From Fetish To Fine Art

For better or worse, as a society, we have evolved to attach monetary value to our cultural experiences and the cultural artifacts we create, albeit oftentimes without any rhyme or reason. For example, who at the time would have considered that the first full color lithographic advertising posters in the late 1800's would eventually become exemplars of a transformative period in art history? Or closer to home, that rock and roll and comic books would ever stand alone as recognized art forms?

In the 1800's, of course, shifting cultural landscapes were easier to parse: Not everyone could afford the education or had access to the equipment required to execute a lithograph. Consequently, the pool of craftsmen and artists available to foster a revolution in the art of printmaking was minuscule compared to the rest of the population.

Indeed, evaluating lithography's impact on fine art only requires identifying and following a handful of influential players along a fairly linear historical trajectory to the present. On the other hand, David Hockney is creating art with an iPhone application today at the same time millions of others are doing the same thing. While Hockney's digital output is considered valuable as soon as it's created, it will remain to history and its tastemakers, interpreters and archivists to assign value to the creations of all the rest.

In the 1950's, popular music and publications like Mad Magazine or DC Comics were controlled by an oligarchy of businessmen who exerted absolute control over the distribution of the content produced by each industries' creatives. How much content they allowed for release was predicated on how much the market would bear before supply overtook demand and profits declined. Today anyone can create and distribute their own music, their own publications (even their own films) online for next to nothing and without any intervention whatsoever. Today consumers are awash in content.

Dave Hickey has written that "Bad taste is real taste,...and good taste is the residue of someone else's privilege." Surfing online galleries on the web and "brick and morter" galleries in and around my state today, one is left to wonder if a distinction can any longer be drawn between the two. Most of the work I see will have very little lasting value - either on screen or off. And yet some of it is very good. The question to ask then is where does the collector draw the line between that which is worth investing in and that which isn't — whether it is a urban vinyl toy or a self published book of poetry?

My wife and I recently visited the Menil Collection in Houston. Here some of the primitive memes that inspired modernism and postmodernism are displayed alongside their contemporary kin. While one could most likely trace in various ways the stylistic and cultural lineages binding the Menil Collection together, the one common thread running through its exhibits that immediately struck me was the attention to detail each artist had lavished on his or her work, no matter how humble the means or methods of construction. Whether a small Rauschenberg orange crate, abstractly embellished with found objects, or a carved African fetish doll covered with nails, one could sense that the makers viewed their process with a sense of sacredness and wonder.

Most art, of course, has no intrinsic value. Even the materials used to construct a piece are essentially worthless once they've been applied. A painted canvas is always going to be worth less than an empty one — unless those viewing it are willing to assign it a higher value than it's actual worth as scrap. And the primary catalyst for that transformation, from being worth nothing to becoming a moving and profound work of art, it seem to me, is craftsmanship — be it fine art or a fetish doll. In an overheated and fragmenting zeitgeist, cultural trends may come and go overnight and anarchy may reign in the art world for years to come, however, quality in craftsmanship will never go out of style.