Many art-worlders have an if-you-say-so approach to art: Everyone is so scared of missing out on the next hot artist that it's never clear whether people are liking work because they like it or because other people do. Everyone is keeping up with the Joneses and there are more Joneses than ever.
'Untitled' is a time machine that can transport you to 1992 an edgy moment when the art world was crumbling money was scarce and artists like Tiravanija were in the nascent stages of combining Happenings performance art John Cage Joseph Beuys and the do-it-yourself ethos of punk. Meanwhile a new art world was coming into being.
Much good art got made while money ruled I like a lot of it and hardship and poverty aren't virtues. The good news is that since almost no one will be selling art artists - especially emerging ones - won't have to think about turning out a consistent style or creating a brand. They'll be able to experiment as much as they want.
Artistic qualities that once seemed undeniable don't seem so now. Sometimes these fluctuations are only fickleness of taste momentary glitches in an artist's work or an artist getting ahead of his audience (it took me ten years to catch up to Albert Oehlen). Other times however these problems mean there's something wrong with the art.
Imagine it's 1981. You're an artist in love with art smitten with art history. You're also a woman with almost no mentors to look to art history just isn't that into you. Any woman approaching art history in the early eighties was attempting to enter an almost foreign country a restricted and exclusionary domain that spoke a private language.
These days newish art can be priced between $10 000 and $25 000. When I tell artists that a new painting by a newish artist should go for around $1 200 they look at me like I'm a flesh-eating virus.
Not to say people shouldn't get rich from art. I adore the alchemy wherein artists who cast a complex spell make rich people give them their money. (Just writing it makes me cackle.) But too many artists have been making money without magic.
There's something pleasing about large well-lit spaces. I love that dealers are willing to take massive chances in order to give this much room to their artists. Most of all I love that more galleries showing more art gives more artists a shot.
Galleries began growing in both number and size in the late seventies when artists who worked in lofts wanted to exhibit their work in spaces similar to the ones the art was made in.
Robert Rauschenberg was not a giant of American art he was the giant. No American created so many aesthetic openings for so many artists.