a well known photographer for an interview.  He accepted.  His altered photographs are a litany of gorgeous color amidst which sits a very young girl who stares back at the viewer with unnaturally large eyes.  While I liked some of the photographs  a great deal, there were some whose disturbing context (the girl, although always clothed, is portrayed as a sexual object) began to bother me.  It is one thing to intellectually understand that photographs such as these are intended to elicit discomfort and uncertainty.  In the case of this particular photographer, the photographs were a critical commentary on child abuse and the treatment of women as sexual possessions.  To the artist’s defense, he felt that were he to have used women as his subjects, his photographs would have considerably less impact given society’s over-exposure to women-portrayed-as-sexual-objects in advertising and the media.

Staring at his photographs (I chose not to publish his name or his pictures as it is not my intention to trash someone whose photographs  have artistic merit) I asked myself whether they were any more more disturbing than images from child beauty pageants.  The answer came down to this:  Notwithstanding the questionable psychological well-being of mothers who subject their young daughters to beauty pageants, there is the underlying (albeit disquieting) knowledge that this is a mother/daughter endeavor.

Two contestants for child beauty pageants (aged five and seven)

So who was the girl in the photographer’s pictures?  Where had he found her?  Was she a willing participant?  Where were her parents?  Making it clear that I needed to know the answers to these questions before we could proceed, I waited for his response.  None came.

In the end, what it comes down to is this.  While the obligation of art (if any) remains unclear, artists are not an entities unto themselves.  Much in the same way a dictator cannot subject his people to atrocities in the name of a peaceful reign, nor can an artist abuse her subject in the name of art.  Art may not have a moral obligation, but artists do have a moral obligation to their subject.

Look up almost any artist today and the first thing that becomes obvious is how sophisticated most of their websites have become.  Most artists’ sites list biographies, CV’s, recent and past work and press coverage, as well as contact numbers – to mention but some of the information available.  Web sites have become the visual calling cards of the twenty-first century, a sort-of virtual get-to-know the artist without having to leave the comfort of your home.

It doesn’t have to stop there.  A great number of these artists are not only represented by “actual” galleries inhabiting our physical non-virtual world, but are also showcased in virtual showrooms.  For artists who don’t have “actual” gallery representation, there is plenty of software that allows them to set up whatever form of virtual exhibition space they may desire.

Virtual galleries aren’t new.  What is new is the ever-increasing acceptance of them, both in the public and the private (museums, galleries) sector.  Given that E-bay has replaced the garage sale, Craigslist the classifieds, on-line shopping the mega-mall, it’s no wonder that on-line galleries are on the rise.  Add to this that our perception of space has changed, as has our expectation of experience.  We no longer need the “real” to feel as if we have “experienced the real”.  Chat lines, twitter, LinkedIn (of which half the time you wish you could link out), have set up an instant intimacy whereby we’re on a first name basis with “friends” we’ve never actually met but, hey, why shouldn’t they be privy to the minutest details of our lives.

Suddenly, switching the gallery wall for the computer screen doesn’t appear that strange anymore.

Hence the obvious question:  Where does this leave the traditional art gallery?  If artists can set up their own sites, display their own work (albeit virtually), and further promote their art through twitter accounts and facebook pages are they not, to a large extent, appropriating the role of a good gallerist?  Even the argument that one misses the “real” experience (assuming there are still those of us who want the real experience) becomes moot, since all one has to do is set up an appointment with the artist and visit their studio to experience and view the work first hand.

Maybe, but one thing a gallery and museum can still do that virtual galleries, facebook, and twitter can’t do is save time.  Advertising and promoting one’s work is a full time occupation, as is managing one’s career.  There’s the showing and talking about the work, the phone calls to museums and potential collectors, the sending out of press releases and the putting together of exhibitions and exhibition catalogues – all administrative thieves of time that could, for the artist, be spent creating.

If anything, what we are seeing today is an interesting combination and collaboration of the virtual and the real.  The virtual allows the artist a sense of self-direction and empowerment in that they no longer have to wait and hope for some gallery to see in their work what they see.  The real (be it in a traditional gallery, a co-op art space run by artists, or participation in various art fairs) not only gives the artist more time, but also provides the artist with a sense of creative pariticipation within a community.  In a way, it mirrors our world:  All of us potentially global, but we are all inhabitants of our very real and very physically present neighbourhoods.  One is simply an extension of the other and vice versa.

Using Andy Warhol’s quote, “Good business is the best art”, as the tag line for one of its last exhibits of the decade, The Tate Modern’s Pop Art: Art in a Modern World, examines a growing phenomenon in the art world that seems to have culminated over that last ten years.  Thanks to artists like Jeff Koons, Tracey Emin, and Damien Hirst, not to mention dealers like Charles Saatchi, good business does indeed seem to be the best art – at least judging by the new breed of millionaire artists.  If anything, business-savvy artists and art dealers of the twenty-first century have taken Warhol’s axiom a giant step further: Good business may be the best art, but self-creation is the best business.

What is it about the 00’s that has led to artists and their dealers creating themselves as marketable brands?   Let’s begin with the premise that art is a reflection of our society and make a quick overview of the last ten years.

Backtrack to December 31, 1999 and the Y2K bug – the cryptically sinister name given to the apocalyptic computer bug of doom that loomed ominously at the end of our millennium countdown.   Nothing happened and we breathed a collective sigh of relief and then came the onslaught of 9/11 followed by the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, whose horror has been compounded by the Orwellian overtones of the Patriot Act and Homeland Security.  Add to this a global economic recession, not to mention natural disasters like the Indian Ocean Tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, and global warming.  Oh, and did I mention the disintegrating line between private and public; and being detained and tortured without reason?

Bali, Madrid, London, and, most recently, the Northwestern flight from Amsterdam to Detroit…  none of this necessarily shocks us anymore.  What was once unthinkable has become thinkable.  9/11 has torpedoed our consciousness into the uncomfortable realization that an act of terror could happen anywhere.  Welcome to the decade of vulnerability.

Far from leading us to cower in some safe corner, however, our vulnerability has led us straight into the realm of self-creation.  Huxley’s Brave New World has become Create Your Own World.  Compounding this are self-creation facilitators like YouTube, Facebook, the RMB video game (or the Nintendo DS dating game Love Plus that is responsible for at least one inter-marriage between plain Joe real man and virtual hot babe).  And what about the unthinkable reality that someone like Sarah Palin stood (stands?) a chance of becoming President of the United States (just read about it in Going Rogue) while the father of her grandchild gets ready to strip for Playgirl?  Just consider one of the biggest movies in the last month of this last decade – Avatar – the motherload of alternate-egos and alternate realities.  Hmmm… let’s see… live my uneventful life in a wheelchair or close my eyes and become the revered leader of a people?

Is it any wonder, then, that the best-known artists and art dealers of today are branded celebrities who openly promote themselves and their art?   Piero Manzoni may have shocked a few people with his 1961 series of Merde d’artista, but today’s superstar artists are past that.  Shocking audiences just to shock them is passé.  Shocking audiences to create your “brand” is in.  Artists now put their brand on restaurants and haute-couture fashion labels while dealers and collectors open their own museums.  Andy Warhol may have been what Robert Rosenblum called the court painter of the 70’s, but we, and our artists/art dealers, have become the court painters of ourselves.