Peter Schjeldahl on the State of the Art World Today | PROGRAM

my name is Helen molesworth for those of you who have stuck with us all day you get some kind of amazing prize and for those of you who are just coming in you get the same prize and that prize is what I'm billing as a State of the Union uh uh a conversation with the esteemed writer and critic Peter sheldahl about where we are at at this particular moment in the art World everyone in the art world has been meeting Peter for years no matter when you entered the art World whether you entered the art world in the 70s the 80s the 90s the 2000s or just yesterday you've probably brushed up against the criticism and the um abiding intelligence of Peter sheldahl as someone who looks at Art thinks about it and then really you know what can I say Peter you turn a phrase you've got a lot of words at your at your fingertips and you will so I have a lot of pictures in your head so um it's it's just such a pleasure to have you here today and to kind of worm our way out of the pandemic together well yes it's I'm very pleased to be here today and would you especially um but for me the opposing as a current expert in the state of art is a is rather forcing it um uh my wife and I spent so that 15 months in a house in the capital because uh well at the end of 2019 uh two things happened I was diagnosed with Terminal 1 cancer and uh there was a fire in our building but just joined our apartment um and uh the uh the diagnosis team premature and I'm I'm uh healthy now old but healthy and um the uh the apartment is the renovation is dragging on because it's been hard not having a place to stay in the city I had some have kept up as I could um and and being back I mean it's just having now been a couple of days in the city that's anthropologically it's it's a different just a revelation I mean well and and Chelsea by the way I've been watching people everybody is Young slim and has at least one dog and and uh and I don't know I have to um Helen of it if I could start with something I'm a little bit frivolous before it had just having a different regretted poem um which is uh Edward Arlington Robinson if they uh uh early 20th century always who I think it's very much underrated and probably I've heard it Jasper John's his favorite poet he's Jasper yeah okay and uh turns the poem and also it kind of sets the moves and they're kind of a funeral reveals again the state of Europe okay yeah he must have had a father and a mother in fact I've heard him say so and a dog had the boys should adventure and the dog most likely he was the only man who knew him and drawing for all I know is what he needs as much as anything right here today to counsel him about his disillusions old age and partitions of what's coming a dog of orders and Emeritus to wag his tail with him when he comes home and then to put his paws up on his knees and say for God sake what's it all about I don't I feel like in this poem I'm the dog like Peter wants to know about it well I don't know I mean the the structural situation of the art world is is this kind of uh cryogenically you know preserved from something for the pandemic uh you know the uh the building commercial system uh with its uh Gallery Wings in his financings right and uh and then institutions which I think you've had uh uh at the time of the pandemic we're doing a lot of sort of purposeful things uh political and and other and uh and how what their function is now is something that you you will certainly know more about them but what uh you know how is all this going to work and uh and uh and who's interested in Japan right I think this well those are exactly the kinds of questions I hope we can get into a little bit um before we dive right into the the stuff that's so sticky though I'd love to know from you um a couple of things it's a corny question but it's heartfelt what did you miss the most you know or how did you feel the shutdown and the isolation when it came to men's looking at art what happened ah it's like I were decapitated I mean my body you know uh lost any function right you know and uh the bombardment I I hope by the way that a long-term inspector this last year has been a level of a fairly wide red level of loathing and distrust with digital images you know as if their actual information is just their actual experience as if they get to anywhere you know and yesterday I had the privilege of being with Helen and and our and broke my wife and her friend Jared ernak at the Fricks Madison which uh the first time I was able to see it and uh and those are like actual objects made of stuff hanging on the wall in in favorable light right and and uh and it's just so profoundly exciting and again it is like green return to your body where it isn't just your eyes and your head it isn't just information it didn't give knowledge it's experience that involves your heart and your gut and then your effects yeah and uh that uh you're sharing the world with these things I found because it was amazing to be at the the frick at the broyer yesterday with you um the how all of us who've grown up in that museum yeah going to those see those pictures regularly as we know that collection doesn't move a lot we know those pictures really well all of us were encountering things we had never seen before yeah and I don't have that same response to a digital image I mean I'm in Technical and a bellini uh you know the yeah the the Stigmata of Saint Francis Bellini that's right I finally saw the rabbit that people have talked about you know right there's a rabbits taking this head on the hole in the wall was it frankly Goosey your professor and it's a very goofy rabbit too yeah I mean its eyes are kind of it's a really walleyed almost cartoonish rabbit but then there's my favorite detailer said is the donkey right you're saying there you know class and lovely without a thought in a cat you know completely there's nothing that's not escaping this to describe you know you told me that that was your favorite and of course I was drawn to the crane right next to it which I think is my own sense of um you know I run a little anxious I'm always trying to make sure I see everything you know in the crane there all tents and you know trying on that little precipice looking in the same direction as Saint Francis I had never been such an incredible thing it is all of the detail which is all uh simultaneous right but but there's no um it's on conclusion to it I mean he's got his hands out he didn't he's not right they don't see this their Mata where there's usually an angel meaning talents in the sky there's a tree there's something lower and look at folks a little bit interested in things right [Music] um and for those who folks who haven't yet had the opportunity to go to the frick and see or go to the broyer building and see the frick pictures uh the Saint Francis is in a room by itself with one of those amazing trapezoidal windows and so saying that that that gesture of Saint Francis and he's oriented directly to it is darn clever yeah there's no escalations it's so beautifully taught too right but yeah I don't know and I don't want to dwell on it too much but you know there is there was a shock of uh a happy shot of recognition on right um the physicality right of our major stuff the way we're made or stuff right um and and the way we're made of stuff makes us kind of sticky and obdurate and the objects were a bit sticky and after it too yeah no it's not uh uh oh Sean it's not easy but but once you start looking at these things you know it can be hard to stop what did you what was your takeaway now that you've been able to sleep on the experience of looking at those paintings old Master paintings paintings we know very well that are traditionally in this highly domestic orchestrated almost stage set and to have them in that modern or inferior no meat racks you know like right um that's reacting one of the things I loved about the frick is that everything's everything is warm yeah you know so um where you know the big museums or semester Fallen everything coal I mean everything's there because of the consensus of committees over there right over the decades and so you walk in and you have to uh or do something look at and you've got to warm it up yourself you know but uh the frick is true and it carries over to this incredible insulation and it's uh did you get the Egypt cooking when you walk in you know bam here or there right did you miss the the domestic warmth or did you did you like that kind of the shock of seeing them that way imagine I love that as a as an artifact of it's a kind of a three-dimensional snapshot of the uh or the artistic and domestic and social and uh and money bags you know um uh sensibility of Bhutan right the the fragonard room anyway there's a fragonized look incredible at Madison Avenue I mean that was where the ladies went after dinner right you know to have tea the men went in the basement with their cigars uh there's a pool table and two uh bowling alleys down there and um I got to blow the fine ones you know it's not very well uh when we were there one of the things you said and it's of course so true about the frick collection is that you know there's there are some pictures that aren't as good as other pictures but there is a a bar that gets set right there where it was put together and it you know that the freight collection has no depths right you know there's all those that's infected rate right there's no Benders or cream right at a time when uh through word Ravine and other dealers uh realized a historical opportunity that uh uh the Europe was full of Art and was broke okay they were in steep depression and America was full of money and didn't have much art so basically they said ships back and forth and um and that's a great collection to National Gallery in Washington uh or all you know come from that do you think that but also also I think the point we were getting at which I don't wanna be labor so much but it's like I was thinking about you know the one one value about about Arts it you don't hear talked about very much anymore is quality right quality good better best right I mean we're uh and and that's natural human we have that feeling about sports about food about you know we're not we're not shy about judging good better best you know and uh we might remember we don't have time to go into the history of how that became uh this disapproves and uh in her circles until getting poorly it had to do with the the uh the evil influence of this Clement Greenberg you know who pushed it and and I remember at the time thinking you know quality the way he's just had a had its social numbering thing if they give you I mean if I can go Rich uh the rich and cultivated used to be called the quality right and and as it seemed like instead of snob advertising um but you know but the fact is don't send are better than other things and some things are incredible right you know right um you know the Rembrandt in the end of the last question right the Bellini and the Ang yeah and the Anne Richards well thanks and you can think and talk about that thing forever but Aang is just spectacular but and uh why do you think we got so skittish though about good better and best and the ultimate amazing why do you think we why do you think the article got so skittish about it I think it had to do with uh their social formation I mean it was I think it was a little turn against it was turned against settled snobbery and uh and and Doctrine formalism and you know it was the 60s robin's eggs right you know it was like show me something that's sitting on top of something else and I'm gonna knock it off right right and uh there was an anarchism and um that uh you know that I mean democracy is a good word for us and on and I lived through it I'd live too a lot of whipped sauce began um it was uh I know I mean but I mean there have been moments from you know of artists uh I was thinking about Susan Rosenberg and then not to mention Gary had Richter or see my poker were for some artists just kind of crashes into the statistic tuition but if it hits is not valued or described as better but just just as something you got to deal with you can't right okay you know um I have this I don't I don't even remember anymore where I read this but and it might be an apocryphal story but I want to share it with you and see what your response is so it's a it's a party scene sometime in the 70s and someone apparently walks up to David Anton the poet yeah and says how are you doing what's going on and he says I am just waiting for minimalism to die which is a great line to say at a party but in our world I want to ask on him it kind of did but he he definitely did so yeah but I want to ask you do you think that this um current efflorescence of of painting of figurative opinion of of work that Taps into things that are more about emotions and feelings and less about form yes is is do you see this shift as being partly bound up with a kind of the ebbing away of minimalisms holding on us yeah that that would be accurate I mean I mean minimalism never went away you know it was it was really a revolution you know it was a um it is a change in the scale and the relation of of what particularly are two institutions to public face right uh and uh and hey you know anti-sentimental um and um okay you know I mean it was it was really hell on the poor last generation after the president that's too bright um well it's like every kind of negation minimalism right like no family no sentiment no no Gary but it also it had to do with the social change it had to do with an architectural change it happened to Big spaces like this one yeah you know or uh I remember what used to be thought of a big basis in the 60s and practically closets you know actually Leo castelli and seven Century but uh uh you know Plaza's airports topping malls highways um and uh where and and also the Pres the the sort of captive audience of a of an aspiring new you know uh who at first they were doctors and lawyers right right um and they cast for being rich um the uh and uh yeah no it was it was it was a huge change and and uh I think any artist since then it has had to deal with it on some level you know it's like uh they could use a figurative painting and put a frame around you're saying okay I'm not dealing with that chat you know but right but it it because it hasn't taked on a certain drama and not right being minimal right and how I wonder if you you know you've been such an astute Observer of objects and their surroundings and you just sort of made the allusion to the doctors and lawyers that once formed the collector class and I entered in I think right at the tail end of that my first job there were a lot of doctors and lawyers and my last job no doctor's lawyers now they're now they're they're they're mogulsed right they're people who have way too much money you know and uh uh and that and the fact that they have way too much money is is lends a certain frivolity it's America's understanding it's like uh you know I mean there are Holdings could you know crash in value overnight and with their accountant even notice so there's that which you don't have a real life right little changes um do you think that that frivolity is maybe bound up a little bit to the loosening of the good better best conversation well it's for sure it's uh uh well I guess it's it's it's a kind of sublimational version in Jesus he held for hot hotter hottest right you know and um you know which may or may not Loosely acquired with the quality of the work right but uh but this is the old notion that it was going to take some time for things to sort out because came to have been 86 I mean that's right um but that's that's the commercial side and there's institutional side which uh was doing a number has been doing a number of good things and I'm getting caught by the way we have a matter of political artificial involved with social justice which is like um and to me it is like a fight outside this I mean there's a good better best about it too right but but it's uh it's essentially art that's for something right you know it's like art being used as an implement to make changes in my world not just another art and uh and you know and we'll have to see what level and intensity uh that maintains is it um you know but it's like you know I mean I do realize it's an animal fashion I mean it's a trying to make a good good work of art and trying to change the world to me or unimical change about it yeah and you find it hard to keep those two things together you can't exactly because you're because you're um uh because you're going to make some of your decisions based on what seems true and just and you know um uh politically right uh effective and while you're trying to make decisions based on what something looks like um right I'm not I have this just wild sense of belief in great art objects to do a kind of political work whether they intend to do it or not I it's part of my belief in them is as well there's an ethical offerings from one human being to another well that's beautiful and I think you know and we all all artists political I mean every damn thing in the world is political if you look at it that way absolutely but then of course if we hear of Freud or everything in the world was factual and looked like it yes you take you take her you take a quality and apply it and you can do something blank it right you know and it's like you know what we're looking at the frick is the uh the analysis of the ghostly constituency a few full inflict for us I think as we were looking up of the purely disinterested you know that that is we can then talk about the politicism at work you know but it's like as a way of getting to know more about them but but it's like they blew us away yeah you know and um yes uh you know and that and to be someone who lives with that value of being blown away doesn't doesn't make you reaction here it doesn't make you anything right well if anything it might I mean I love it was actually amazing to be in the frick with you and to see you still have the capacity to be blown away and to see the pictures still having the capacity to blow you away yeah do you know what I mean I really I thought this moment they were given I mean the insulation is really incredible I mean in fact every picture there is given a shot yeah you know it's like it's set up beautifully you know so it feels like it'll never look better you know that's so interesting that every picture is given a shot because that's a kind of democratic value right that in a meritocracy this is interesting yeah I haven't thought through that I mean India uh traditionally social the implications of what the frick has done right that or that I mean everything's going to go back to that right everything is going to go back into its place and those rooms have a hierarchy unto themselves as any domestic space where those rooms have hierarchy but I wonder if that's partly the force of the the modernism embroyer's building is to create a kind of a an open field where those pictures are really vying for events I don't really understand him but actually I think you were talking about and Jared was talking about issues is the the incredible dissonance those pictures and that architecture but it's like now dissonance I mean it's like it's really like shaking Your Hands Across The Centers right well the bro I really felt I mean I'm like all New Yorkers um you know born and bred New York are like all New Yorkers I love that building I mean I I there's something about I grew up going to see shows there the little Charles Simmons in the well I was out there he cared I hated it but because I was a young uh malcontaine who hated everything and uh but it wore me down I mean it's just a wonderful building can we talk about that for a second how you changed from a young male content to because one of the things that's really evident in your writing is there I always find in your writing multiple levels of pleasure you're having an enormous amount of pleasure with the art you're having an enormous amount of pleasure with your own mind figuring out what you think about the heart yeah and then there are certain sentences like writer to writer I'm like I know he felt really good about that since so you're someone who lets the pleasure of your experience well the way the way I explained what you know I was a certain growth in the midwest dropped out of college not really before they never took an art course I came to New York worked as a journalist fell into their poetry World which fell into the art world you know right sort of wild times and I started writing our criticism in almost perfect ignorance because people liked how to do that did it so they kept asking me and little by little I got self-educated which is a very painful way to learn but you you remember all the lessons and um um what's one of the lessons you remember about like I mean it's a it's a flat it's a pedestrian way to ask but what's one of the lessons you learned where you're like oh I really got that wrong well huh I think it at first I mean I was because I knew the poets who knew the after I take freshness you know and uh I mean who I believe is God you know to this day but uh uh I think I was sort of over the top in in support of painters who weren't terribly good and uh and I was uh I don't know how quickly I caught on to minimalism um but uh as I'm sure of a position at first um and you know and sometimes if you just in a really bad mood and without even quite meaning to you're immune to somebody you know which is utterly pointless right and uh but that's uh careless so by the way you can't negative reviews are very bad for your character yeah because you can't write a negative review without showing off oh that's an interesting formulation I never thought of that huh you know about how clever you are you can't write a negative review without showing off yes that is what one is doing isn't it yeah yeah I just thought about a negative review I will I wrote and I was totally showing off yeah yeah nobody perfect um right but uh I always thought that but I felt like I just fell into the I live in New York New York and Association no it's like it's totally a performance Shady it's like uh nobody ever asked to see a diploma of mine you know right but I think it's I hope it's still sort of okay from New York if you do something and somebody likes it they're going to want you to do it again right and uh and pretty soon you're a professional also I became I sort of worked through the Poetry world and uh who has a fair amount of disillusionment um and um and you know the art parties were so much better than the Poetry party who wouldn't believe it um you know it's funny I say the same thing that in my senior year of college at UCSD there were the poets and there were the artists and the visual arts people through the vastly better parties and that's why I ended up where I am yeah well that's true I mean I think it's all which all happens and I mean it's like it was a great EB white fa about New York relationship that's one qualification for coming to New York as a willingness to be lucky and uh so can I ask you so New York and the art world for the 20 for the second half of the 20th century as we know they're they're synonymous with one another I mean there's no you can't talk about the art world and not talk about New York and you know that has eased that if that gives way and I'm curious in this moment this pre-post pandemic moment whatever this moment is that we're in what what are some of the things you are worried we might lose well I I don't I don't have I don't know I think the things that are lost are probably due to be lost and you know and and uh we'll get over it right um you know if it's not gonna happen and uh you know we're going through a year where we've been of universal isolation where there are any number of tens or hundreds or thousands of young creative people out there right uh who have been sitting on things Tom it's sometimes I like I feel like I feel like you think about the situation that like I hear a fizzing out of those things of this you know that there's there's got to be some character Dynamite around here that are going on that are going to go out um do you think the kegs of dynamite are going to go off in a good way or in a destructive way I mean that Dynamite metaphor can go both ways well Dynamite are used in indestructive ways to make space for consumption yeah or to blow up your your best enemy could you right um uh I don't know I mean I didn't know I I don't think any reason to not be optimistic you know you don't see any reason not to be happening yeah you know because well it's like I'm loving we know I'm wrong okay you know and uh again I'm not expecting a whole lot I mean it's a it's John Asbury report said when she when she discovers it life can't be one continuous orgasm you uh settle for pleasant surprises [Laughter] and uh you know I'm looking forward men with hope to accept and surprises but but you know also I'm you know I'm I'm way high on the food chains and you know right and and uh in the uh later years of my career so I'm not I'm not imagined that anybody is going to do something with a contest uh intention to please me I mean right I mean I hope this should be around long enough to register changes and say things about them but um and how would you narrate the changes that we've you know I mean I don't know whether sort of like where to drop the pin is it 911 is it a trump presidency is it the rise of a black lives matter movement all of these things family dramatic I think that I think maybe maybe it was a uh maybe with a difference for black lives matter I think they seem to have less effect than you would have thought I mean they would have been changed since the last time you would have anticipated you know because who are artists I mean artists are uh you know causative narcissists uh who are interested in and uh who's interested in art is confined to themselves um oh I don't know I mean I I think black lives matter has changed so much and I I think that that had that had an expensive by artists I mean black lives matter was basically born of a group of artists I mean yeah well it was a shower yeah well that that I am making in such an exception of that right it's a real cultural change um but you know uh 911 was just you know which we've never quite recovered from yeah and uh um what else did you mention uh um the Trump that little matter of the time presidency which is a oh gosh what do you know is there anything we can say about it I mean it's just so numbing still you know I mean it was horrible but it um it's well okay let's talk about I mean one thing about politics like I know about politics but you know there's uh the discovery that there is a substantial and growing and extremely energetic fascistic tendency yes around the world around the world around the world yeah and um it's uh uh and you know I've I loved Joe Biden I mean it's you know my fight and you know he's uh at least he's betting that there is a long-term appeal in things being irrational and normal and and good-hearted we'll find out right we'll find out we don't we don't know how many people out there are crazy Brown and uh will have to have a relationship on top do you think when you see that about this sort of Rise of fascism worldwide which of course I agree with you I wonder um I feel both protected by my love of Art in this moment because I feel like well I think we're I think we've got to we've got to look in the mirror and admit that we are the Elite of the elite yes you know and and uh and and with all of the implications the elite has you know some of which are highly negative right and um and you know the uh the sense of being right the sense of being raped politically it starts to be correct aesthetically because you know it's like it's poisonous itself it's self-destructive right you know and we were quoting this this great France Klein quote um yeah uh interest probably and living by Franco Harris uh to being brave is the most terrific personal state that nobody is interested in right uh and uh it's seven because intentionally as if you're involved in art uh you're either you're either you have an interest in maintaining a certain vulnerability right you know where You're vulnerable to experience your vulnerable to being confided with something that you immediately hate right you know uh which better is something immediately to hate it's an absolutely authentic human response right uh you know that I'd like to have advised people thinking great you know stick around have another first impression you know it's uh because uh because their first reaction anything of it is resistance we can just get threatening our stability and then you know relax a little that the stability you know develop yeah because I I I've throughout my whole professional life in the art world I've always tried to counter that antipathy that can happen in the face of new things people just writing it off not liking it right away I'm I'm sympathetic to that I mean I sympathize with them I mean I always want I kind of like that moment of not knowing though I sort of love being confronted with something you were at work you know we're we're at it really I am an addict uh you know and talking to like regular people is uh I mean you gotta you gotta shift down again and uh and realize okay now you're honor regular person jokes um but that that had to do with also about how I came into the artwork and say ah you know an ignorant amateur right you know and uh so I always had anyone and I say I was a male content I was you know anti-anything it was an institution uh whatever I mean it was you know everyone but also it has to do with I think I'm I think I'm somewhat of an artist and you know and that uh it's a typical the stage for a very young artist is to arrive in the world and and fly into a rage at discovering that nobody has been waiting for him okay you know it's like they don't know who he or she is you know that's right right and boy that depends if you are right you know and and you you know try to uh you know strategize something let's get a ticket to those people right and um so that was you know if it was time to I mean it was standard adolescent you know uh I'm so um it's time it's time for us to go to some questions from the folks who are listening to us and watching us out on online but I I have like one more kind of goofy uh question and I am I'm a little embarrassed to ask it but I do want to ask it because um you know you are and I mean this in the most honorific way you are an elder Statesman you are an octogenarian you have like this is so not your first rodeo and I wonder if there's just so a few you know a few good words you can give us about what it means I mean to be in this art world life for this long like what has changed for you internally the personally that well general generous contract from The New Yorker a generous contract from the newborn um it's true you do have the job everybody wants yeah it is and it's embarrassing you know I think it'll be a national celebration on that when I'm gone no I don't I don't think so I think there'll be a nap I remember but I remember when I was you know young you know on the 670s you know it's like you know I I almost prayed for Harold Rosenberg to die and and when he did I felt weird but uh right right you know Rich uh but he's there but also like 15 hours into anger I don't know it's like uh it gets it without the old anger it gets a little harder for me to uh to concentrate that's interesting do you miss the old age not free I mean yes no I mean uh yeah John it's an engine everything engine you know and I would write it through the horrible columns and then know enough to and and with the alpha editor you know something tune them down and right and made them saying right um it's uh there are many opportunities for going and faint in and around art and uh uh because some of them are more fun routers okay there are oh my goodness there are absolutely so um many questions um okay I'm I'm I'm I'm going for it um have you seen the Alice Neal show at the Met I have not seen that show okay but I am a huge Irish nail fan you are you are a huge animal and I think by the way it's it's interesting when there's something that should share it about it I mean that it's the phenomenon of Alice Neal coming out of absolutely nowhere to be you know the people favoring is I mean that that's a cultural that's a cultural pain what do you think that cultural change is about well I think contribution well I can see there's the effects of it is like uh another nail in the coffin of formalism I'm right you know it's like uh what do you want a youngest kneel or tennis Noland right it's not not a cold call right it's clear no it's it's really um it's it's it's interesting um okay okay this I always love this kind of question what are you reading now either for Solace or for pleasure oh she I just read their uh detective novels um and uh uh probably one of one of my all-time writer hero the Draymond chamber you know which by the way in terms of of Snappy lines yeah you know he's the he's the Massachusetts Guru yeah yeah and um okay I just reread Fathers and Sons which are getting out you know and which I read when I was revealing and I hated it then I still do is there a picture you hated when you were young but don't hate anymore oh bored probably yeah probably I I would have should um well it's one of the greatest things about art is that you get to you know have the 20 year old version of meme the 30 year old version of your relationship to many you know absolutely I had I had you know I mean I think had the usual um the story was remember at you know okay I was close to 40 before it went you know right before you got it yeah and it got me and right right you know I I had to have lived enough right to absolutely believe what I was saying you know and something I um I feel that way sometimes sometimes I think we get the art we're ready for we get the art we deserve and and sometimes you're just that old enough to get it yet yeah sure or we have some kind of uh I'm kind of twisting I suppose but it's the artist stays the same but in the experience of it is different every time and right it is it is like a a way of tracking yourself through life and and also doing it and doing it in semi-public doing it in one of the uh I mean pretty visual art is like the one art that doesn't persist doesn't subsist uh economically on the sales of tickets or copies right you know it's uh it's a unique objects and um um he had already around manner right all right another um question is have you thought at all about the nft situation the nft yeah I mean it could uh you know if you know I think deeply chili but but it's it's uh it's part of the logic of uh the constant invention of new uh financial instruments right you know it's like uh you can make money from off of money but you know right derivatives and you know uh and it's kind of the ultimate derivative because it's like right it's only about money you know it's it's about money that's theoretically parked from around the universe right now and um it makes sense to me that it dovetails with our world the art world because we're a world we create enormous amounts of value yeah and we're not quite sure how we do it and no one's quite sure how to regulate the value we create adjective to Mark until that you know we're just the market which which includes galleries by the way and so it is like you're involved in the business of transform alchemically transforming value into price right you know and um and by the way here we are in a gallery and uh boy I sure don't want to bet by the hand you know but but it's everybody hits play I'm David or project is part of hybrid uh you know Commerce slash institutions right which uh which you'll have have a possible a lot of dynoism in them and uh we're also a lot to think about and then a lot to it you know I think so and I think museums are also increasingly hybrid too perhaps without knowing it right because they have well they've established on a not-for-profit Model yeah however the new philanthropy models are extraordinarily transactional and um the the idea of the that the culture has that if you're rich you must be smart yeah if you're not rich you know try to prove that you're smart right um it's uh oh I'm going to say something that couldn't be some people are going to hate I don't mind the assassinating you don't mind the assessment yeah yeah museums is like uh you know as long as he as long as they don't burn the artwork I mean it's just it's always going to be somewhere you know it'll probably end up in another institution you know in an institution that is it's chronically broke and having to have a couple of things that are really valuable you know I just do not see the felony and even if the stuff is sold to pay the bills and not buy other art I mean the current rule is yeah so yeah I buy more work but you can't sell it to pay the heat now I know that I had that just seems frustrating I mean it's like it just seems like the world is bigger and Mark on flexion now huh and ethical situations are never you know black and white right but that but that's I think you know my uh orneryness comes back whenever anyone is being moralistic about anything right you know I'm just saying right uh you know I'll say I'll take the bad Resurrection yeah I am um I'm on record as being against the accessioning to pay the bills I think I think it's the trustful manager I have to pay the bill pretty much the consensus from yeah from our institution so yeah and I'm not entering into argument about this time but I've grown more open to the fact that um art has the the museum is not a sacrosanct place where you know the museum is an ethically challenged place like all the other places it doesn't have any special purchase on uh yeah yeah the Little Bo Peep jury of a saint it's just it's just not going to have a future I mean it's distance well so where you are in our um wind down phase I have a few things I want to say to you when you're wearing met sneakers yeah and you can use their gift from my son-in-law and you know but uh the structure of a Mets fan and being an art lover are the same you got to believe yeah and I really um I love that um the preeminent art critic of our time is wearing matte sneakers oh we've got ghosts we rode way back yep man broke and I know and also to hear it's how to endure Seasons out and just horrible just right and then everyone's in a while there's 1986 man and something really just yeah something pops oh gosh I remember I remember the algebra oh the whole city just went the whole city and the other thing I want to say is you are uh you are the Mark Twain of our time um the rumors of your demise or your death are are highly overrated yeah very pleased very very pleased that was embarrassing no no yeah I would give him six months to live during which I became you know incredibly absorbent and I wrote a piece in New Yorker about dying yeah that you know perhaps a lot of people seem to like it was amazing and and it's an immunotherapy which the doctor had given a 35 chance of helping I was like 35 in Vegas you're broke within an hour okay in baseball you're in the whole thing there you go um but and it just it just took so uh well this brings us full circle then because in you are in the hall of fame in baseball in art criticism and um it's been just it's been great and I am so happy to have uh had this opportunity to talk with you and want to thank you for coming out and coming to New York and engaging in this experience this little experiment that we're doing here I was so pleased to be invited and um and uh you give me um you give me I'm gonna I'm gonna talk to your sense of optimism and hope yeah well why not well exactly what's the worst thing can happen exactly exactly the worst thing that could happen is that we could be disappointed and which that's just a given anyway yeah man man more our daughters you know you know five God what's your name what's it all about it

Channel: David Zwirner

Views: 15,849

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Id: AWJUIBaWSGE

Length: 55min 37sec (3337 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 07 2023