Beyond the Froth and Jargon
By Jackie Wullschlager
This year’s Contemporary Istanbul has been visited by 28 thousand people within 2 days, which is behind the expectation of 70.000.
Jackie Wullschlager writes on November 24th in Financial Times about The faster and louder the art world spins, the harder it is to get to original art that matters:
We all write resignation letters in our heads, telling it as it is. Dave Hickey, eminent American critic and university teacher, actually sent his. Last month Hickey announced that he was quitting an art world that had turned “nasty and stupid”, where writers, dealers, curators, advisers have become “a courtier class – intellectual headwaiters to very rich people”. For this 0.01 per cent, “art is cheaper than it’s ever been” but “nobody cares if it’s any good, and everybody hates it when something’s really great”.
The straw that broke Hickey’s back was an invitation to sign a 10-page contract for talking at a Guggenheim museum seminar – to which no one came, because “secular” interest in art has fled bureaucratic professionalism and an all-must-have-prizes culture. “When they make me president,” Hickey concluded, “I’m going to ban all group shows – exhibitions that emphasise the least interesting aspect of the work … and demonstrate the vaulting ‘intellectual’ ambition of some preening curator … I want to see a one-person show, I want some f***ing substance, but we can’t do that, because we have to be fair.”
Please continue reading at Financial Times