LETTER FROM AMERICA by Lucio Pozzi - Il Giornale dell'Arte (The Art Newspaper), November 2009 I read on the
first page of this summer’s Art Newspaper that the art market has
touched bottom and that now it’s certain to start its comeback.
Ah, let’s all jump on board again! Just as the big bank managers
are restarting their risky speculations
Many of us are living the
irreconcilable conflict between a desire to be left in peace
simply to make our art: pitted against that desire to share the
wealth of it with others for, well, wealth. This dilemma is
heightened when the art market pretends to offer us some real
means at a living if we just play by its rules, even though by
doing so often impels us to censure our more intimate roots of
invention.
These rules are the same as a
supermarket: the artist must offer produce easily recognizable by
its form and content, in
other words, to offer an always distinguishable brand. If
possible, it’s best to have every such expectation come neatly
packaged and easy to label. Warned off from any accepted criterion
that might explore the potential scope of our art, we often must
adapt familiar or current formulas to this end product.
From time to time, very rarely,
into the pervasive net of this mercantile stamp of approval an
authentic product happens to fall, often too late and often only
to the benefit of its author’s widow. The other ‘products’ at
market remain for the most part calculated, embracing the
repressed emotions and transformed ideas dealt out by the critics
and the wealthy collectors to whom they cater in order not to seem
antiquated.
In this suffocating and deeply
boring context, the artist discovers it nearly impossible to work
to overcome the forces in power, on the one hand to even be
allowed to enter the game while on the other simply to stay in it.
Walter Gropius, founder of the
Bauhaus in
 Not so long ago, I wrote in this column about the American artist Jef Bourgeau. I am forced to write about him again because he is indeed a unique and rare phenomenon. Critical, indefatigable, and constantly at war with the status quo, Bourgeau founded Detroit’s Museum of New Art a decade ago, and, much like the city itself, without any money at all.
From among those hundreds of
artists exhibited at his museum, he’s not only shown the work
of many emerging and established artists, whether regional,
national, and international, but he’s also invented a few
of
his own along the way, or, many
times merely presented
totally fictitious and unbelievable exhibitions such as the `lost’
photographs of Picasso.
One of my favorites
from his imaginary artists is the incomparable Shen-ba
Wong. To this artist’s attribution, Bourgeau has created complex
and beautiful paintings - all
from
inside his laptop computer,
only
later
transferring
them onto
paper or
canvas.
Bourgeau recently presented
this body of work at the Jane Speaks Gallery (another of his
inventions, but with a director seemingly made of real blood and
bones, Christina, daughter of the now `deceased' Jane).
These new works are
both
original and elaborate
in
form and color
as if at
the hand of a reborn Picabia, of a sort of
Cubism freshly discovered after a century of modern art,
but
bearing newfound gestural expression
while
utilizing hi-tech
pixelations, making them uniquely intelligent and emotional
creations
well beyond any possible pseudonym.
And still better, you can
resize this artist’s digital files however you want, whether for
your wall or your screen saver.
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