How the artworld lost its authority
Digital Strategy + Execution
I have a confession: I dislike writing about problems of the artworld. I find it painful to see something I once loved destroy itself. Personally, I have moved on and outside of my writing here I rarely think about it anymore, which is a much happier life. After today's column I will focus primarily on solutions.
However, to understand why solutions are necessary, one must first examine and acknowledge the problems. It is not my intention to hurt anyone's feelings. My intention is to assess and assist others to move forward instead of getting buried alongside a dying system. For readers who are not part of the artworld, this is a case study of behaviours to avoid.
Art itself is not dying. The artworld as we knew it is in its death throes. The audience is moving on and seeking art elsewhere.
The cultural section of mainstream newspapers is disappearing, both in print and online. In September 2024, Professor Leif Ove Larsen analysed the situation in a piece titled Farewell to Cultural Journalism?. He used data from Norway however the trends outlined are global. In summary, what's left of meaningful coverage of the arts is primarily government funded.
Ongoing government funding, using income from taxpayers, is not guaranteed.
Recently Australian politician, the Honourable Chris Minns Premier of New South Wales, was criticised by journalists in mainstream media for spending $16 million dollars of taxpayers' money on hosting UFC, a mixed martial arts competition, in Sydney. In defence of this spending, he compared it to the investment return of money spent on the arts.
Mr. Minns said, "We spend about $70 million a year on art installations, classical music, the ballet. And I'm not knocking that. I think that's important for a city like Sydney. The point I'd make is that there's millions of people that live in Sydney that don't have a big interest in those classical arts but do like mixed martial arts. And I think it's reasonable that we would say, 'for all those taxpayers, there should be something available for them as well'. And as you saw yesterday, a packed arena, huge interest, not to mention a massive economic pull for the city. Dollars invested in UFC are far better investments in terms of return."
In Australia, government funding for the arts is reduced each year. It is difficult to have an accurate insight to commercial art sales given the lack of regulation however many artists who are considered successful have another job which finances their artmaking and the majority of artists live below the poverty line.
Tellingly, the lack of audience interest is not uniform. In June 2023 I stood across the harbour from the Sydney Opera House and watched animations of drawings and paintings by John Olsen projected onto the sails of the building. The piece was called Life Enlivened and was part of Vivid Sydney, an annual festival of light, music and ideas, partially funded by the state government. It was an enlivening experience. The audience was a sea of people clearly moved by the artwork. They stood still, quietly taking it in. At times smiling and sharing the experience with their loved ones.
This response indicates that interest in art itself is not declining. What is declining is respect for the artworld.
There used to be a common phrase that I don't hear much lately. People used to say, "I don't understand art, I just know what I like."
The idea that the audience does not innately know how to appreciate art was constructed by the contemporary artworld, including within art schools. Both the audience and art students were told that anything the artist decided was art and put inside a gallery was, in fact, art. If the audience didn't appreciate it then they didn't understand it. The audience was told that art is understood through third party justifications like artist statements, academic explanations and approval by commercial gallerists and public art institutions.
After the artworld belatedly transitioned online during the pandemic, the audience got to see art promoted by the artworld on social media platforms alongside art posted by everyone else. When finalists for major art prizes are announced, the audience now sees who was selected by the artworld – and that many finalists also have concurrent exhibitions at commercial galleries. In the past there was a reasonable assumption that these works, selected by artworld experts, were the best. No one got to see the art that was excluded. These days, the audience sees excluded works online, shared by the artists who made them, right next to artworks that were selected. They can now be compared. While opinions vary it does not take a special kind of genius to recognise that much of the art excluded is good, and much of the art included is not very good after all. This fact is recognised by people within the artworld. In his recent review of outsider art, Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Jerry Saltz wrote, "maybe the traditional gatekeepers are not always the best arbiters of what is good and what’s not". The title of his review is Maybe KAWS Is Not So Bad After All His collection of outsider art, on display at the Drawing Center, is a marvel. "
This admission is too little, too late. The audience has seen enough to no longer believe in the cultural authority of the artworld.