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In a recent piece in Glasstire, Christina Rees lays out a stinging critique of the current state of affairs regarding the art market in Dallas. Much of what she had to say was connected to the recession and its effect on galleries like her own. Reading her article, I found myself nodding and smiling as she said things that many have whispered to each other in private. But I also felt that her focus on the market in Dallas was potentially the start of a discussion about a much larger art ecology.
I use the word ecology to describe the complex interrelated relationships between the players in the art world, which are symbiotic in a way that resembles the natural world. For instance, the social/political issue of natural resources and the growing question of sustainability in terms of both energy and food is analogous to the constant tensions in regional art centers between the risky support for unknown local artists and institutions vs. the importing of known commodities like blue chip artists found in the galleries and art fairs of New York or Basel to fill collectors homes, galleries and museums designed by blue chip architects from Rotterdam or London.
An art ecosystem is made up of artists, galleries, collectors, museums, non-profit art spaces, critics, universities, residencies and public or private non-profit support that provides things like grants, legal aide or health insurance for artists.
From her position as a gallerist, Rees noted the importance of the relationships between artists, galleries, collectors and museums to create a vibrant art community. If artists are able to sell work then they are more likely to keep making it and if better collectors or curators also buy their work then they are challenged to develop their work along with their careers. I do think that this is very important and true for a number of artists but an art community also needs diversity including a kind of criticality that is not as easy a participant in the market.
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Noah Simblist is an artist and critic living in Dallas, TX
(Copyright Noah Simblist 2010)
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Mark Lombardi World Finance Corporation and Associates, 1999 Colored pencil and graphite on paper
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"It Is What It Is: Conversations About Iraq" 2009
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Art Workers Coalition Rally outside MOMA Photo by Jan van Raay
Still wondering about the Arts in the state of Texas? Need more insightful issues from Noah Simblist? For more great Lone Star Reports and Past Issues, Click Below and Scroll to find the Issue
What are we going to do now? No more daily perusal of the online newspapers. No more obsessing over politics. No more wondering who’s going to win. Obama won! President-elect Obama will take office in January and the country, likely the world, will be a better place. Hope and change and a real possibility for the tide to turn towards common sense and compassion are on the way.
So much hangs on this man’s shoulders it’s a wonder he’s still standing as tall as he is - the expectations, the dreams, the promises. And it’s not like he’s starting out with a perfect situation; in many ways, he will inherit a mess. It’s like taking over a company in the midst of bankruptcy, or dating someone going through a messy divorce. But he can do it. That is, if we stick with him. So what are we to do now? Take all the energy we gave to making campaign calls or knocking on doors or, let’s face it, reading online papers and blogs and posts from around the country like some kind of political page six junkie and DO something to help this man in whom we have placed our trust. Okay, not him exactly, but someone else: Volunteer to read to kids at a local school; bring food to a soup kitchen or stop to acknowledge someone on the street asking for food or money; enjoyed the phone calls to voters in Florida? - volunteer to help out at a phone bank or train to answer calls on a suicide hotline. Drive less. Smile more. Care about someone who you haven’t given the time of day to previously. See the other side.
Americans, myself included, spent so much time—for good reason—over the past two years to help elect Obama but as anyone who received his frequent, inspiring, and pragmatic campaign emails knows, he can’t do it alone. We have to step up, in ways small or big, and do what we can. Maybe it’s uncomfortable or annoying, but the hope we are voting for can’t come only from the White House. It comes from all of us. It comes from paying attention to something bigger than our own desires and giving time and effort to something beyond our patch of grass (or maybe, for most of us artists, cement). All that campaign junkie stuff? That was just training ground for the real change to come. And we can do it. We elected him; we can make a difference.
I have to acknowledge something here. In an earlier post, written over two years ago in June of 2006, I chided artists for not getting out and talking about real issues, politics, change, and social concerns the way that musicians did. During the past few months, this was not the case at all. Sure, musicians wrote and performed their share of memorable songs about the candidates (who wouldn’t want to write a peppy lyric about Obama if they had even a modicum of talent to come up with one?). But artists have been out there too. We’ve all seen the work of Shephard Fairey by now, and not because he's a promotional whiz, but because he made a powerful image of Obama that inspired millions.
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Annie Buckley is an artist and writer living in Los Angeles, CA
(Copyright Annie Buckley, 2008)
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