The (He)art of Things

Speaking with my younger friends, I get an overview of current office culture as it has morphed post-pandemic, and the job market in general.  It's a much more welcoming environment than when I first entered the day-gig world in the mid-70's, fresh out of full-time academia, working as many jobs as necessary to get through some graduate courses.  

My first actual job paid $92/week.  Or maybe that was the take-home... I know I used to forego bus-fare and walk to boost my spartan weekly budget.  There was a recession and employment was scarce.  In the end I'd offered myself for no pay to an art gallery where I craved to just 'sit'.  They accepted, and then kindly gave me a weekly check; I was in workplace heaven.  Besides greeting clients (who ranged from Andy Warhol to Edward Albee), one of my tasks was entering auction estimates into the catalogues.  Prices were listed on separate sheets in those days, and nothing but descriptions were on the pages, with occasional illustrations. Auctions were sort of a dealer's market-- a wholesale meeting place for trade.  But writing-in figures-- and studying results-- 'set' things in my head-- value attached to the invaluable. 

The other part of gallery administration was registering new work. Artists delivered paintings (usually by hand-- personally)... there was a face attached to work.  My job was also logging things in-- you measure, you describe-- you make a label for the back, and an index card for the files.  Sometimes we'd photograph something-- a visual record.  But when things were important, there was a photographer named George Roos.  He did all the work for Sotheby's and had a studio nearby.  With a 4x5 camera he'd make a special skilled color transparency that was as close to the original as possible.  One-- sometimes with 2 or 3 copies.  These would be mailed out to a collector or a museum and then returned.  It was a process; if the prospective buyer was interested, they'd come in for a viewing.  In very special cases a work was shipped on approval.  In this event a card was pulled, put into a different drawer, like a library.  We girls would do research and write up extra information on the cards-- provenance history, exhibitions, etc.  We'd contact institutions and try to procure old pertinent catalogues.  Scholarship was integral. 

Most of us in the art world had a common frame of reference.  We'd studied the masters and knew our contemporaries.  There was a limited number of galleries; at lunch I'd stop by other exhibitions; most 'shops' were on the upper east side in those days.  We knew one another and looked forward to shows with mutual anticipation.  Each place had its own POV... its traditions and its emerging 'stable'.  With every opening, we'd nervously anticipate the arrival of Hilton Kramer or Clement Greenberg.  Their opinions were everything; their critique could make or break an artist's sales.  Galleries depended on their favorable reviews and these were honest and rigorous in their approach. 

Art history studies included connoisseurship.  We went into the rooms of museums, into their basements and storage spaces and looked at things-- signatures, details.  Our final exams involved determining authenticity.  We also learned photography, as a tool.  This was archival photography-- the point being to capture the object as closely as possible to its physical reality.  Flaws, discolorations-- all of these things mattered.  If something was reframed, it had been documented in its original state. 

In this current world of altered states-- of digital tricks and ubiquitous images-- it seems almost absurd that the value of art has skyrocketed rather than leveled.  The sheer number of works produced-- the masses of artists on all levels, the reams of galleries... it's overwhelming.  My daily email receives an average of 50 announcements from art fairs, galleries, auction houses.  I browse and peruse endlessly, it seems.  Whereas the rarity of works seemed part of the pursuit in former days, universal visibility now seems the status quo.  Millions of views are logged on these platforms; auctions are publicized and people are paid vast sums to celebrate realized prices.  Images are spread like viruses-- the more views the better. Photography is enhanced and backlit... it's often hard to recognize the actual painting after seeing its more photogenic version online. Things are sized, staged, mocked up on virtual living room walls, as though they are 'worn' by some architectural model. Art itself is viewed as not just commodity but an asset class.  Buying has become a kind of competitive sport. Art criticism is sadly tainted by the fact that many publications are supported by paid advertising.  How can one pan the very source of income and support, look the gift-horse in its eye?  Reviews are tempered; taste-makers can be clique-ish and overfed. 

Presentation is everything; one must lust after these things like the latest Birkin bag... possession is for the highest bidder. It baffles me... how the brand of art becomes more expensive... as the images become cheapened and common.  The exclusivity, the rarity-- the intimacy of old collections-- has been violated.  Middlemen and advisers take huge cuts for simply moving merchandise around. Prices escalate; the art world parties on.  

This week I am working a few extra days at the gallery where I spend many Saturday afternoons.  While I have some kind of relationship with the objects here and their narratives, I find myself completely helpless when faced with the various publicity and social media protocols that are prioritized. I find the complications of the numerous inter-office platforms not just baffling but time-consuming. Notations and remarks are shared, conversations and internal information create a digital vine that has my hands tied and my brain on high anxiety.  Dings and bells on my laptop are perpetual interruptions... staff meetings and procedural updates are constant. One wonders how any work gets done... and yet it does

At home, in my non-air conditioned bohemian cave, I am lucky to have a full house of creativity.  A library of music, of books... a selection of instruments ready and waiting for me, and walls lined with the work of mostly artists I have known-- things I cherish and understand, things I have lusted after, logged in with joy, lingered over during my nightly walks up and down the hallway.  They are exclusive-- unique--  my roommates and family-- my intimates, these things.  They have no instagram presence, no online likes, no followers other than my actual houseguests who are fewer and fewer in number these days.  I am old; some of them are even older, yet they greet me with fresh energy; they inspire me.  They matter. Party on, art world. 

Can I Get a Witness

I've been thinking lately about truth... how I once believed there was a singular version of things-- as they occurred-- and it was sacred. Simple. Not biblical, because there are versions-- interpretations, translations... but sacred.  Today I can't even get two identical thermometer readings-- there's the air temperature, the ground, the heat index. There's exaggeration, and there's the margin of error of human memory.  With all the technology and recording of moments, there is photo-shop and there are erasures, corrections... these change history.  The Rashomon-reminiscent January 6th hearings... will they lead to justice, conviction, or just a massive national shrug?

In the small-print news items, there has been a spate of suicides. Jumpers. This always shakes me to my core.  Looking further into a couple of the incidents that happened just blocks from me, there are local postings-- discussions, comments.  Yappers and criticizers observing the selfish nature of this kind of drama-- the clean-up, the damage, the risk to innocent human life passing on sidewalks below. Someone's car windshield was smashed.  Jumpers are not always considerate; they do not warn.  Or do they? And how do we know at the last instant-- they could have been pushed... tripped on the brink of some decision? I remember watching that documentary about the Golden Gate Bridge-- how the few survivors of a leap spoke about regret when it was too late.  

Some days I feel as though I'm in the middle of some Murakami novel. I'm not quite sure what is real. I observe, I even record, sometimes-- write things down... but I am too often missing a witness. Occasionally I lie awake worrying about being misunderstood.  The indignity of having your final gesture misinterpreted-- the poor suicide being not just victimized enough to end his life, but to be posthumously chastised--- well, it was a little overkill.  Who really knows his last thoughts-- his intention? Even Ivana last week-- what happened? I'd rather, in the end, not rely on a Coroner's report.  

Over the years I've done a bit of support work-- for medical patients, cancer sufferers.  Mostly this requires listening.  In the end, these people need not just care and pain-relief-- but they need a witness. Even Sunday confessions-- it's not absolution as much as the release of information-- sharing, letting go... to be heard, if not seen.  Their own truth, or their guilt as they process it.  Once it's witnessed, well.. it becomes perhaps bearable.  Psychologically, a large percentage of therapy is just talk-- having a 'paid friend', one of my acquaintances used to describe his shrink sessions-- but for me, it's the designated witness that somehow shifts the burden of guilt.

My friend reminded me this morning about the importance of sunscreen.  I suddenly had this memory of a distant summer in the city where I sat out on my rooftop in a white bikini day after day, at peak afternoon heat, maybe trying to turn myself into a different race.  Coincidentally I was married at the time to a West Indian who was often on the road.  In my neighborhood there were tons of musicians; many of them knew I'd be lying around on the rooftop, and they joined me there.  It became, more than anything, a kind of therapy... people would tell me their problems... I was a captive sunbathing audience, absorbing not just rays but extraordinary tales of infidelities, band-infighting, bad relationships. Unpaid witness that I was, exposing myself to not just future skin cancer risk but the toxic unraveling of people some of whom became celebrity fair-game. Today the memory gave me a laugh.  Nowadays of course I'd have to go to their instagram or whatever and see their secrets and minutia exposed for the world.  A little cheap.  Would I sell my experiences?  I would not.

The whole Facebook/instagram culture attests more than anything to some human craving to be 'seen', for those of us with no lifetime heroics to display ourselves in all our petty daily activities as though we were being paparazzi'd to death.  Then there are the endless autobiographies and blogs (guilty as charged) for everything that a photograph cannot convey.  

I recently read a disturbing but important history of Eastern Europe under the Hitler and Stalin regimes. The author reiterated the fact that the horrors of concentration camps and cruelties as described by survivors cannot even compare with the atrocities that passed without description, with no witnesses besides the silent perpetrators who were unlikely to retrospectively record their wickedness.   While we sift through the endless mountains of media product, the competitive surfeit of daily information, there are still the unsung, the unobserved-- the lost and perhaps longest-suffering unseen and unheard.  For all the history books, there are perhaps just as many unknown narratives.  

Last week I ventured out to sit on a park bench at sunset, with a book.  There seemed to be an endless stream of older neighborhood people looking to talk, to share... asking me if I'd listen, or speak... they'd been so solitary during the long months of pandemic quarantine... they'd lost loved ones and friends, jobs... homes.  It was a bit reminiscent of my bikini roof-top days.  I got no reading done but felt a certain communal sadness realizing with all the outlets and connections, we have very few valid witnesses of our own deeper realities and truths.  On every level, it's a little tragic.