Artist Stores: an Education in Art and Commerce
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City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works Dissertations and Theses City College of New York 2014 Artist Stores: An Education in Art and Commerce Naomi Huth CUNY City College How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/cc_etds_theses/327 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] Artist Stores: An Evolution in Art and Commerce Naomi Huth Advisor: Professor Lise Kjaer May 2011 Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts of the City College of the City University of New York Table of Contents Introduction 1 Chapter 1: The Store Is My Art 11 Chapter 2: Pop 'til You Drop 44 Chapter 3: From the Art of Business to 84 the Business of Art Conclusion 115 Image Pages 137 Bibliography 180 Introduction “Power is in the hands of those that control the means of production.” – Craig Owens1 “It's a lady's handbag...No, it's an iron. No, a typewriter. No, a toaster. No, a piece of pie.” These words were exclaimed by a visitor to Claes Oldenburg's 1961 East Village storefront, trying to figure out what product she had just been examining.2 As the viewer encountered a series of handmade objects representing mass-produced goods, she found herself in a storefront oddly mimicking a retail space, creating an ambiguous space where common distinctions between “art” and “commerce” had seemingly collapsed. The fine line between “art,” work appreciated primarily for aesthetic quality or emotional power, and “commerce,” buying and selling on a large scale, reoccurs throughout art history. Oldenburg's The Store began as an experimental art project that aimed to counter the commodified exhibition spaces (an early form of institutional critique) in an activist- and performance-oriented mode.3 Oldenburg's project laid the groundwork for future artists, like Keith Haring and Takashi Murakami, who continued to explore and comment on the growing role of art and commerce through the lens of the artist store. Oldenburg's The Store, Haring's Pop-Shop (1986-2005), and Murakami's ©Murakami Louis Vuitton Store (2007-2008) are arguably the most famous examples of artist stores yet their changing roles in the 1 artistic discourse of the 1960s, 1980s, and 2000s, remains to be examined. By situating each of these artist stores within the context of their respective times and revealing each as a changing paradigm steeped in its time and cultural context, this thesis argues that the artist store has become an intricate part of contemporary artistic practice that reveals a changing set of artistic and critical responses to an increasingly commodified and commercial (art) world. Artists have long recognized the connection between art and commerce. Pablo Picasso (b. 1881 – d. 1973), for example, repeatedly painted his studio as a theme, and depicted his principal patron in Portrait of Gertrude Stein (1906). Marcel Duchamp (b. 1887 – d. 1968) created Boite-en-Valise (1950s), a museum- in-a-suitcase that held replicas of his own work, which the artist sold door-to-door as a traveling salesman. Duchamp examined the commercial possibilities of art with the ongoing performance that involved the artist and all of New York City. Constantin Brâncuşi (b. 1876 – d. 1957) used his studio (1916-1956), rather than a commercial gallery as a showroom for the public. His reception of visitors has often been described as of a performative character. Once his guests were in the studio, Brâncuşi would dramatically emerge from behind a curtain and begin to introduce his works to his company. The early performative nature apparent in Brâncuşi's showroom proved successful and set a precedent for future artists to create interactive environments around their art. Carefully placing each object in 2 relation to the other, Brâncuşi obsessively cared for the exhibition display. His studio itself became an artwork on display at the Pompidou Center in Paris, which makes it an interesting precursor for the artist stores of the 1960s, 1980s, and 2000s.4 As the number of products available in consumer culture increased drastically after World War II, concurrent artistic practices began to also embrace, reflect, and respond to this change.5 In the 1960s, as art became more political and activist driven, contemporary artists began to also seek ways to comment on the growing commodification of art within consumer society. Performance art, Happenings, and Conceptual Art developed as ways of critiquing an object-based and increasingly commercialized art world, while Pop sought to bring attention to the passive consumer and the media-induced desires affecting both the art market and the rest of consumer society.6 The French Situationists, an avant-garde anti- capitalist art group, began to appropriate preexisting images and texts and subvert their meaning while other artists, like Daniel Buren (b. 1938), chose to work within the entrenched system. Art dealers, in turn, almost immediately recognized the market value of anti-consumerist work, which was purchased and commodified because of its individuality and uniqueness.7 This dilemma led artists to continuously search for new ways to represent life as they experienced it and try to somewhat control the interaction between art and commerce. 3 As museums and galleries were commonly viewed as the proper place for displaying and understanding art within a cultural context, many artists struggled with the decision of either seeking representation from a gallery or developing a new and alternative venue for their work. Art galleries in many ways resemble retail stores, but are nevertheless seen as distinct, in part because art sold in commercial galleries has historically been presented as a luxury for the cultivated, and often is considered a symbol of wealth or status. Additionally, the (modernist) myth of the artist as living on the edge of society, poor and radical in his or her practice, anarchically free from any financial bonds or limitations, and therefore better capable of critiquing the existing social, political, and economic system, plays a significant role in the general understanding of art, its function, and its subsequent placement in a gallery.8 Yet throughout the history of contemporary art, artists who have critiqued the art market system have also had to rely on and benefit from the gallery system. The artist Hans Haacke (b. 1936), for example, describes his decision to work within the system as a necessity: More often than not it is by way of commercial galleries that one eventually gets invited to shows that attract larger audiences. Documenta [one of the most important international exhibitions in Germany], museum exhibitions, and so forth rarely present works that have not been, at the very least marginally, sanctioned by the art trading posts.9 However, the problem, as art critic Nancy Marmer points out in a 1987 Art in 4 America article, occurs when successful artists who critique commodification in art fail to later critique their own work when it becomes a commodity.10 If artists accept the benefits and financial successes gained through the art world without comment, they become part of the system, rendering their outsider critique ineffective or even hypocritical. Artist stores, as a space outside of a gallery or museum, have attempted to critique the art market while being fully immersed within it. Beginning with The Store in the 1960s, artist stores have been designed as stores that critique the art world, particularly its relationship to consumerism. Oldenburg viewed The Store as a statement against the commodification of art in commercial galleries. The Pop-Shop's creation was intended to make fine art accessible to a consumerist society. Murakami's ©Murakami Louis Vuitton Store embraced the commercial aspects of art and revealed them to the world by creating a branded empire around his images. Over time, by blurring the line between works of art and other commodities, artist stores came to resemble commercial entities. For this thesis an artist store is defined as a business establishment where an artist sells his or her own work, separate from a gallery or art fair. In addition, the issue of value, both artistic and monetary, is a prominent feature in artist stores because money and market value are often intertwined in the store's mission. These differences contrast with both the commercial gallery, a privately owned for-profit business 5 exhibiting and dealing in works of art, and the retail store, a business where usually diversified goods are kept for retail sale.11 However, commercial galleries, retail stores, and artist stores consist essentially of rooms stocked with merchandise for sale to a consumer society. This connection is one not often discussed in academic literature, but warrants closer examination. Much of the existing literature only provides art historical analyses of each artist and his place in the history of contemporary art, but fails to consider each store's impact on the way the artist store is viewed in a commercial context. Newspapers reviews of the Green Gallery exhibition discuss objects from The Store, but the 107 East 2nd location received little press until the 1990s.12 In 1967, Something Else Press published Oldenburg's Store Days: Documents from The Store, 1961, and Ray Gun Theater, 1962, a collection of the artist’s writings on the art