7/28/2019 Saltz on the Death of the Gallery Show

1/1

Jerry Saltz on the Deathof the GalleryShowhttp://www.vulture.com/2013/03/saltz-on-the-death-of-art-gallery-shows.html

Artists and dealers are as passionate as ever about creating good shows, but fewer and fewer people are

actually seeing them. Chelsea galleries used to hum with activity; now theyre often eerily empty.Sometimes Im nearly alone. Even on some weekends, galleries are quiet, and thats never been true in

my 30 years here. (There are exceptions, such as Gagosians current blockbuster Basquiat survey.) Fewer

ideas are being exchanged, fewer aesthetic arguments initiated. I cant turn to the woman next to me and

ask what she thinks, because theres nobody there.

Instead, the blood sport of taste is playing out in circles of hedge-fund billionaires and professional

curators, many of whom claim to be anti-market. There used to be shared story lines of contemporary art:

the way artists developed, exchanged ideas, caromed off each others work, engaged with their critics.

Now no one knows the narrative; the thread has been lost. Shows go up but dont seem to have

consequences, other than sales or no sales. Nothing builds off much else. Art cant get traction.

When so much art is sold online or at art fairs, its great for the lucky artists who make money, but it leavesout everyone else who isnt already a brand. This art exists only as commerce, not as conversation or

discourse.

The auction houses are in on the new game as well. Christies, in partnership with a company called Y&S,

now provides a venue for emerging artists not yet represented by galleries and creates a bridge between

young artists and a young audience. Translation: Were cutting out dealers. Come on down. Make a

killing. Thus, unrepresented artists go straight to auction. Work that is sold this way exists only in collector

circles. No other artist gets to see it, engage with it, think about it. The public functions of the gallery space

and its proprietorscuration, juxtaposition, developmentare bypassed and eliminated. All these people

supposedly want to help artists, and they probably think they are doing so. But theyre engaged in

something else, and it makes being around art less special. Too many of the buyers keep their purchases

in storage, in crates, awaiting resale. Mediocre Chinese photorealism has become a tradeable packaged

good.

Ill admit that theres something democratizing about all this. All those buyers can judge for themselves

what they like and put their bank vaults where their taste is. The paradox is that art is not inherently

democratic. Its a kind of meritocracyalbeit with the interior high-school rules of some other nebula.

Today, those with the most money are the only ones whose votes count.

I started thinking about the art world. Something clicked and brightened my mood. There is no the art

world anymore. There have always been many art worlds, overlapping, ebbing around and through oneanother. Some are seen, others only gleaned, many ignored. The art world has become more of a virtual

reality than an actual one, useful perhaps for conceptualizing in the abstract but otherwise illusory.

1