Art magazine to artists: Drop dead

The brain trust over at London's ArtReview magazine wants you to know that artists no longer matter very much. For the first time since it began publishing the Power 100, a subjective annual ranking of who counts in the international art world, at least as seen from its offices in the vicinity of Fleet Street, no artists made the top 10.

None. Zero. Zip.

In fact, no artists made the top 12 -- henceforth to be known as the Dirty Dozen -- while a grand total of just three of the top 25 slots are filled by artists. The rest, as my colleague Jori Finkel noted (in a short article long on jaundice) are big-deal dealers, collectors, curators and museum directors. 

Here's how ArtReview explains the Power 100 ("in association with Dom Perignon"), which the magazine has ground out since 2002:

"Entrants are ranked according to a combination of influence over the production of art internationally, sheer financial clout (although in these times that's no longer such a big factor) and activity in the previous 12 months –- criteria which encompass artists, of course, as well as collectors, gallerists and curators."

Presumably, that "of course" is appended after the word "artists" just for effect. Artists have always been barely acknowledged in the higher reaches of the Power 100, never getting more than one or two nods.

Last year, an artist hung on by his fingernails to the No. 10 spot, the only one to make the highest cut (this year he slid to No. 17). In 2010, it's worse. Apparently, the magazine believes that artists don't exert much influence over the production of art internationally anymore, while financial clout, even in straightened circumstances, and something known as activity do.

Long live the market and marketing. "Of course," artists don't buy ads in art magazines, which puts them at a disadvantage here. But have they also given up champagne?

-- Christopher Knight
twitter.com/KnightLAT

Photo: A replica of Michelangelo's David, damaged in the 1987 Whittier Narrows earthquake. Credit: Al Schaben / Los Angeles Times 

Recent and related:

What do Eli Broad and Mike Kelley have in common? Power, says ArtReview

Comments

[boris8]

The headline for this piece said "drop dead" to artists. Not the same as "none in the top 10%". We need a new headline writer here.

[coagula fan]

I think if Eli Broad really was that powerful he would have gotten Larry Gagosian to be director of LAMoCA not Mr. Deitch. Glad to see @FakeGagosian is gloating.

[Donald Frazell]

LMAO!!! What did you expect, you represent their interests every day on this blog. And the expectation of art is so low, this is what you get. Like in pop music, this pop art you love, and make no mistake, this IS entertainment for the rich, all is appropriation, er, plagarism. Independant thought is drilled out of eager naive students, the Academies produce legions of Pavlovian trained lemmings.

It is Meism run rampant, and so easily controlled by those who buy their services. Salesmen are always marks for better ones, and artists the biggest marks of all. Time to grow up, and live life, have something to SAY through the visual langauge, something about Us, about humanity, nature and god, and just perhaps, you will eventualy make something worth saving. We just left the Age of Excess. Artistes kowtowing at the feet of the Broads of the world.

What did you expect to happen?

Save the Watts Towers, left out of the absurdist Pacific Standard Time party next year. Tear down the decadent Ivories. And their patrons.

[joe]

WHO CARES.

[Ben Guidolin]

I've been painting happily for the last 40 years mainly because I've never picked up an art magazine,,,and now I know why.

[El Guapo de la ciudad de Los Angeles]

Can't wait for the next issue of "Artforum" to come out! It's always enlightening to be told what qualifies as "art" these days by those literate souls writing the reviews. I only wish it came with a centerfold. Harumph!

[Gun control]

I didn't see my name>>>> Banksy!

[Chris B]

As an Artist I have never read Art Review and do not intend to. I agree with what the poster above wrote "WHO CARES "..Art Review should be renamed Art Dealing .... As you may know to produce art an artist is required and to sell art,art is required .... so on that note go figure.... Cheers! :)

[Sal]

"High" art is crystal masturbation.

[william wray]

Artists are supported who are conceptually based thus interchangeable/ disposable precisely because the system doesn't what good artists to have any power. The biggest lie in history was pulled of when the art world sold the=idea that skill makes an artist less unique when precisely the opposite is true. Ideas can come in a flash-- skill takes a lifetime. CK is the biggest promoter of this state of events... WHOOPSS!!

[MATTHEW ROSE]

Isn't it just a boatload of whale crap, this list business? We're so in love with celebrity and money, and less conscious of actual influence (with regards to aesthetics in this case), the lists serve as self-serving blather to attract attention and little else.

No wonder few artists are on this list, and only very deep pocketed collectors, dealers and loud mouths. One must be reminded that bowling is the most popular participant sport in America...and that most folks making art these days are using water colors and crayons on big poster paper, and working straight through Sunday Afternoon.

Sure I'd love to be on the list, but what it would really mean remains a mystery. Better to understand the art world by looking at the folks not on these sorts of lists, and meeting artists in their studios.

MATTHEW ROSE / PARIS, FRANCE

[Artoo45]

This comment is art.

Simply screen capture it and print it out. Then photograph it with an old pinhole camera. Develop the film and scan it at high resolution and print that out on a very high-end glicee printer. Have a frame shop float it in an elegant box frame.

Then, write an elaborate description about the piece. Claim that it's a story about a story about a story which is all about irony and meaning vs. meaninglessness. Shop it around until some black-clad, goateed doofus in the East Village gasps audibly at the genius of it all and you'll be on the fast-track to "undiscovered genius" fame.

Charge $750,000.00 for the piece. Cash the check, buy a new Rolls-Royce Phantom and fill it with the leftover cash. Set it alight on Rodeo Drive. Grab your pinhole camera and photograph other people photographing you photographing them.

Repeat scanning/glicee/framing/abstract-writing process and you are now an "established, important artist."

[artalamode]

I gotta say for the first time, I agree with Donald Frazell's first paragraph!. There's different types of enthusiasm out there... I'm still sane.. artists are rockstars to me.. though, I met Jeffrey Deitch and he made my knees weak. Maybe because I was way taller than him, ha, ha.

[artalamode]

... Also, I like to imagine the "Chris B" above is actually Chris Burden!. You are amazing Mr. Chris Burden!.

[Hairy Carrion]

I agree with boris8.

[patroklos]

This is just a reflection of society. The rich are not those who make anything, they are the high-stake hucksters, the gamblers, and the exploiters. The Times is just an instrument of this game. For every mention of an artist, we hear five hundred mentions of Eli Broad or the Resnicks.

[Apple1]

What are the names of the three artists who were in the Top 25; in which medium or media do they work? What have they done during the last year? Why were their names and works, not mentioned?

[hank]

art magazines are for the people who buy art not the ones who make it.