The artist of today is a titan of microindustry. He employs a lot of people—for an artist—and calls his workplace a “studio” to denote not a place of private craft but rather an organ for collective production. These arrangements, recalling those of old masters and modern architects, meet the demands of the contemporary institutions he engages, which, in turn, allow the artist of today to manifest his works in many places at once. Each project is suited to its venue; each is authentically his. These customizable, polymaterial, unique multiples offer a dependable quantum of aesthetic experience, to be completed by your viewership. His art is to evince ingenuity without virtuosity; he is at pains to make space for you in the meaning of his work. The artist of today is nothing if not generous.
The artist of today is perfectly suited to the museum of today, which likewise appears in many places at once, providing the highest level of culture in the world’s best locations. And it, too, is generous: your admission fee gets you more and more every year. Together, artist and museum have established a harmonious partnership, one free of the antagonisms that marred the art of yesterday. It is a golden age of art—an era so perfect, so serene and productive, that we no longer worry about the artist of tomorrow.
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A few generations ago, when artists got tired of being existentialist drunks, they decided it would be funny to ape the profile of America’s then-ascendant social type, the Businessman. They engineered an art of wry conformity to the more tedious aspects of modern life: lots of grids and numbers, lots of boxes. The joke caught on in a big way, and pretty soon everyone was making deals, talking on the phone, and carrying little briefcases. Real gains were made. Artists moved from cold-water flats to commercial lofts, they went to the dentist, and nobody mistook them for hobos anymore. They didn’t have to spend all night in the studio worrying about the bomb; they didn’t have to kill themselves; they could work nine-to-five like everybody else.
The schtick eventually wore out. In fact, nobody really got the joke, and artists got stuck with a bunch of assistants, speaking engagements, and application forms. You really did have to act like a professional.You could make anything you wanted, it’s true, but the contrapasso was, whatever it was you did, you had to keep doing it over and over again, until your self-expression turned into money. You were stuck in a circle of Dante’s hell, somewhere between the impostors and the counterfeiters.
We didn’t like it in hell, but we weren’t sure how to get out. The routine was murder, but we needed the money. Shuffling between the panel discussions and committee meetings, we dimly remembered a very different idea of our vocation. Where were the late nights? Where was the existentialism? For that matter, where was the booze? But while we mulled this over on the way to the bar, everyone else, we observed, seemed to have moved on. Evidently, you could just throw on some sunglasses, fill your bag with drugs, and magically fuse the bohemian and the businessman. This new joke had all the perks (and none of the drawbacks) of the previous models: you got late nights without the anxiety, steady money without bureaucracy, and the drinks, naturally, were on the house. All you had to do—our friends spelled it out for us—was impersonate the new ascendant social type. That’s how we became celebrities.
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For thousands of years—in caves, churches, and castles—artworks stayed on (private) display for a long, long time. For the last hundred or so, they got shown in public galleries for about a month before being sold into wealthy homes and museums. Then, more recently, people started hustling art through little booths for just a few days before it got snapped up or shipped off to other art fairs. It was obvious to everyone that the best way to sell art was also the worst way to see it, but a lot of us—not just the buyers—spent serious money getting to Basel and Miami and London. The rationale was that you could see a lot of things fast—and you could—but the speed had a side effect; it distilled multiple phenomena into just two: art and money. In fact, we were sure we could see the art actually turning into money, and not just in the sense of being bought and sold. No, we were certain that if you watched the blur carefully, like the dealers and collectors did, you could see the artworks themselves turning into an ornate and hermetic currency.
Seeing art at the galleries gave us more old-fashioned feelings: we felt privileged, and we felt left out. When we went to movies, plays, and concerts, or when we bought books or albums, we paid—just a little, but as much as everyone else. We voted with our dollars, as they say. In art galleries, however, we were allowed to see the art gratis. This had always seemed like a great bargain, but, really, it cost us in other ways. The gallery system subjected the art to a strange procedure: initially viewed by everyone, for free, it’s eventually paid for by just one person, at a very high price. Impressing both audiences was a struggle, and as the boom pushed prices up and up, the artworks were put under immense pressure. And guess what happened. Some art chose simply to ignore us—the countless non-buying viewers—but seeing that stuff was fine, like looking at lavender alligator shoes, or canary yellow convertibles, or the other things rich people buy. (We could always dream.) Meanwhile, another kind of art became overt in its disdain for the market; rebuffing the horror of art-as-merchandise, it presented itself as inviolably unsaleable. This was rebellious, and sometimes invigorating—and we sympathized!—but while things up front were getting rowdy, in the back room, through the half-shut office doorway, we could usually glimpse five or six pristine objects—some Donald Judd boxes, or maybe a Jeff Koons—lined up like Porsches waiting for their buyers. Our hearts sank as we realized these well-intended protests we were attending were secretly promotional events.
Meanwhile there was the internet, the Pure Land. People kept inviting us to visit their websites. Or someone would mention an artist: “Google him!” So we did. We browsed. We clicked. We went down to the kitchen for a snack. We had found countless reproductions (every medium becomes a JPEG), discussions (a sea of “comments”), and archives (useful for research), but in the end we hadn’t found too much art. Other activities—shopping, dating, journalism, masturbation—had developed lively (you could even say improved) versions of themselves via the internet, but art was curiously slow to flourish on the Web. We theorized: If you replace art’s usual context—the gallery’s heady blend of enticement and alienation, the intricate social rituals that envelop the viewing, the nostalgic romance of the expensive and the useless—with the relentlessly practical context of your computer— the to-do lists, the iced coffee, perhaps a phone bill or two—then it does become pretty hard to get that art feeling.
But isn’t it time for a new feeling, anyway? Maybe, just maybe, as technology improves and the art boom comes to an end, there will be a moment—right before computers take over and everyone has to go back to work—when art objects flash before us like we always dreamed they would: financially indifferent, exuberantly three-dimensional, and quietly glowing in the egalitarian LCD light of heaven.
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The encyclopedia of the present moment is written at parties. Late at night, over loud music, after several drinks, someone approaches you and wants to collaborate. They want to know how your entry is coming, and then they want to tell you about theirs. Focus! If you’re on the same page, if you can still read, you can really get some work done. You know: compare references, fix footnotes, clarify your positions and maybe find some new ones. If you don’t want to do it right then, you have to promise to work on it later, by yourself, at home. That way you’ll be ready next time. And there will be a next time, because the encyclopedia of the present moment is a big job, and it has to be done right now.
On paper, it’s a total mess. It’s supposed to be complete, systematic, and timely, but what was impossible for Diderot in 1750 is even harder now, when you’re hungover. You tell yourself to start simple, with the biographical entries—but even then all you can do is make a list of names. So-and-so begat so-and-so begat so-and-so… It reads like the Old Testament. Except you have to make sure it’s up-to-date, so you’re constantly scanning other people’s entries, before adjusting (and readjusting) your own. When it’s finally done, you fear you’ve left something out (and if somebody spots that, you’re off the project) so you preemptively append a lengthy disclaimer, like the drug companies do. This entry may not contain all… The final result is a cross between the Book of Generations and the side effects of Paxil. But then again, that’s not far off: endless names, legalistic qualifiers, plus headaches, abnormal movements of the mouth or face, the specter of prophecy, and the possibility of drowsiness, hypomania, or sudden death—you’ve actually catalogued the present moment pretty nicely. So we’ll see you at the next party?