On Quality Criteria for Modern Art, Part 3

A text by: Rudolf Schramm

In an article by Piroschka Dossi, a German art curator who sat (or still sits?) on the supervisory board of artnet AG, one of the questions is “How do you recognise (good) art?”*

To the reader’s considerable astonishment, she brings out the following answer from Jeremy Deller, winner of the Turner Prize in 2004. He says, simply and tersely: “By the price.”

Aha!

Ms Dossi’s comment on this: “The price as a defining component of the work of art is the culmination of a logic in which art seems to be no more than a mirror of our present and of the market principles that pervade it. One precondition for this ‘zero-sum game’ between the present and art is the dissolution of binding standards of quality. What is quality in contemporary art? This question is harder to answer today than ever before.”

How true, how true!

But wait! There is a man in Vienna for whom it apparently poses no problem whatsoever to formulate a clear and highly precise answer. Let us listen to the illuminating words of Hubert Thurnhofer, head of the Kunstraum in the Ringstraßen Galerien:

“What is the most important thing about the quality of art? The ITÄT, otherwise art becomes Qual (torment).

This is not just a play on words; it can also be decoded rationally: ITÄT stands for I = Idee, idea (what idea underlies a work of art, is it original, originary or merely derivative?) T = Thema, theme (how is the work in question to be placed thematically within the artist’s oeuvre, do his works relate to the themes of the time, does he follow fashion trends or does he go his own way?) Ä = Ästhetik, aesthetics (what aesthetic and compositional principles does the artist pursue, is the picture beautiful or ugly in the conventional sense, or does it set new aesthetic standards?) T = Technik, technique (are ideas, themes and aesthetics realised with technical brilliance, does the execution live up to the artist’s own standards, in short, is his technique state of the art?)”

Finally, someone who gets specific. Unfortunately, a new problem arises that is hard to overcome, or rather a whole series of them: who decides whether an idea is originary, whether the work relates to the themes of the time, what is beautiful and what is ugly, where one can get to know the new aesthetic standards – and how on earth is one supposed to be able to judge whether the execution lives up to the artist’s own standards? How, if you please?

So that has not got us any further either.

But perhaps everything is much simpler than we think. For if we follow Piroschka Dossi’s statements a little further, we may yet come a little closer to the mystery of good art. She says, namely: “What counts as art is no longer determined by craftsmanship or the rules of pictorial composition, but by a closely networked system of influence in art valuation, in which gallerists, dealers, curators, critics and collectors are intertwined, observing and influencing one another.

The experts of the art system cast their cultural vote and the

players in the art market cast their financial vote for a particular artist, whereby the two votes converge over time owing to the close personal and in part also functional interconnections, and thereby decide on that artist’s relative significance.”

For, put a little more simply, the above means nothing other than this: in the global art market there are a number of “experts” (mostly thanks to self-ascribed authority* note RS) who, in expedient agreement, settle among themselves what is good and what is bad art and what it should cost and may cost. And there is much to suggest that she is not so wrong about this.

After everything I have read, heard and researched on this subject, the sobering quintessence that Ms Dossi presents comes very close to the truth about the art market. But not necessarily to the truth about contemporary art itself.

My personal experience is that after hundreds of visits to galleries, museums, exhibitions or artists’ studios, one does indeed develop one’s own feeling for quality in modern art. Hand in hand with this goes the development of one’s own taste and one’s own preferences as well as dislikes. There are, for instance, a number of artists who are respected and highly praised worldwide whom I consider untalented and charlatanesque. That is my right. On the other hand, I can get so enthusiastic about many, many works of the 20th and 21st centuries that I would like to have all of them around me day and night.

https://www.welt.de/kultur/article1303099/Qualitaet-erkennt-man-am-Preis.html