Theoretical Disengagement Part V

Galleries look for the branded artist - or an artist that can be branded. They develop an idea about who that artist is and what they do. In the corporate world of PR this is called Perception Management. These are techniques used to manage the public's knowledge of what the brand is doing. We see this stuff all the time in the media world. My favorites were all that "green" advertising that BP was doing a couple of years ago. TV advertising, billboards in Times Square, that sort of stuff all of it designed to promote one of the largest oil companies as friendly to the environment and looking to improve environmental problems for the future. They must've spent millions. It was designed to have the company appear as caring and concerned about the future of the environment and practical in their search for alternative energy. This goodguy advertising hit the air just as oil futures began their ascent to the stars. Wall Street analysts, economics experts, government committees and now Alan Greenspan have all been stating over the last couple of years that oil will hit 100 dollars a barrell, and that this amount for oil futures is still a feasible price for the non-inflationary US economy. Oil speculators have been pushing the 100 dollar price ever since the first futures speculations hit the air waves. It is now almost at 90 a barrell thanks to speculators on the commodities market driving the price up by creating artificial shortages and price spikes. The oil companies are busy coming up with further perception management advertising which will come at us in torrents, especially as profits now in the the super billions of dollars, make their way into news stories. Sorry for the aside - but it is advertising's job to provide a perception of the brand, and I just wanted to make a point.

In the artworld we have similar branding going on through business, entertainment and art media. I can point to a few easy cases like Koons, Barney and Hirst, but we will go for a lesser known artist who shows at a very connected corporate gallery.
I think this is one of the iconic pictures of the last 15 years of an artist in their studio. I wanted to visually break it down a bit. First, this story on Ms. Boesky and her new gallery space appeared in Conde Nast's new business magazine entitled Portfolio. What struck me right off in this picture that accompanied the story was that Barnaby was wearing a lab coat. I don't know about you, but I don't know too many artists that wear lab coats in their studios. So why was Barnaby wearing a lab coat that had a pen in the pocket along with something that looks like a name tag (I can't make it out in the picture) - like he would write me perscription, and enter something in my medical record? Additionally, the painting is laying on a table, as if he's unrolled plans for a presentation meeting, or he's going to present a proposal to a group of investors. In the background is the only hint as to what is happening in the studio - a still life of painting materials - which brings it back to creativity - R&D in a studio equals art. I thought this picture of the artist was at odds with the work that I had just seen at Boesky's gallery. Basically the show included a number of itchy drawing/paintings of Jesus-like figures in expressionistic backdrops - plus a room full of giant paintings with huge swaths of red paint waves. In his Saatchi online PR bit it says..."Drawing from the ultra-violence of big-screen cinema and illicit video games, Barnaby Furnas develops his own subversive cartoon world, populated by rock stars and Abe-Lincoln look-a-likes hell-bent on maniacal destruction. Barnaby Furnas uses his blood-and-guts subjects as a means to flirt with abstraction and design, entrenching his hyper-contemporary scenes in historical tradition." The incongruity of the image of the artist in Portfolio as a professional medical type and the over-the-top violent painterly iconography is a brilliant stroke of manipulative marketing genius. This image of the artist levels the images in the work. It makes the collectors feel at ease, especially if they can deal with one of their own. And what is more corporate or professional than a nicely groomed man in a lab coat? I'm not sure how much of this is staged, but it is interesting in the context of Barnaby's agressive visual images.

There are many other examples of this type of PR at work - especially in this media saturated art world. But branding an artist is part and parcel of the corporate structures that push product on us. Barnaby's work is very well made, very professional, but visually, it covers no new territory, offers no new aesthetic ideas. Nor is it particularly engaging or thought provoking. It is decorative and timely, and unfortunately, it suffers from the POMO preponderance on a bigger is better routine - especially in the giant red wave paintings. But what is very interesting is how this show and artist were marketed in Portfolio - tied to the fortunes of the gallery and part of the idea of Ms. Boesky as a tastemaker and aesthetic adventurer. Perception Management for good or ill is now part and parcel of the marketing of the artworld - artists need to confront these sort of ideas in order to push their work into new territories. I say this because the aesthetics, theoretics and economics have now become all the same thing. It is a Cerberus that keeps new ideas at bay.