Letter to the Bank #39

Dear BM,

You know…I kind of wanted the big banks to fail. I did. I admit it. I am not saying this is a responsible “want” but it is true. In fact I REALLY wanted the banks, the banks that were too big to fail…to fail. I still do! Now that they haven’t it certainly is no better for the majority of us and they are not exactly loosening their assets, their belts (despite their obesity) nor are they reaching out a hand to help the little guys, the small businesses, the families on the brink of foreclosure. They have no interests at heart but their own. They also have NO IDEA how they are generally perceived by the public-at-large. They are so indifferent I am not sure if we should call it obtuseness or absolute, cold-hearted indifference. So yes! Let the big banks fail. Naturally the little banks like the one you manage (it IS little isn’t it?) are an exception. They are exempt from this particular batch of vitreole. In fact I just read that seven more little banks just failed. I'm so sorry. If there is anything I can do let me know. Maybe now you will write to me. I wonder how they feel about Goldman Sachs just now.

I probably shouldn’t blame the banks. They are only bricks and mortar after all. It is those individuals who specialize in holding up the banks on a daily basis by working their financial wizardry…they’re the ones we should hold culpable. Remember when I say banks I mean hedge funds, private equity firms, the whole shebang.

Once again I’ve spoken my piece and I still feel there is a whole lot more to say and until I have said it all I can never, ever feel satisfied. I can never relax. My temperature is rising. I wouldn't be in the least bit surprised to hear news of more and more people spontaneously combusting rare phenomena though it is.

Your most disgruntled client,

K. Witherkay

Ps-You are not real and I am not getting real. Let us both get real. I will help you by imagining you into existence, imagining how you could be. You can help me by preventing me from hurting myself. Take away the sharp knives, the financial instruments, the credit I, like so many, find so easy to abuse.

The Arts and the Economic Crisis, A Symposium

Overview - Lewis Center for the Arts

It is difficult to find funding for the arts in the best of times, when the economy is comparatively robust; in a time of recession, it is even more difficult. The aim of this symposium is to explore the current state of the arts in our country and to consider how most effectively to manage our increasingly limited resources. As the role of the university in the arts becomes more and more significant, we think it appropriate that a university provide the forum for this discussion. Our hope is that we will come away from this occasion with a clearer sense of the "ecology of the arts," a sense based on the perspectives and insights of artists, artistic directors, arts administrators and arts advocates. We are confident that the better we understand the problems, some of them inextricably tangled up with the nation's economic and political systems, the better we will be able to find ways to solve them.  Paul Muldoon                                 Chair, Lewis Center for the Arts

Auction Houses Love Branding

Nicholas Forest writes about art and finance in his art market blog and here tells another tale of Art Market Branding. How much better to sell through an Auction House with the name Sotheby's than Bonhams and Goodman.

For more on this read The Twelve Million Dollar Stuffed Shark, The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art

Letter to the Bank #38

Dear Bank Manager,

I find myself thinking more and more about how you might look. When you read my letters do you look like this?

I'm kidding. You are my personal bank manager with, as I so often say, though mostly to myself (like a mantra), my personal best interests at heart. If I say it enough I know I can make it so (like Captain Picard). I just know it.

Yours continuing under the delusion that you really do exist,

Kristian Witherkay

Art and Finance, do they go hand in hand?

As I settle down all too comfortably to read The Twelve Million Dollar Stuffed Shark, The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art, it quickly becomes apparent that the answer is a resounding Yes! This is a book for all Art World skeptics and artists of the outer salon, le Salon Des Refusés, which, though it originally took place in 1863 (and can be read about in Wikipedia, naturally, if you want to know more) is alive and well in 2009.

Did you you know for example that if you are painting in an outer suburb, a small town, a village, you are essentially off the map! It is time you moved to NEW YORK, or LONDON, or ...BEIJING. You can do that or change your name to Jeff Koons or Damien Hurst. This is called rebranding. Hopefully I spelt both their names wrong. You might run into copyright issues if you call yourself by exactly the same names, but then again this could be construed as a creative act and it would fit nicely into the whole debate of collage, and sampling, and recontextualizing, almost like taking a kitschy toy and having it built (by Italian artisans) on a grand scale. THEN what you do is open an auction house and call it Sothebie's or Cristy’s. Use my spelling because who can afford the boringly inevitable lawsuits that would ensue if you were to be so foolish as to call yourselves say: Sotheby's or Christie's. Anyway the point being once you have become a brand you can do ANYthing and call it ART! Its GREAT! That’s what I do! Trouble is nobody appears to be aware of my brand! I have not been successful in selling my brand to the broader public. That is a battle for another day. I am planning my method of attack, because it is a vicious game. Perhaps I’ll break a painting on the walls of the Academy in some public act of defiance/stupidity and by so making it public gain...notoriety, or, at the very least, a little publicity.

Read any book on Contemporary Art these days and a vast percentage of the wordage is taken up with issues of branding, selling, finding the right buyers, snubbing the right people, withholding the right number of artworks so as to not saturate the market or, conversely, saturating the market and making that very act ones brand. So it goes. Very little seems to concern itself with issues of quality, or intelligence, depth, ...spirituality, or ... philosophy, ...humanity, ...feeling, ...meaning...(snooze)
What? What? Oh, so sorry. Where was I? Oh, yes. It is hard isn’t it—you know—deciding which Art is good? So much easier to be told by your financial consultant the best Art to buy. Don’t trust your instincts. They are outmoded, outgunned, and definitely unable to come up with the kind of funds that buy influence in the Contemporary Art Market. Trust you financial advisor instead.

Letter to the bank #37

Dear BM,

Who holds the Moral High Ground? What is that and how valuable is it? Isn’t this something worth examining? When countries sacrifice their moral high ground for lucrative armaments deals have they spent down an asset the value of which they have vastly underestimated? I’m thinking some of the clever chaps over at your fine institution might consider packaging these lots of moral high ground that have been so carelessly tossed aside by governments the world over and then sell them back to those very same governments. They might make a killing! You would of course have to articulate the value of these assets in ways they can understand. Don’t say I have not given you some valuable advice. Of course my biggest problem is I am not capable of taking advantage of the situation because, absurdly, I cling to notions of doing the right thing and doing right by one’s fellow human beings and so cannot separate business from ethics as easily as you guys can*. Also I am numerically dyslexic but that is a whole other issue. You could say holding the moral high ground runs counter to the act of making money but I surely do not want to believe it is so. Then I'd have to think, god forbid, of Capitalism as fundamentally flawed. So if you can figure out how to proceed with the above transaction successfully all the more credit to you.

Yours sincerely,

Kristian W.

PS*—As an Atlantean I fall between two worlds that each can, or certainly do, claim to have held that very moral high ground of which we speak, even if they no longer do: England and the US of A. This would also explain my ambidextrous use of words like “chaps” and “guys”. Hope it isn’t all too confusing for you as you struggle to squish language into the necessary documents so that selling moral high ground can become a reality and not just a pipe dream.