Today I stopped by Phillips auction house to try and see the public show of works in todays jumble sale Under The Influence, which offered a large assortment of work but primarily by that class of artists who typically get ganged together in the press, the ones we all hear about, the so-called flip artists who specialize in different historically-referenced styles of artfully desiccated, process driven abstraction and post-internet recapitulation of digital source material in painterly form. Parker Ito, Jacob Kassay, Lucien Smith, Israel Lund, Oscar Murillo, David Ostrowski, N Dash, Michael Manning, and others; on the outside edge of this scene works by Mark Flood, Kour Pour, Sam Falls, and Tauba Auerbach, and a handful of lesser known Wool/Guyton-esque imitators. I missed the exhibition except for a few pieces still on view in the lobby, and the cheerful front-desk woman gave me the catalog for free to take with me. Im not here to pass judgement, just reading the tea leaves. The data available in the catalog speaks for itself, but Im not insider-savvy enough to interpret it. Ill just report what Im reading and what Im thinking. A few things are clear. Taking that first group of afore-mentioned artists under consideration, what we find is this: 1) These artists are all born at least in 1980 and many well into that decade. 2) Among the first three dozen-odd lots by these younger artists, the works were all made between 2012-2014, most in 2013, with a small handful dated venerably at 2010 or so. 3) Most of the provenances listed are from well-known galleries like 11 Rivington, Untitled, OHWOW. Some are listed simply as private collection and some are listed as acquired directly from artist. 4) The prices are not shocking. The top lots, like Smiths $80-120K estimate, Lunds $40-60 estimate, pieces by Pour and Ito at $30-40K, a dumb little nothing by Kassay at $40-60K, and a $50-70K Ostrowski, are within whatever it is that guides our expectations about these things nowadays. But a number of works by these same artists is priced much more humbly. A Lucien Smith found-object-junk sculpture from 2013 at $7-10K, a Ito piece at $6-8K, another Lund at $7-10K, a 2012 Murillo at $30-40K, Sam Falls at $6-8K, and other lots well within the $10-20K range. These kids have markets that can be described as bi-polar, at best. And does it seem accurate to really call this their secondary market in the traditional sense of that term? 4b) A lot of this work does have a lot of wall power. Cant be denied. 5) Once you get outside that clique, the prices are even more bonkers low. A Tillmans photo for $4-6K (!); a Pettibon for $10K; Jason Rhodes for $15; Elad Lassry for $8K; a Guyton/Walker drywall piece for $10-15K; and a lovely Eileen Quinlan print for $6-8K !! WTF? If even I could plausibly afford work by these artists, things are either more open or more whack than I could have imagined. Several of the later lots are listed as low as $2-3K on the low estimate--seriously, whats the point of that!? 6) The anchors of this sale appear to be works by David Hammons (on the cover) est. $100-150K and Christopher Wool est. $120-180K, both works on paper. That is to say anchors in that, these are the only artists for whom some effort at scholarship was included in the catalog, which are usually chock-a-block with explanatory essays. For the younger artists, aside from a few meaningless splash quotes, there was no textual interpretation or critical analysis. Not even for Murillo to whom hectares of print have been devoted. Maybe they figure that the market is already a given material & context with these artists? So. We hear a lot about flipping. We hear a lot about these record-setting auction prices. But when you get down to the krill level -- and this auction seemed to have a lot of krill, as the majority of them do (I collect auction catalogs for fun) -- it doesnt seem to me as though collectors are really getting rich off this stuff. At least, were not talking a level of wealth generation that is more substantial than the interest on their fortunes is already generating on a daily basis. Again, these are only musings-- my ignorant entrail readings. Throwin the bones. I just found it perhaps significant to see so many of this gang assembled under one roof…since a lot of the work never really gets shown publicly at all! In through the out door. Actually. -Sept 16th
Posted on: Wed, 17 Sep 2014 02:07:43 +0000
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