CLEVE GRAY
362
when a young graffiti artist, apparently believing he was being
insufficiently rewarded by his sudden and great success, opens a
boutique of his own graffitized clothes? Is there honor for art
when extensive lobbying takes place around this nation by artists
and their accountants for state and federal legislation to ensure
that artists will receive a percentage of profits made in all future
resales of their work? A column in
Art News
stated that if Van
Gogh's
Irises
appreciates at the rate it has in the past forty years, in
the past week it will have increased by $25,874. A wealthy client
who had recently bought a painting at the world ' s record price
for that particular artist-almost a quarter of a million dollars–
goes to see a well-known dealer to speak about her thrilling pur–
chase; she closes the door to his office and, in a semi-whisper,
says, "Now, please tell me what's so good about this artist's
work-I don't understand it at all." Thus are art world record
prices made at auction. Recently I received a typical broadside for
an art newsletter stating "...we will brief you on current and
coming trends... on artists who are over- (and under-) priced... on
conditions which can affect the value of your collection and
redirect your plans for acquisition and disposal...on entire schools
of art, old and new, which are due to rise or fall in demand, or
languish at present levels." Last October's
Vogue
Magazine fea–
tured a young artist who, it reports, is paid from $10,000 to $15,000
for his paintings; he calls the people who buy them "drips" and
says, "Suckers buy my work.... "
How did this dishonor to art occur? It's curious that the ori–
gins of the present situation were esthetic before they were eco–
nomic. Its roots were planted by Dadaism about seventy-five
years ago. Since that time there have been schisms in Dadaism,
but the version which dominates today is Marcel Duchamp's.
Duchamp, prophetic, provocatively complex, a professor of indif–
ference, was a combination of Mephistopheles and the Pied
Piper. About forty years after he tried to exhibit his infamous
Urinal,
he gave a speech in Houston at an American Federation of
Arts meeting. He began it by saying, "Let us consider two
important factors-the two poles of the creation of art: the artist on
the one hand, and on the other, the spectator who becomes the
posterity." He then went on to emphasize the creative role of the
spectator. Art from the hand of the artist comes to us in its "raw
state," he said, "it must be 'refined' as pure sugar from molasses,
