How much for that dead sheep in the window?

Today's leditor to the editor comes from Known Associate Cookie Monster. She writes:

Dear Hot Johnny: What do you make of the current state of the art market? Some people say it's up, some say it's in the toilet, about to get flushed. What's your take? And what's your advice to the investor looking to purchase a dozen tanks full of dead sheep in formaldehyde?
Dear C is for Cookie (is good enough for me): Allow me to spin a tale from my own life and hammer its square body through the round-hole of debate until, by Glory, it fits. It may have meaning for you or it may have absolutely nothing to do at all with the answer you seek (and you can trust me when I say, that I’m just as curious to see what happens as you). Either way, it’s a so-so story but reason enough not to go back to work.

On the Friday night after a particularly riotous New Year’s Eve, I found myself eating sushi with a young lady because I had deigned to wonder whose phone number had been magic-markered to my right hand. The date began as you might expect, with each of us trying to remember how we met, whom we knew, and whether we were in fact the people we were supposed to be meeting there.

She worked on the advertising side of a well-known local arts magazine, knew something of the local art scene and looked good in a black dress. This is what people mean by “opposites attract,” by the way.

We spent most of the meal piecing together the night we met, with her reminding me of some of the witty things I said and I just nodding along and not remembering those comments at all (but who was I to judge?). By saki bottle number two, our conversation was quite the perpetual motion machine not to mention the corner stone of a very successful din.

That was the point when I noticed a chance to impress our fair young artsmith with my Bazooka Joe knowledge of modern and contemporary art. Pointing out the three red, modular plates before us that contained the detritus of our entrees and appetizer, I noted that, stacked side-by-side against the equally modular, and otherwise spartan, dark tablecloth, they looked “like if Rothko had worked with fish.”

Silence.

“… Like If Rothko, Mark Rothko, Had Worked With Fish.”

(crickets, gently humping)

I pointed to the plates, explained the joke again -- always fun on a first date -- and how the three rectangular plates against a canvas of a larger rectangle were reminiscent of the colors and forms he used in some of his more famous works and “Ha, how funny would it be were famed abstract expressionist Mark Rothko to have used fish in his work!” Again, failure. Come to find out, the issue was not the tenuous association being made between deep reds and the deep blue (and to this date I have no confirmation whether the leads of this joke do indeed form a circuit). No, our hip artswain never had heard of our Mr. Rothko, a painter you‘ve seen if you‘ve set one foot in one modern or contemporary art museum in your life.

That misfire set the tenure for the rest of the night, because who doesn‘t like their date to make them feel stupid? Not that either of us made mention again of the “joke” nor let it abruptly end the mirth, gaiety and jubilation of the night (we even had one more bar in us). But it was a pea under the mattress, and no manner of squirming was going to find that level of comfort from earlier in the night.

It was an important lesson to learn, though -- and pay attention, Cookie, because here is where I answer your question -- because the incident helped me understand that no matter how brilliant a work of art you may think you‘ve created, it’s the market what has final word on whether the damn thing sells. In my case, the comparison wasn’t understood, the reference was unfamiliar, and thus the effect was considered opaque. Never mind that I still think the comment clever. It didn’t sell.

My value, I learned, had been inflated in headier days (or nights, rather) when everyone was looking to buy and my bon mots could draw ten figures from her. Now that those days were over, however, the market was a bit more conservative; still buying, of course, but much less, and taking a longer, more discerning look before it did. And no matter how good you -- the artist of paint, of video, of jokes -- may think you are (and you may be genuinely talented), sometimes you have to realize that just amusing yourself doesn’t cut it anymore, and that what it is you’ve got to give just isn’t the “Big Thing” she’s looking for. So to speak.

That isn’t to say that the artist need dumb down his work to be a success. Rather, he must lead as much as craft to realize his vision. That means hHe must listen as much as talk and learn to adapt and to adjust as well as to suggest and not to demand if anyone is to show sustained interest. And if you are single or remember how it felt to be single or taken a look at the divorce rates recently, you know that that is the true art.

Well, I’ve overstayed my welcome by a paragraph or two. Hopefully, this leditor to the editor helps (though that’s never been the case before with these things).

Thanks, and keep reading.

Yours,
HJ

Oh, and PS: As for the “dozen tanks full of dead sheep in formaldehyde,” quickly but quietly ease yourself out of bed, find your pants, your shoes, socks and shirt, and wait until you’re out the door before doing more than the minimum needed to shuffle away in public.