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.

The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living (source: http://tinyurl.com/ycjmxaw)

If you are not familiar with Damien Hirst’s conceptual piece, “The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living”,  here’s the scoop:  In 1991, Charles Saatchi commissions British artist Hirst to create whatever he wants.  Hirst decides to formaldehyde a shark and then place that shark in a tank filled with formaldehyde.  A whole lot of formaldehyde later, “The Physical Impossibility…” is created.  In 2004 Saatchi sells the work for eight million dollars to Steven A. Cohen who, in turn, lends the piece to The Metropolitan Museum of art until 2010.

Fast forward to the future.  My husband John and I walk into a Montreal art gallery where we familiarize ourselves with an artist called Dominique Gaucher.   Lo and behold – one of Gaucher’s paintings depicts Hirst’s shark at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  Entitled “Showpiece”, the background is dominated by Hirst’s shark while the foreground is dominated by an encroaching mass of sea water.   In effect, Gaucher’s “Showpiece” brilliantly reverses the process that went into the creation of “The Physical Impossibility…” – instead of art extracting its subject from nature, nature  reclaims its subject from art.

Showpiece. (Source: artnet.com)

Unfortunately, “Showpiece” was sold and therefore unavailable.  Solution?  Commission Gaucher to create another version.    In our 6 x 6 version, the shark and its tank (which rests on an embankment of sand) are at the forefront of the painting.  The background is dominated by the oncoming sea.

John and I each have the mock up of our painting (it’s not yet finished) on our phones.  Like giddy new parents we proudly show our friends.

Their reaction?   Are you seriously putting that in your home?  Maybe you shouldn’t make it the first thing one sees when they walk in and whatever you do, don’t put it in your dining room!  So what kind of art should enter your home anyway?  Obviously, you should love your art but, and this is a big BUT, is love honestly enough?  If you were buying one or two paintings then yes, it is enough, but what if you begin the slow and alluring road towards becoming a collector?

Art should be like a great book.  You finish it, you put it down, and yet it stays with you.  It makes you question what you hadn’t questioned before, it makes you “re-see” your surroundings.

Ponder the “what kind of art…”question if you want.  In the meantime, John and I look forward to welcoming our blood-thirsty shark!  Where will it go?  Our living room of course where it will boldly glare at our wine-sipping guests or our kids while they attempt to snuggle on the couch with a good, thought-provoking book – okay maybe I’m stretching the part about thought-provoking, but what better companion than an open-mouthed shark for the reading of the Twilight series!