There is kind of an interesting vibe in Chelsea right now – one friend referred to it as a personality crisis, the other was just really blunt and said that it seems the galleries don’t know what to do about the current economic environment and how they were behaving in the days leading up to it. Of all of them it seems like Gagossian Gallery had a plan and has started executing it with impressive effect. Temporarily turning his back to his living artists, he has created a blockbuster show that any museum would love to get it’s hands on.
Just judging by the simple numbers, when I was there Friday afternoon (2-ish) approximately 250 – 300 people were in the gallery. I was shocked by this, I mean lets be honest most of the time you are in a gallery maybe there are a total of 5 people in the space at the same time. The people were not the same “gallery crawler” types either, many of the men were in suits and women were in dresses and made up – I mean everyone had on a “pretty face”. There were more people in the Gagossian show than I saw at the Francis Bacon and Pictures Generation shows at the Met combined. Also the catalog for the show is sold out at it’s bargain price of 100 dollars – don’t worry a second printing is on the way.
I think the really interesting thing and only time will bear with me on this is that the show is a cultural bellwether. By that I mean if an art show will get as many folks attending as a museum and can sell the work to boot – what exactly is the allure of museums to the buyer or even the viewer? Clearly, and for some time now, “The Gallery” is more culturally relevant than “The Museum”. It reminds me of reading Douglas Crimp in the Eighties when he references in On the Museum’s Ruins, the Theodor Adorno quote; “The German word Museal [museumlike] has unpleasant overtones. It describes objects to which the observer no longer has a vital relationship and which are in the process of dying. They owe their preservation more to historical respect than the needs of the present. Museum and mausoleum are connected by more than phonetic association. Museums are the family sepulchers of works of art.” I wonder if the museum crowd is realizing this – galleries right now have found a highly effective way to become even more daunting as you try to build that world class collection and still get people in the door. People who frankly are looking for spectacle and cultural reassurance (usually the domains of museums) can now add the titillation of money to the mix.
Back to the current mood in Chelsea. There are a few galleries doing some interesting shows – some just seem to be scaling back in a wait and see type mode – I don’t think that will have good results – but who knows. More and more it is beginning to appear to me that it’s time for artists to develop new lines of connecting to both other artists and the public/collectors – clearly the idea that the gallery to museum approach might not be the straightest line anymore. A DIY approach is slowly taking shape in a number of places helping facilitate the building of a fully realized art community.
I’ll hit some highlights in the galleries and studios tomorrow and Thursday.