Before New Republic art critic Jed Perl penned his latest insights, he visited a good number of recent exhibitions, including

* The inaugural exhibition at the Broad Contemporary Art Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art
* “© Murakami” at the Brooklyn Museum
* Take Your Time: Olafur Eliasson, at the Museum of Modern Art
* “Unmonumental: The Object in the 21st Century” at the New Museum
* “Jeff Koons on the Roof” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

and within his essay, he referenced a good number more–including some not-so-recent shows and installations (although when, if indeed ever, he visited each of these is not clear to me from his text):

* Damien Hirst in “Beyond Belief” White Cube, London
* Richard Serra at just about any museum of your choice, but in particular at Broad Contemporary Art Museum
* Cai Guo-Qiang: I Want to Believe” at the Guggenheim
* “Color Chart: Reinventing Color, 1950 to Today” at the Museum of Modern Art
* Tony Feher’s March-April 2008 exhibition at PaceWildenstein

and yet, he found precious little in any of them that seems to have moved him. Indeed, he goes on for nearly 6000 words explaining how all he can offer “after all this museumgoing and gallerygoing, is a series of postcards about nothing written from places that felt like nowhere.”

Sigh.

About three-quarters of the way through his opus, he does mention some artists he seems to like, though, including Ry Fyan, Carroll Dunham, Jess, and R.B. Kitaj (although with Kitaj, you get the sense Perl only likes him after he turned away from Pop art and embraced “tradition”). But just in case you’re not sure how he really feels about the state of contemporary art, Perl goes that extra mile to note that “you cannot possibly understand what a safe haven for frauds and con artists the art world has become.” Read More »

A side benefit of the boom has been a stream of new books on the business of art. Given the lack of independently verifiable data, especially about the gallery trade, these books usually promise more than they can deliver. Don Thompson’s The $12 Million Stuffed Shark: The Curious Economics of Art and Auction Houses (until recently available only in the U.K.) is no exception. But it qualifies as recommended reading for anyone looking for a quick overview of how the art world works.

Thompson, an economist and branding expert, undertook a yearlong “journey of discovery” for this entertaining study of the “economics and psychology of art, dealers, and auctions.” By his description, the book “explores money, lust and self aggrandizement of possession, all important elements on the world of contemporary art.” He admits “much of the anecdotal material and some of the numbers in the book are single-source stories and facts,” which are often “embellished in the retelling” and “accepted as fact because they are repeated as fact.” The candor is refreshing. And to be sure, Thompson has a keen eye for the telling statistic.

With these provisos out of the way, and no endorsement of the accuracy of what follows, here is a glossary of facts and figures from the book (all offered by the author without the benefit of direct references or footnotes):
• “Eight of ten works purchased directly from an artist and half the works purchased at auction will never again resell at their purchase price.” Read More »

A new barometer of global culture has been set in motion by Google, which launched an “Artist Themes” function that allows people to customize their personal Google pages.
The gallery of custom images doesn’t amount to a vote of confidence for visual artists, especially American ones. I dutifully set my iGoogle page to the “Jeff Koons” theme. Every time I do a search I now see a different Koons work at the top of my screen.

But Koons is pretty much the only artist in the pack. There are many more choices of fashion people (Diane von Furstenberg, Todd Oldham, Dolce & Gabanna) and designers (Philippe Starck, Michael Graves) than of artists in the conventional sense. Most of the custom themes are from the hands and keypads of web designers and animators whose names few gallery-goers would recognize. Many are from Asia (but no Murakami here). Then there’s Coldplay, Beastie Boys, Lance Armstrong, and Mark Morris. Lesson? Though Google’s developers are clearly not trying to draw an all-inclusive map of global visual culture here, what if their selections are, in fact, faithful to what our society understands under the rubric of “artists”? Is Koons the best choice for this virtual Noah’s Ark?