Maybe because it’s a stressful field. Still, I checked the documentary “Blurred Lines: Inside the Art World” an afternoon after a short phone call.
It turned out to be a better experience than I expected. Seven (or eight) chapters were nicely crafted with key components of the art world. What made me relief was that there’s nothing new or surprising to me. It seems to reveal how I felt about this circle as well as my wish to make a change, even knowing the game is solely played by .1% wealth players.
Artists, fairs, gallerists, dealers, collectors, etc.. As “LOTS” went on I recalled the times when I just stepped into the new york art scene. The overwhelming evening sales, the art law debates at SIA, the Thursday Chelsea openings and trips flying in between Basel Miami, SP-Arte in Sāo Paulo… Then the first show in the gallery, the art foundation, the events and negotiations. My first curatorial experience ever was to assist a show on Jeff Koons, Charles Ray, Cecily Brown, and Betty Tompkins.Back then every single event, exercise, conversation, and opening seemed all so important to me. I was like a sponge that absorbs everything, EVERYTHING.
It was quite a long journey til I started my own path to producing and curating. The exhaustion continued, so did my understanding of the art world and myself. It was not easy to truly peel off layers of surfaces to get to the essence of one’s existence and its relation to the situated time and space. Some people may never get to that unbalanced point, some do. Life is random in that all the discoveries or revelations can only be applied to the specific person, with its own location in his time/space.
The film made a good point, disappointed or not, surprised or not, the art world has never really changed. Now if I look back, there were even moments that made me feel so stupid, even ashamed, but it was probably just me growing out of the bubble.
Nearly at the end of the film, economist Allison Schrager asked a question that has been my core belief in the past two years,
“Could we create a market that would support more working artists rather than just a very elite group of artists who just happen to be very good at playing the game and pleasing a small group of very famous collectors?”
Out of the white box isn’t just the wall and the room, but a whole new architecture of ecosystem, it means more players, forming new ways of setting values, creating innovative structure flows.
I guess this is what still kept me going. As lines truly blurred, boundaries between so many disciplines, species, categorizations breaking down, the question isn’t what’s next, but are we willing to build the next.
After all, I found it delightful that it was not depressing to watch at all.