Art/Class
Adam Pendleton’s Who is Queen? was among our weekend highlights. The immersive work questions art, historical narrative, and the very essence of museums and who they serve.
Photo: The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Photo: Andy Romer.
Last Saturday afternoon, I went to Sotheby’s to preview the Macklowe Collection, the soon-to-be-auctioned-off art of divorcing billionaires Linda and Harry Macklowe. According to Sotheby’s, this is the “most valuable single-owner auction ever staged.” Many people, like me, were just there to see these works before they changed hands and disappeared for another generation after Monday night’s auction.
I typically don’t go to art galleries, unless there is something very special or rare to view. I have never been to Sotheby’s before. Given how much I love art, I’m not sure why. I suppose it’s because I’ve always split the art world into two parts: appreciation and finance (yes- I know the line between those two parts is increasingly blurred, but that is another post for another day). I have never equated cost with taste and the focus on market value at a place like Sotheby’s makes me feel like I’m there to gawk at wealth as an outsider versus lose myself in what I am viewing.
My kids and I went to Sotheby’s because a visiting family member invited us to join her for a guided tour of the collection with her art advisor and a representative from the auction house. It seemed like a great opportunity to gain insight, but the conversation between that trio mostly revolved around real estate (which house will the piece go in?), market caps (is she buying a piece at its peak or as its value is on the rise?), and literal wall space (will it look good in her home?). Because this is rarely (never?) what I think when I look at art, we slowly drifted away from them to look on our own. Nevertheless, by the end of our Sotheby’s visit, my kids and I spent as much time looking at the estimates as we were at the art. I knew it was time to leave when my 12-year-old daughter said, “Mom, this one is only $25,000. Maybe we can afford it?”
Before Sotheby’s, we spent the morning at The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute. My daughter wanted to see, In America: A Lexicon of Fashion. This social-media famous (via the Met Gala red carpet) exhibit looks at the nomenclature of American fashion over time and how, through its artistry and craftsmanship, reflects hope, diversity, promise, opportunity, and many other terms. The words hover above each exhibited design.
My favorite was this DVF wrap dress, circa the 1970s. According to the curators, this piece evoked “Freedom”. Perhaps because it came of age in an era-the 1970s- of great progress for (most) women: the ability to get their own credit card, birth control, a mortgage. When you think about it, it’s quite stunning how recent these developments are.
Since the annual Met Gala is the main source of funding for the Costume Institue there is no doubt that Conde Nast’s Anna Wintour, who has overseen the Gala since 1995, plays an outsize role in its theme, guests list, and curatorial decisions. As I looked, I thought about how it was reported that Anna was adamantly opposed to Melania Trump getting the traditional First Lady soft-focus feature in the pages of Vogue during her tenure in the White House and how angry that made Donald. I thought about how the past four years were not about any of the attributes reflected in the show we were viewing, and that Anna must have had that in mind when she planned the event that coincided with the beginning of the Biden Presidency. Art is finance. But it is also political. America is back!
But then I also thought about how white-washed Vogue magazine was for almost thirty years under Wintour’s watch. According to Teen Vogue, there has been only one Black photographer to shoot a cover in the publication’s 127-year history, and only 21 Black women have appeared on the cover alone. The first Black photographer, Tyler Mitchel, was hired at Beyonce’s insistence to shoot her for the September 2020 cover. Last year, after three decades at the helm of Vogue, Wintour sent a letter to the Vogue staff admitting the magazine had a lot to do to make up for the systemic racism it perpetuated on its pages and in its halls. I thought about how all the mannequins in the exhibit were shiny and white.
The artistic highlight of our weekend was finally viewing the immersive and powerful Adam Pendleton exhibit, Who Is Queen? at MoMA. The installation is in the Museum’s Marron Atrium, a space that climbs from the second to the sixth floor of the museum. When you enter the exhibit you are enveloped by sight and sound. Black scaffolding, evocative of inner-city housing, climbs on three sides of the narrow atrium. Pendelton’s signature black and white abstract canvases produce uncertainties, via unfinished thoughts and even words.
But it is the video/audio collage that is most impactful. There is a video of the Robert E. Lee monument in Richmond, VA, covered in graffiti calling attention to BLM and racial injustice, and the recent summer of protests and violence. There is something striking-menacing even-about the way the video is shot, in jerky circular movements with lights placing the statue in and out of shadows. As you watch the sound comes at you from different heights, volumes, and angles. It’s very disorientating. The audio-visual effects made me consider how it feels to have the violence of white supremacy always present, lurking in your life, in the shadows, and, increasingly out in the open, unpredictable, and unbound by common-sense rules. On the other hand, the graffiti rising up from the base of the monument depicts determined attempts to correct the historical record: Black Lives Matter. Fuck the patriarchy. The writing does not reach the top of the monument. The statue of Robert E. Lee remains almost completely unblemished. He sits too high for anyone to reach. It has since been removed but the graffitied base remains. What happens next to that space is anyone’s guess.
The video then switches to 1968 footage of Resurrection City, a campaign against poverty started by Martin Luther King Jr. before he was assassinated and taken on LBJ’s war on poverty. At the time, 35 million Americans (19%) lived below the poverty level. Resurrection City, comprised of 3,000 wooden tents in the national mall, lasted for 42 days before the residents were evicted. The goals of the poverty campaign-basic income, housing for the poor, and full employment- were never realized. In 2020 there are 37 million people (11.4 %) living below the poverty level. When poverty measures are taken, they do not include the homeless because you can’t mail them a survey. Art is finance. Art is political. Art is a protest.
Last Monday night, half of the Macklowe Collection, which included Warhols, a splashy red Twombley, a Rothko, and, a famed Giacometti sculpture, went up for auction. This first auction brought in $676 million for the auction house and the Macklowes, well above the estimated $400 million. The other half will be auctioned off in May. Many of these paintings went for record-setting prices. A substory was the increased demand for paintings by well-known women and people of color—works of these sorts are desirable because they are priced relatively low, giving them room to mature as an investment. The Macklowes had no works by artists of color, but an Agnes Martin sold for 3 times its estimate, setting a record for that artist.
While at Sotheby's that Saturday afternoon, we walked by a panel exhibiting an original copy of the U. S. Consitution. On Thursday night, after a bidding war between a consortium of NFT investors and an anonymous American oligarch, it went to the oligarch for $43 million.
Art is finance…political…protest…Art is a mirror.
