Arte joven en Nueva York / Young New York Art. De radical a establecido

From radical to mainstream - Bruno LeMieux-Ruibal

The story of Dana Schutz (1976): Michigan-born and recent graduate of the renowned Columbia University mfa , she painted her monumental Presentation (2005) thinking of her forthcoming inclusion in Greater New York 2005, the mega survey of new art made in and around New York organized by ps 1/ m o ma, which took place from March to September of this year. Curators made her and her expansive canvas the centrepiece of the show; she was loved by almost all the critics that furiously trashed, en masse, the exhibition as a whole. Big, powerful collectors gave the painting to m o ma . Seven days before Greater New York 2005 closed at ps 1 , Dana Schutz's Presentation ended its rite and process of assimilation into the corporate art system when it was whisked, physically and symbolically, from Long Island City (home to ps 1 ) to Manhattan (home to the almighty m o ma ) to be exhibited for nine months as part of Take Two , the second instalment of the Modern's contemporary collection. The opening she left at the Greater New York show was filled by another big-size canvas lent by a prominent collector and supporter of young artists, also a trustee of the Museum of Modern Art. Dana Schutz still lives in the same studio in Far West Harlem, rejecting the lure of blue-chip galleries desperate to sign her up. Twelve of her paintings are part of the Saatchi Collection in London, exhibited as part of the in-progress series The Triumph of Painting .

Dana Schutz's life and art, readily prepared for, and instantly absorbed by, an insatiable market that is constantly looking for new fresh young artists, are the perfect embodiment of not only the kind of artist living and working in New York nowadays, but of the art world we are living in (the famous and sought-after painter Julie Mehretu, also a Harlemite, was the protagonist of an identical story, from her discovery in the first edition of Greater New York in 2000 to her appearance at the new m o ma , although her assimilation took longer).

I tend to compare, probably in an unfair manner, the New York we live in today with the New York of the late sixties and early seventies. Conceptual, Minimal and Land Arts, among others, where born from intelligent artists prone to discuss, write about and be thoroughly engaged in the arts. "Art" conceived as a means of expressing the inner self. The 1970s saw a broken city that bordered ruin and self-destruction due to a severe fiscal crisis but whose art community (like never before or after) was more alive and exciting than ever. What mattered were art and ideas, not looks and social connections. Everything seemed possible: among the dilapidation and lack of money there was an abundance of creativity and neighbourhood/artist activity. Still in the eighties, the epoch of Reaganomics, Wall Street frenzy and rampant capitalism artists were trying to keep a haven of artistic creation, around the East Village neighbourhood of Manhattan, unaware of the mainstream politics of market and money.

They all got absorbed too, and those who did not pledge to the rules of the commercial art world simply disappeared.

It should not, then, come as a surprise or a scandal that the young artists working in New York today are but mirrors and reflections of their times. If as German artist Wolf Vostell said, "art is life, and life is art," the most recent batch of artists are responding to a very hyped-up era of heated money, a hungry market, lust for young blood and a desire for instant fame and a profitable career. Where Gordon Matta-Clark and his peers in the seventies created revolutionary art out of the market and in a city menacing physical and mental ruin, the artists of the new millennium are working within, for and because of the market in a city that stands proud and looks fabulous, where the rich are richer and the poor are poorer than ever and the middle class left long ago to move to the suburbs in New Jersey. Manhattan sometimes appears on the verge of becoming an expensive shopping mall for the high classes. The 70s SoHo this is not. Although New York is an ever-evolving place where hardly anything stays the same and longing for the past makes less sense than elsewhere, the current burden the market is posing for art and artists is reaching levels of suffocation (and therefore seems about to burst and settle down) .

For many, most of the artists working in New York City now seem to be prefabricated clones. They all want to be "artists," rich and famous; they want to get invited to places, show fast, sell a lot and get a deal with a Chelsea gallery. They are signed up by galleries and bought (in more than one sense) by collectors well before being fully trained, or mature even, and then by the museum. In our present madness for everything young and supposedly cool, agents for anxious galleries, collectors and museums seek anxious-to-break-through students at the mfa programs and exhibitions of America's Ivy League universities. You could say they spot each other, they know they want and need one another. The dealer and the artist, often both as young and ambitious as each other, professional like Wall Street investors, perhaps even both graduated from the same college(or about to), one from the mfa , the other from the mba . They work together.

The first Greater New York exhibition, organized in 2000, required participating artists not to have had a solo gallery show. The 2005 makeover at ps 1 set as its main condition that artists were to have "emerged" since the first presentation in 2000. This "emergence" means, in terms of a bubbling, bursting market, exactly the opposite of the 2000 exhibition premise: most of the 167 artists exhibited in Greater New York 2005 have gallery representation. An artist like Ryan McGinness has not one but five galleries in four countries, including Spain.

Those artists in Greater New York whose label was not "courtesy of the gallery" were "courtesy of (an influential) private collector," and very few were "courtesy of the artist." Therefore it is not strange, but it certainly is dispiriting that out of over 2000 artists who submitted work in a free-for-all call, the curatorial committee of the show picked mostly "known," established creators, rejecting and dismissing those with submissions, hopes and no connections. The ones who made it to the show have not only got gallery contracts, as aforementioned, but also exhibitions celebrated in museums and biennials around the world and articles and covers in magazines (although, at the same time, many of them are still in school).

How "healthy" is it to be bought by and shown at m o ma when you are only 27 years old or younger?

Furthermore, and totally not by chance, Greater New York opened to coincide with the art fairs staged in March in New York. In fact, the exhibition felt much like an art fair, although it ran on for a longer period. A tidy and professional event for collectors to pick and tastemakers to decide who will rule and become famous, which was also a generally boring and predictable affair, except for a handful of unexpected artistic rewards. Indeed, the "emerging" New York art on show in Greater New York most tragically failed to be exciting, or emerging, or even "young".