Viva la Revolución / Hey art’s pretty important, you guys

“This society—American society—does not value the arts.”

True words from Patric McCoy, President and Co-Founder of Diasporal Rhythms, as well as one of the panelists at “Creating Community through the Arts,” a discussion I attended a couple weeks ago. The conversation was a breath of fresh air. Saying the things we all want to say but are often hesitant to say out loud, the panelists pulled no punches, dispelling and deconstructing misconceptions and myths about art and artists, taking on America’s lack of funding for the arts and arts education; and, most importantly, offering grassroots level solutions to the problems addressed.

American society at large may not value the arts, but one cannot deny how indispensable the arts are to American society.

“Arts are essential for democracy. […] The arts teach people to think freely.” –Panelist Carlos Tortolero, Executive Director of the National Museum of Mexican Art.

Here’s an excerpt from my write-up of the panel discussion on Sixty Inches From Center:

Patric McCoy: I’m seeing that the energy is actually in the subcultures, and that it really is a bottom-up phenomenon. [...] What we have is a top-down process, is that the Art Institute, the Museum of Contemporary Art, the art critics, and so forth [...] tell you who is good, instead of you telling them who is good. All of our community should be working to promote… should be telling you, “This is who we think is good in this part of the city,” and it bubbles up. I think it’s most prevalent in visual arts. [...] In the musical arts, we don’t have a problem in America that it comes up from the bottom. [...] Hip hop can start in the Bronx, gospel in the South Side of Chicago… we don’t have a problem with that, that eventually, it gets up to the top and it becomes “America.”

Carlos Tortolero: It becomes “America” from the powers that be, and I think the real problem is that the power structure has created an “either/or” situation, and I want to create an “and” situation, where the mariachi music is good, classical music is good, hip hop… it’s all good. It should be an “and” situation where we embrace all forms of art, in which all forms of art are valued.

Luis DeLaTorre: [...] Do you think it’s because music is a very rich commodity, that people can trade easily, and make money off of, and art isn’t seen that way?

PM: That has to do with power, and that the visual arts are associated with power. Imagery is extremely powerful.

When it comes to working within one’s subculture(s) and inciting change from the bottom up, panelist Giselle Mercier, an installation artist from Panama and the Executive Director of Pros Arts Studio, pointed out that anyone can be a patron of the arts, that “it has to be a collective force and can’t be just from people who have means.” She explained that, instead of purchasing a $3 cup of coffee for one day every week, one can donate to a local museum (or, as I’ll interject, invest in a great piece of artwork).

Technology was another topic that was raised, framed initially as another problem (think bookstores-might-be-going-bankrupt-because-of-tablets problem) artists and arts professionals face. One audience member asked whether technological advances “undermine the ability of the people to decide which art is important.” On the contrary, technology makes the world smaller, makes art more accessible (shameless self-aggrandizing: hello, blog), allows for the democratization of art (why yes I will continuously recycle my own words). In the words of moderator and artist Luis DeLaTorre:

[With technology], we can have [art] at our fingertips To be able to experience it, visual art and music, you have it right there. I was talking to a friend of mine and I said, “Art is dead.” Her response was, “Art is never going to die, because it’s that human experience of creating that always propels us.” 

Essential for democracy? Never going to die? It’s what propels the human race? If that’s what art is and we’re not supporting it, it looks like our values are indeed skewed.

Read more highlights from the conversation here.

All of this brings me to the flip side of the discussion we had (and are still having) on this site concerning overrated artists. One of my main objectives is exposing and sharing the talents of artists—who might otherwise remain under the radar—with shows like Exquisite Corpse and via online galleries. Who do you want to see exalted in galleries and museums? What do you want to see? Who/what do you feel represents you? We need to take the microphone from the mainstream and major outlets and institutions and hand it back to the people, to you. The artist has the ability to condense an entire zeitgeist into a single image, to create something that someone else can look at and say, “This is who I am, and this is who we are.” Art encapsulates the voice of the people.

Related: I’m pleased to be a part of Lolk Collective, a new community-focused initiative I mentioned briefly in this interview. Launched by Zachary Johnson, who exhibited art in Exquisite Corpse, Lolk is looking for collaborators, so this is an artist call for those of you who are interested in street art, guerilla art, and other forms of happiness.

Everything is connected.

Except for the following fact.

My favorite “search keyword” (thank you, Blogger stats) that led someone to this site this week: “how old is jenny lam”

(Well, kind stranger, if you click around on enough links—hint! the sidebar! also! interviews on the press page!—you’ll figure out when I graduated college, and that should narrow things down. Although I’ll let you continue to believe I’m either a 14-year-old prodigy—the ages mentioned on the “About” page are fabulous red herrings—or a geezer with an aging portrait in an attic.)

Discussion: Should I shell out a hundred grand in cash to watch a museum guard slowly strip naked?

Today, this blog is one month old! Since its inception four short weeks ago, it has received over 6,800 pageviews from 76 countries across six continents (someone please donate laptops to the penguins in Antarctica), each post with more hits than the last. I see sixes and an eight. This is good. Thank you, lovely people, especially all the returning visitors and those who, astoundingly, spend more than half an hour on this site (hopefully that means you’re actually reading the posts and pages instead of stepping away from the computer to take an extended coffee break while forgetting to close this tab). Again, thank you. Make sure you share the love and point your friends in this direction!

In the last post, we discussed the many reasons for collecting art. In the same vein but less broad, let’s consider collecting art that is more ephemeral and/or conceptual. Newsweek (they of the hilariously misguided top 10 artists list) recently published a piece profiling collectors who purchase conceptual art, asking their readers if these buyers are “crazy or on the cutting edge.” An excerpt:

When you buy a [Lawrence] Weiner you don’t acquire the lettering itself, let alone the 3-D work it implies. You buy Weiner’s immaterial idea, as a certificate that lets you write his phrase in a room, or come up with the sculpture you think it describes. “When you take ownership, you can realize it any way you want,” says Victor Gisler, the Zurich dealer showing Weiner’s balls-y piece, priced at $160,000. In late June, the Museum of Modern Art in New York put a vintage piece of his on display as part of a major acquisition of so-called immaterial art. MoMA curators are eagerly backfilling a collection that has tended toward the material.

“I think good art is when I can hear the ideas bouncing off each other in my brain. This is where aesthetics are for me—not in my retina,” says Aaron, a 76-year-old lawyer who makes his living suing Big Pharma. “Ninety percent of the money [at Art Basel] is spent on painting,” he adds with a hint of contempt. Whereas the Levines want work that makes you wonder if it’s even art—and therefore might be the art that’s breaking new ground.

From the collectors who own the Tino Sehgal piece referenced in this post’s title:

“What’s interesting is people talking about the work,” says Josée. “You may think more about a Weiner [text piece], over time, than about some canvas you’ve bought… An idea may not be material, but it’s powerful.” She refers to her memory as the “medium” such works are realized in—and then you realize that that’s where most art lives, anyway, most of the time.

Her husband chimes in: “When the work is immaterial, we’re just its temporary holders. Accumulating fancy goods is absurd. We buy works to talk about them, and to stretch people’s notions of what art is… But some people want the opposite: a reassuring object with a big name.”

What do you think? Are these collectors ahead of the game, or are they being duped? Would you buy art you can’t simply hang on a wall?

Discussion: Why do you collect art?

I’ve returned from a trip to New York, where I attended a Pixar Artists Masterclass; hit up as many art events as possible, such as Bronx Calling: The First AIM Biennial (my good friend and fellow Columbia alumnus with whom I was staying curates at Wave Hill), which showcases experimental work by 72 emerging artists and runs through September 5; and got into oddly heavy late-night discussions that included questions like “Would you resort to murder if not doing so meant you could no longer create art?” with the aforementioned friend. I also may or may not have gone tagging with said friend. (You have no proof!) (I type this with unpredictably permanent paint still encrusting my fingernails.) It’s always good to be back in NYC.

ARTnews recently published their Top 200 and Top Ten Collectors lists. Accompanying the latter was an article that detailed the art market’s recovery over the past couple of years, a shift in collectors’ interest from Impressionist and Modern to contemporary, and reasons for collecting art:

The late art historian Kenneth Clark probably said it best: "It's like asking why we fall in love, the reasons are so various."

Some of the reasons: social climbing; the work will increase in value; and, as a dealer said, it "provides you with feelings or sensations that you cannot get from anything else—visceral rewards, emotional satisfaction, the fact that you can look at the work in your home every day and continue to get renewed pleasure. It doesn't wear off."

Why do you collect? Whose work would you most want to collect, barring any and all financial and political limitations?