Notes from the Underlings

I have asked around and it’s safe to say that my young friends and I are sick of reading about the downturn’s upside; tired of hearing middle-aged critics and established artists offer a spoonful of it’s-good-for-art sugar to help the medicine go down. For those of us most susceptible to the market’s illness, that tincture tastes terrible, and anyone who says otherwise is in the midst of an inoculated haze.

To be clear, it’s not the white wine and crudités we’ll miss, but that catering job was crucial. And that second edition of skid marks that sold for six-figures? Fewer of them isn’t a bad thing, though painting the panels in preparation for the spectacle was a good day’s work. While the past decade’s boom brought about lots of bad art, it also made jobs – stepping-stones, places for young artists to learn.

Assistants working in Jeff Koons’ studio

I’m certainly not saying that young artists ought to work in the art world, or that art is better when they do, but all of the optimistic arguments made recently ignore the reality that this boom – which made the art world bigger, more professionalized and more hierarchical – employed more people than ever, and in so doing gave many young artists a special kind of access and education.

Many of my friends were these people: young artists moonlighting and learning as assistants, preparators and fabricators. Few of them have appeared in the pages of frieze or elsewhere, though the galleries, artists and exclusive events that used to employ them make up a part of every issue. For their former bosses, there may be an upside to this downturn; they’re the ones who will have time to experiment more, rethink assumptions, stay in a couple of nights each week and read, or do some other lovely-sounding thing recommended lately. Meanwhile, my friends will be wondering about whether they’ll make next month’s rent, not what they’ll make next in the studio.

‘Right on!’ the inoculated gush from their SoHo lofts, ‘That’s the way it was back when….’ Well, I’d venture to guess that it was – but also, it wasn’t. Not only is hindsight rarely 20/20 after good Bordeaux, a retrospective, or a few book deals, but no other bust followed a boom so big and sustained. Thirty-thousand art students received an MFA in 2005, Chelsea has more than 225 galleries in 12 blocks, and the prices (adjusted for inflation) were higher than ever. Said simply, the art world became official. And now that the necessary preconditions have fallen away, the people who invested in it – not just financially, but academically and emotionally – are unemployed, worried and wondering what will happen next.

Now here is where my friends diverge: some see the glass half-full. They argue that the bust, after some painful years, will wash away the professionalism and classism that made people and places unapproachable – and they might well be right. Conversations about art are clearer without the fog of commerce, and it’s easier to see work at an opening that isn’t crammed with so-and-so’s entourage. We’ve all been told that’s what happened in the past, and I’d love nothing more than for it to happen again.

But there are other pasts that could happen, very different pasts with very different lessons. What about artists in the music industry, who, despite technological revolutions that promised to empower the creative process, have yet to fully wrest control from marketers, managers and flacks? Maybe this analogy limps – all do – but perhaps what the art world will learn, like the recording industry has had to, is that the system it generated is an efficient and relentless one. Some may say it’s bad for creativity, but it is very good at selling it, and so it will persist for better and worse.

Erin Shirreff, still from Live Feed (2007)

I know that many of my friends appreciated their jobs. They liked having money to make work, to pay rent, to have time to experiment more, rethink assumptions, stay in a couple of nights each week and read. And I’m going to hazard a guess that those making a comfortable living from art – from making it, to teaching it, to selling it, to writing about it – liked that time and security too. That after all – along with the white wine and crudités – is what powered the boom.

Of course, art will continue to be shown in warehouse shows, non-profit spaces and make-shift studios. It always has. But to simply state that there is an upside to this downturn not only ignores some fundamental realities, but underestimates the potential reverberations of the past decade. The art industry, like all the rest, will see layoffs and may lose some great talents to necessity. It may also end up with a larger audience than ever before: what else will all the ex-insiders do?