As money drains out of the art market, there is a good chance that the art will actually get better.
In 2007, British artist Damien Hirst covered a skull in diamonds at a cost of $20 million and sold it for $100 million. This September, he staged his own auction, earning $199 million in two days. In the process, he became the poster child for an art bubble that burst a few weeks after Hirst set the sales record for a living artist.
Out went the extravagant parties, excesses, wildly inflated sales and the artist-worth-as-measured-by-sales attitude. In comes art that is “more socially engaged,” “more connected to reality” and more about ideas than about the “artists’ brand names.”
At least that’s how Pablo Helguera—himself an artist as well as a musician, actor, singer, composer, author and cultural critic—sees things. “Art will continue to be made,” he says, “but the art world will suffer some adjustments.”
That sounds like an understatement from a man who wrote that the art world is best understood in chess terms: “The pawns are…the artists—the least and most important piece of the game.”
Biography
A native of Mexico City, Pablo Helguera is a New York-based visual
artist who works in a wide variety of media, including drawing,
collage, photography, video and performance. Helguera’s work has been
exhibited and performed worldwide, including at New York’s Museum of
Modern Art, the Havana Biennial and The Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum.
His School of Panamerican Unrest, a nomadic think tank that traveled by
car from Anchorage to Tierra del Fuego, is the most physically
extensive public art project on record.
Helguera also composes music, has written five books, and works as an
educator and museum professional. His most recent book, published by
Jorge Pinto Books and titled Artoons, distilled Helguera’s drawing and satire into cartoons about the art world.
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