If 2008 gas prices are any indication, it's futile to try to guess a particular outcome about anything these days. However, I feel pretty safe saying that for the global art market, the bubble has popped, and it ain't reinflating; the only clue that it ever existed is a slimy, soapy film splattered on the walls. Same goes for publishing. (As for corporate music, I don't keep up with arena rock shows, so I can't tell you how Hannah Montana's portfolio looks for the final quarter of 2008.)
We've already seen some unpleasant blowback from declining art markets - dead auctions, layoffs, fewer donations to arts institutions. And yes, all of this sucks. On the other hand, I keep returning to a conversation I had a few years ago with a local artist, whose daughter was a recent art-school grad. She lived in Brooklyn, and was doing pretty well, because buyers - well, speculators really - had bought up every piece of work she'd ever generated, ninety-nine percent of which was grad school stuff. They were doing this with lots of promising young artists. While I'm sure these kids were happy to have a large sum of cash straight of out of school, I found the fact that these buyers were speculating on art as if it were wheat or rubber, that they were buying up everything in order to have a monopoly on the next Hirst or Freud, a little disturbing. It reminded me of the day I first learned that big box bookstores don't call books "books;" they call them "units," or "wallpaper."
I'm mostly a realist, but ... jeez. Why even bother? Why do people value art in the first place? Sure, for some people it's an investment; but most serious art collectors I know don't buy stuff unless they have some emotional response to it, too. As for big publishing, I am hoping this shakeup will mean that one day I can walk through a bookstore and not see thousands of book covers with "How" subtitles on them. You know the ones I'm talking about: How America Lost Its Soul, Went Bankrupt and Ripped off Taxpayers Along the Way. Or: How One Man Got Fat, Got Fit and Found God Along the Way. Or: How to Raise a Happy, Hopeful, Emotional Intelligent Child ... And Not Lose Your Mind Along the Way. If I ran the world, I'd ban subtitles - and the word "how" - from book covers for the next 10 years.
Bad art and half-assed books give me the same headachy, annoyed feeling I get when I watch network TV, with all the stupid commercials for cars, sitcoms, candy and wrinkle cream ... like I'm being smothered in trash and being played for a sucker. It's true that economically bleak times are not great for peace, love and art. But I would argue that bubble economies are far worse. Now, I'm not talking about plain old economic prosperity - I don't think the past several years count for that, because the prosperity only arrived for certain people, most of them metaphorical card sharps. Bernie Madoff, a seemingly generous contributor to the arts, was only one of them.
In 2009, I'm hoping the harsh florescent light of economic bleakness will continue to reveal the shuckers and jivers. How that will translate into canvases, and books and plays ... well, I'd be stupid to try to call that one. I'd rather make bets on what gas will cost a year from now. But saying goodbye to an era that was like the worst parts of the Gilded Age and the Me Decade rolled into one - an era of dog manicures and $200 gold-salted cocktails, not to mention those dreadful "How" subtitles - no, that doesn't make me sad at all. And seems to me, as far as art goes, there is nowhere to go but up. —Stefene Russell
