Thursday, November 30, 2017

The Branding of Leonardo

Post-Thanksgiving for me is a calm time-- no more pre-Christmas frenzy in my current state of financial deprivation; my son and I managed to snag the very last tree of the Whole Foods Black Friday Event; it was deemed unsaleable because of a trunk defect-- tall and skinny, it was the one for me, and as it turned out, harbinger I hope it is, the ugly duckling Frasier swanned into utter holiday perfection.  A work of nature's art.

Anyway, with the scent of the forest, I was dared by an old friend to take an entire night 'off' and binge on reality television.  To parallel the US 'marketplace', the Housewives have morphed into a brand rather than the ridiculous parody of what happens when you mix the ingredients of mediocrity, extreme cosmetic prosthetics and Twitter with absolutely no content but scenery-- real estate-- restaurants, bad behavior, etc.  Their share of the store-bought network pie, from the jewelry, cars, homes-- is now huge.  The Kardashians have become a dynasty-- it's like the Partridge family with 21st-century values and portfolios.  Everything is scaled to enormity... and the words 'real' 'reality'.. 'real-real'... are everywhere, reminding us that we are being not just scammed but duped and insulted.  At least the cooking shows have some entertainment value although it baffles me that an audience is so hooked on an experience which depends primarily on the two senses missing from television.  Would we watch a Dylan concert with no audio? Doubtful.

It's been many years that we've overused the term 'really'; as a teenager I doubled it for emphasis... because like so many things, we need these words to prop up and convince.  Authentic-- another one.  Art these days often comes with a certificate, a pedigree or document.  Why?  Because its authenticity, in this sea of mysterious Monopoly money, is uber-questionable.  There used to be a chain of command... things were traceable and there were stamps and marks for ownership.  Things were commissioned-- things were kept in institutions or palaces-- churches.  Yes, things were stolen, occasionally.  But talent was unique and copyists were copyists.  Scholars kept logs of these things, which became catalogue raisonnés.  I studied Art History... connoisseurship and restoration.  It was a responsibility.  We looked and compared, had many hours in museum basements looking at forgeries, copies... comparing to masterpieces.  We discussed and often failed to conclude.

Then money entered the equation.  Art is one of the least regulated businesses.  It is mysterious and incomprehensible for many.  Collectors rely on 'experts' for advice and education.  Besides an important jewel, it is one of the few instances where one man can own something rare and unique.  Priceless, they say.   There is one Mona Lisa.  But we read about scandals-- even catalogue raisonnés where the authors received fees for certificates and inclusion.  The question of authenticity becomes dubious... which only seems to fuel the market further.  Cut to the Leonardo da Vinci sale... the star of the Post-War and Contemporary auction-- does this not, in itself, speak to us?  Okay-- since the $110 million Basquiat, all bets are off.  Wall Street loses and gains many billions each day.  This is the way money moves in a world where the managers make the market and profit either way.  A million dollars has become cheap in Manhattan culture.  Money has grown geometrically for the rich.  The housewives might have begun in apartments, but now they have jets... mansions; the Countess looks poor compared to her friends with the diet margarita-mixes and personal enterprises.  Their twitter audience is massive.  They rub shoulders with the celebrity culture and now our President himself is the greatest American reality show.  His brand and personal wealth will be many multiples of its pre-election worth.  Stupidity reigns and Greed is its Prime Minister.

But seriously... the Salvator Mundi-- it just doesn't look right.  There is a reason this painting was shelved and sold for a mere 45 pounds in my own lifetime.  No one claimed it.  The experts who taught me, way back, are gone. I doubt they would have been fooled. The restorer, from the IFA-- my alma mater, although I dropped out of the program because the ethics of restoration began to worry me.  This is big business now... and piles of crooked money are laundered through the art market-- masses of fakes are certified and authenticated and carry this like a vintage sheepskin.  I owned a Jean Michel Basquiat and a couple of things Andy gave me.  Did they have certificates?  No, they did not need paperwork because they were actually real.  At the time, of course, they were inexpensive.  Unmarketed art is affordable and sometimes very, very good.  There are artists quietly suffering and painting small masterpieces.  For the ultra-rich, this is not sexy.  Hedge funds do not buy a man selling home-goods on the street; they are invested in the geometrics of money.

Art, like religion, is suffused with belief.  The art market exists because collectors believe in the value of what is really a few dollars' worth of linen and paint.  It is a symbol, the way this da Vinci has become a symbol, to me, of the way anything can be marketed and deified-- not unlike those TV evangelists.  I hated this painting... found it uber-ironic that the number 45 was still in the figure-- with an additional string of zeroes.  The Christ figure crosses his benediction fingers... he reminds me a little of the king on the new BBC Versailles series-- the handsome and indulgent sovereign who is beginning to get a little fat and just corrupt enough to try to use religion to consolidate power.  Glam piety.

How many scrappy start-ups have gone public and raised a billion dollars overnight-- the market pushes up share prices and investors sell for profit?  Another kind of 'belief'.  Not to mention this is the way they can afford these paintings.  Monopoly money buys hotels, golf courses, mansions and art.  It's a whole network, an incestuous web of artifice and fantastic wealth.  Look at our president.  The Midas asshole of quackery.  The man-who-would-be King, if he could only....

At 3 AM, we watched a back-to-back of My 600-pound Life.  More dubious reality? You can't really make up this kind of thing.  What struck me is these people who consume food all day until they are literally paralyzed--  they are all poor.  They are mostly suffering from some childhood abuse issue... and they are not alone.  They have a partner who loves them-- enables, yes-- that, too.  But they have some kind of love the housewives lack?  The scale of obesity-- well, it maybe parallels the obscene scale of wealth on the other shows... this is a different kind of greed, though... it is some kind of inverted need that becomes desperate and personally destructive.  And they all have TVs.  Large ones.  They are victims of this culture, trying to make their way and failing on a massive scale.

I took a break and went up to Harlem to see what I could buy for $1.  I got 5 pounds of slightly defective but decent tomatoes.  A haul.  On the street I stopped to pick up a penny.  What you want that for, a man asked me as he smoked a butt in the mild night air?  Because it's real, I said.  I know it's real.  And it's free.  And I can trade it in anywhere.  Unlike the Salvator Mundi-- a very large title for a painting that enriched those involved in the deal... but saved no one. Certainly not the world.  My bad, Jesus might say.

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1 Comments:

Blogger Unknown said...

So well written Amy, as always..!!

"It baffles me that an audience is so hooked on an experience which depends primarily on the two senses missing from television. Would we watch a Dylan concert with no audio? Doubtful." And "The scale of obesity-- well, it maybe parallels the obscene scale of wealth on the other shows..."

VERY TRUE INDEED! We live in a world where "reality" is used to describe shows that are far from real, those are scripted shows. And everything has gotten bigger - wealth, ambition, greed, TVs, mansions, portion size, body size- everything except the capacity of our hearts to feel/ respond/ be alive - that's what's gotten smaller.. Indeed it appears the relation between acquired goods and emotional/spiritual capacity is inversely proportional - the bigger the mansion, the smaller the capacity to empathize with others; the bigger the greed, the smaller the capacity to respond to the bleeding soul of the world...

November 30, 2017 at 5:44 PM  

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