Re-evaluation of the Art World is necessary and healthy
Do we learn from crisis?
Although the peak of the COVID-19 crisis is perhaps still to come for most of us, it is clear that the pandemic will end someday and that humanity will survive, yet it is equally clear that the world will have changed inexorably. What it might look like, how will our value systems have changed as well as our attitude towards things, other people, and art – are questions that Arterritory.com has posed over these last days (in the form of an email interview) to many people intrinsically involved in the art world.
The opinion of Daniel Hug, the art director of Art Cologne
How do you feel in this new reality which is neither a book nor a sci-fi film, and is happening to all of us in the here and now?
I go back and forth between being optimistic and very nervous. I'm worried most about the effects of misinformation and, of course, the people out there who don't have the means and resources to deal with this situation.
COVID-19 has achieved in a matter of months what the climate change movement and frequent formal meetings between heads of state have failed to. Everybody talked about the need to ‘get out of the bubble’, but nothing ever really changed. The emergence of the coronavirus has served as a kind of ‘higher power’, showing humans their true place in the planet's ecosystem.
The question is, are people even capable of comprehending this ‘shutting off’ of the world that we are in right now? Can we learn from it, and is it possible to permanently retain what we learn? So far, modern society has responded to the situation by pushing the economic shutdown button (taking into consideration that the virus is not quite as wholly destructive as the plague). Yet the question is much more fundamental than that. Once it is all over, will people realize that we need to change? Will we come out of this better than when we entered? Or perhaps in the future, when we look back on this, it will turn out to only have been ‘a gentle warning’...?
When Covid19 passes, things will return to the way they were before, except most people will be a bit poorer. Despots and right-wing politicians will use this to set forth their xenophobic agendas; events like this tend to exacerbate the situation already on hand. I am especially concerned with the Americans. I'm hopeful that Joe Biden will beat Trump in November, but this means Biden will inherit a government in shambles, an enormous national debt of trillions, and an economy likely to go down for a few years. Trump and his propaganda apparatus Fox News have managed to spread so much misinformation, it is unlikely the world order as we have known it will remain as it was. Europe will see the light as it has before Covid19.
I'm hopeful that Joe Biden will beat Trump in November, but this means Biden will inherit a government in shambles, an enormous national debt of trillions, and an economy likely to go down for a few years.
The crisis has hit the art world very seriously. It's almost clear that art institutions and structures and artists should find new tools on how to survive and how to deal with the post-pandemic consequences. Calling to save the art world curator Hans Ulrich Obrist in London mentioned Roosevelt's “Federal Art Project”, Manuel Borja-Villel, the Director of Museo Reina Sofia was calling for a Marshall Plan etc. What would be the tools that could help artists and the art world survive?
Despite the negative effects on the economies of the world, a cleansing, or re-evaluation of the Art World is necessary and healthy. Most artists before COVID19 did not sell, few artists today can actually make a living from their Art. I opened my first gallery in 1995 when the art market was pretty much non-existent. Back then I would try and imagine what the 80s boom market must have been like; the glamour, money, celebrities mingling with artists and art dealers at restaurants like the Odeon in New York. Big shot players like Mary Boone, Gagosian, Leo Castelli, the high prices achieved by artists like Eric Fishl or David Salle, it seemed like another planet. Apart from art magazines like Flash Art and Artforum, nobody seemed to give a shit about contemporary Art in the 1990s, which is generally how the art world always was until the noughts. However, it was also a great time, and it was a smaller and more intimate art world – normal people could buy art, art was actually affordable, and most importantly, art was more intelligent.
Nobody seemed to give a shit about contemporary Art in the 1990s, which is generally how the art world always was until the noughts.
One really got the impression everyone involved in the art world in the 1990s did it for the love of art, not the money. I don’t want to downplay the importance of the art world, but the last thing we need to do is artificially support the art market. Art institutions and non-profits need help! The art market will be fine, it has weathered much worse. We need to find ways to help all people, not just the art world.
The mid-level dealers will have problems, so will the trendy over-priced artists, and young artists whose work is being sold for over €50,000.
Do you have a vision of what the art scene will look like? What will be the main shifts and to which direction will they shift?
In the most extreme scenario, only the absolute core of the art market will remain. Gagosian will still be around, most serious collectors will remain, most of the young galleries will continue, the secondary market dealers will be fine, the big auction houses will remain, prices for names from art history will rise, the market for Modernist artists and blue-chip post-war artists will remain. The mid-level dealers will have problems, so will the trendy over-priced artists, and young artists whose work is being sold for over €50,000. Most art fairs will suffer, many art fairs will stop due to fewer galleries existing. Things will become more local, less global. The art world is pretty predictable; what is not predictable is how nations, economies, politicians, and industry will weather this crisis. I'm guessing about 85% of businesses out there will be impacted negatively, while around 15% will profit from Covid19. The world will suddenly have new top dogs, new has-beens, new concerns and values. How the art industry will be affected remains to be seen, but a correction in the Art Market has been long overdue.
