How Uptown Money Kills Downtown Art (from the Village Voice)

Art by William Powhida

An article in the Village Voice addressing just a few of the issues that muddy the world of Art when finance and money run the show

Steve Bell on Brian Lehrer

http://www.wnyc.org/shows/bl/20Great slide show of Steve Bell cartoons12/may/03/steve-bell-cartooning-election/

Draws every day in response to the news "my way of shouting at the radio..." in interview with Brian Lehrer.

We really do need ruder cartoonists in the US.

John Glashan

John Glashan, the Great Scottish Cartoonist (born John McGlashan, 24 December 1927 - 15 June 1999) was a Scottish cartoonist, illustrator and playwright. He created the much loved cartoon GENIUS that ran in the Sunday Observer magazine during my formative years and he remains an inspiration.

Revisiting my bookshelf I pulled out John Glashan's World, published by Robinson Publishing, with rave review on back cover by Terry Gilliam, and these two images are scanned from the book.

SHARE The Bouncy Banker!

photo credit: Marikama Dado

This blog has taken way to long to top 10,000 views but finally did so this week. Maybe Art and The Bouncy Banker is only just beginning to find its feet. What began as the semi-biographical musings, ravings and satirical commentary of an oppressed home owner, artist and family man to his fictional bank manager and sometime therapist, evolved into a forum for anything pertaining to that place where art and finance collide or collude. Reposts of related stories from the blogosphere will occur less often now that everyone is feeling something of the same fury I felt when I began this blog. Henceforth the majority of posts will concern a comic and absurdist portrayal of "A Day In The Life Of The Bouncy Banker". Art O'Connor's letters to his bank manager, AKA the Bouncy Banker, the BM, and Mr. Bullrider, will continue sporadically as the need arises. As the Bouncy Banker's nemesis Art O'Connor will make it his job to be a perpetual thorn in Bullrider's rear end, behind and...let us not beat about the bush...bottom. 

Now that I've stopped pretending I know anything about finance despite semi-serious attempts to understand what things like toxic assets and zombie banks are, you can be confident you are in good hands. Please help me increase my audience by sharing "The Bouncy Banker" with your friends. Thank you.

Saatchi, Art and Money

Letter to the Bank Manager #79 (The Big Stink)

Dear Mr. Bullrider Esq,

You know what’s been trickling down all these years? Not hope, not work, nothing that could be called a growing return on the average investment of your average working being. What has trickled down is a very bad smell, the stink of corruption. When a body begins to fall apart it will reek and that is clearly happening in the world of finance, and, maybe not as obviously in the world of non-renewable energy, and within the insurance industry. I may be ignorant when it comes to business but I am not stupid. My observations are not based on the massive numbers that get hurled around to the point of being meaningless, changed as they are by the billions from one CEO speech to the next. I’m simply using my eyes. Sometimes it takes years to believe what your eyes have been telling you all along. A Tipping Point of Recognition, of Seeing, has taken place and now the whole world sees it: The Big Stink. Foul play is everywhere and people all over the planet are fed up. I’m willing to believe that the practices now proving to be so damaging to the economy are so ingrained that it may take a little while for you to see the problems you have caused and naturally it is hard to turn the spotlight on yourself and have the courage to admit your own mistakes. Now would be the time to drop your defensive stance and open yourself to criticism. You may see the awful, almost unbearable truth just in time and thus avoid recriminations. You might successfully remove yourself from a lucrative but soul destroying career and point your ambitions toward something the community can not only condone but applaud.

Yours,

Art O’Connor

PS-Your regular correspondent, K.W., is taking a well deserved break from your perpetually unnerving silence on any subject he broaches with you! I’ll hope you’ll listen to me. He has urged me to remain polite even as I am pushed to the limit of my patience with that ugly infrastructure you are a part of.

Letter to the Bank #75 (Voices-even the confused ones-must be heard)

Letter to the Bank (Occupying Wall Street)

Dear Bank Manager—if you can call it managing because really all you’ve managed to do is get all of us (sigh)—this is why it is hard to remain polite—you know, in a great, big ol’ mess,

Where were we? Oh yes. As one who has made a specialty of politely being rude to banks and bankers these past few years but who also expends much time and energy in the earnest effort to keep channels of communication open it is with pleasure that I can report back from Zuccotti Park and tell you they’re on the same page! They don’t plan to insult but to engage! By setting up camp they ask for and establish their right to do so. I’m down with their talk, their agendas, their hopes and desires, and above all I’m down with the fact that they are out there trying to speak their minds. The voiceless are finding their voice and what a powerful voice it promises to be. I’m waiting to hear those voices rise up in London, in the City, in Paris, France. Go Global. Don’t remain a Western voice or a white voice or a male voice become universal. This is about bigger things than banker bonuses. Those are just the shame of the old order.

Winter will come and those camping out will be stubborn. They can’t stop now. This has become inevitable. They are on a roll. People will bring hot soup and tarps, tents and socks. Doctors will bring mobile flu-shots and medicine (though some at Occupy Wall Street will balk at the idea of a shot in the arm administered without questioning the effectiveness of flu-shots, and good for them). Question all authority because for all too long we’ve hung our heads and done as we were told and that in a country where we should feel free enough to loudly debate everything. We've listened to the refined arguments and explanations of the 1% for oh so long and have heard oh so little of substance. Now it is time to listen to the daft and the silly, the extreme and the difficult, the messy and the clumsy and even the barely legible. That is where graffiti and poetry come from, the soil of art is the almost inexpressible and only if that soil is tended with loving care can those voices emerge. Nurture them and encourage them and show them the whole complexity. It takes a special talent to role the whole big ball into something we can all grapple with and maybe right now that is what is in the works.

Dear BM, I have to highlight one of their demands in light of what, despite your resistance, I’ve been insisting all along:

Demand eleven: Immediate across the board debt forgiveness for all. Debt forgiveness of sovereign debt, commercial loans, home mortgages, home equity loans, credit card debt, student loans and personal loans now! All debt must be stricken from the “Books.” World Bank Loans to all Nations, Bank to Bank Debt and all Bonds and Margin Call Debt in the stock market including all Derivatives or Credit Default Swaps, all 65 trillion dollars of them must also be stricken from the “Books.” And I don’t mean debt that is in default, I mean all debt on the entire planet period.

I’m personally delighted to see the protesters out their articulating (however inarticulately) their/our numerous grievances. Did I ever send you a Delete All Debt mug? I know it is absurd. I know it is preposterous! What? One day everyone at the stroke of an agreed upon clock will push a button and kill all debt? Too big to do? Bit tired of the “too big” argument. Very tired of the “too little to succeed” actuality.

I’ve been banging out these absurd letters to a bank manager who does not even exist who goes by the preposterous name of Bullrider, or Banks, or BM, for the past four years or so and honestly it may do a lot for the soul, my soul, get it off my chest at least, but it doesn’t really go much further. You know I’m not even sure it gets it off my chest. I think all this time I have been hoping my rage (I call it rage but is the simmering kind, the kind that is no doubt familiar...the fuel to the 99%) would form into cogent arguments for change. Once they did I’d get out there and share my thoughts loudly in the Public Square. My mistake? Waiting for these arguments to clarify. I should've been out there long ago. We all should've with are simmering fury at the state of the world and its sad attempt at economy. Well now we know you don’t need ghee. You just need butter. Fact is I get so caught up in nuance and language I forget to forge my thoughts through with threads of...there I go again...I forget to speak clearly. And actually that is okay. Speak up! Write me back! Argue me down! Put me back in the enveloping folds of my ragged armchair in front of my dismal TV with my potato chips and beer.

Sincerely,

Kristian Witherkay on behalf of the Bruxist Collective. 

Thanks to Hyperallergic for this image.

Spring in Town-1941

Grant Wood papers, 1930-1983. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution

A typed list by Grant Wood, painter of the classic “American Gothic”, features columns containing the start and end dates of all economic depressions ever to have taken place in American history, ending with the Great Depression—the time during which Grant lived and worked. At the bottom of this list, Wood adds, “all [depressions] came to an end except this one, mebbe [sic] this will…”. This desperately hopefully message, and the whole list itself, emphasizes the drastic conditions out of which Wood’s work emerged, breathing new air into the now-staid, iconic characters in his paintings.

I was at the Morgan Library, NYC, to check out the thoroughly enjoyable Exhibition: "Lists". I was too cowardly to take my own cell phone pictures thanks to a particularly vigilant guard but found this at The Art Blog whom I thank most sincerely for having overcome said fear and posted the above. Go to their site for more on the "Lists" exhibition.

Would You Trust This Man?

BANCOPHOBIA-A Definition

Burning Man Goes Not For Profit

TENS of thousands of volunteers are gathering to build a city in a Nevada desert that is notorious for triple-digit temperatures, high winds and blinding plumes of dust.

Related

• Times Topic: Burning Man Festival

Enlarge This Image

Heidi Schumann for The New York Times

At the festival in 2006, “giraffes” from South Africa met a giant “cat.”

Their organizer is a for-profit company that has collected millions in revenue over the last decade, largely because of this donated labor. At a distance, it’s easy to wonder: why are these people working so hard — in the blazing heat, no less — for a company they don’t own?

Scott Sady/Associated Press, Reno Gazette-Journal

That’s one of the paradoxes of Burning Man, the annual arts festival whose attractions include colossal art installations, all-night dance parties, marathon kite-flying sessions, off-kilter fashion shows, and classes where revelers can learn things that range from Hula Hooping to playing the ukulele to making absinthe.

Letter to the Bank #67 (What Art Can Do For You?)

Dear Manager of my Accounts, Bank Advisor, Financial Oracle of Yore,

After some serious thought I’ve decided to downgrade you. I stared into my iced coffee for a good few minutes before making this drastic decision and can only give you an F.

1. You stood idly by and let the madmen vote in your favor thus proving you cannot think counter-intuitively.
2. You revelled in the fact that interns in Congress cheerfully did your bidding (so saving you astronomical lobbyist fees) and thus revealed your culturally boorish nature.
3. You have, as usual, failed to stand up for anything except your own bottom line...so now you must fall.

Your thick skin resists. My penetration quotient disappoints. You still don’t get it. I haven’t gained access. The disappointment is so great I’m once more inclined to stop writing these letters. In them I’ve always grappled with describing the emotions of financial distress and have failed to seek out or find effective coping mechanisms. I do make Art and whilst it is, as I've said before, worth way more than money, it still fails to bring in the bread and butter. I always was more interested in expression than practicalities. Still I persist in wanting to get through to the mutable you, that figment of my imagination who runs in the unfeeling world of acquisition that is Hedge Fund Land, the Financial Sector, the Marketplace. The wistful hope remains that I might show you to that deep, dark place where your emotions reside, shivering, scared and neglected, help you connect, warm you up to real gut feeling, and then get you out into the sunlight, guide you out of the darkness that hovers over us all. But these letters seem trite in face of the hugeness of the problems we all are facing. I cannot explain the Economy nor would I presume to do so though my understanding of the economy may be just as water tight as yours or anybody else’s—trouble is that isn’t saying much and gets us nowhere. These feeble missives hardly aid the jobless or the homeless. Some understanding of the human side of what happens in markets sinks in but in the face of astronomical greed I remain as ever gob-smacked and stunned in the focused, narrow beam of your cold headlights, a wounded little pocket pet grown conscious of why you’ll never take me to the vet. You’ll pat me on the head, stroke me, watch me on my treadmill, and then flush me down the toilet when inside-out bowel syndrome strikes—so much for me putting you on notice with a downgrade.

Thankfully the madness, the impotence, the inaction, the hopelessness is now being captured and cornered daily by courageous writers in so many parts of the media universe that the insane and unreasonable voices, loud and obnoxious as they are, must eventually be drowned out by common sense.

Meanwhile what can Art do to help? What has he to offer in these surreally difficult times? He can slither though cracks, cross borders without a passport, pen cartoons that dissect with precision and send—get this—electronically! He can look through holes in the fabric of fraying societies the world over and report back on what he sees. He must see and hear and smell and feel harder, and do so outside the box, seen only by choice, revealed on his own terms, not telling the obvious stories but those stories that blow open the conventions that hold us all down. He stencils the walls of your institutions, sings in the library, upends convention, turns your golf game inside out and so changes your perceptions, gives you alternative perspectives, and permission to re-envision this whole experiment called Life on Earth. He even gives you permission to doubt yourself, change your mind, admit failure and be silent once in a while.

Whilst Art works at his modest goals you might consider looking at what you do from a different angle yourself. Write that check whilst standing on your head. Sell those bundled mortgages whilst intoning a story from Edgar Allen Poe, but always have a mind to the hurt you might cause if you allow your hubris to undermine due diligence.

This humble life lesson offered sincerely by yours truly,

Kristian A. Witherkay

Artist’s Statement Video – Charlotte Young

Artist’s Statement Video – Charlotte Young

Very enjoyable

"Artist's Statement"

Ai Weiwei released

Chinese legal authorities have released the dissident artist Ai Weiwei after detaining him for nearly three months on suspicion of tax evasion, likely ending a prosecution that had become a focal point of criticism of China’s human rights record, according to a report on Wednesday night by Xinhua, the state news agency.

Museo’s Bienal: The (S) Files 2011

Honest George" (2009), a painting by Lee Quinones

Although the market keeps crowing about how auctions and fairs are booming even in a ruinous economy, the exhibition catalog points out that the average artist is having a tough time, scrounging for the odd job, for a place to show, even for materials — all things that the street has helped provide in hard times past. The show itself also suggests an alternative definition of “average artist.”

Resignation Letter

Official Resignation Letter




Dear Financial Engineers, Money Guys and Bank Managers,

I am formally resigning from my position as Concerned If Numerically Dyslexic Artist/Citizen/Observer of the Ongoing Financial Meltdown (OFM), or Continuing Monetary Tsunami (CMT). My letters to you all—henceforth to be referred to as the Void—have met with virtual silence. I like to read this as your possible embarrassment at truths skillfully revealed by yours truly but suspect you all have simply been laughing yourselves silly and slapping your thighs all the way to the bank. My outrage is your fodder for fun, my economic innocence is risible, my infantile hope that you might be more considerate to those you are supposed to serve, is nothing but a joke! That I remained shocked by your infinite ability to suck blood from a stone, reap rewards, bonuses and slaps on the back for what is in essence criminal behavior, must be very amusing for you all. Or I can can only imagine you are able to defer all blame onto others in your industry, or redefine your industry in such a way as to make it plain it wasn’t you guys but those guys; or your job but their job. You can stop right now blaming the Consumer. You asked us to consume and we did because you are the Experts. You are expert consumers and you showed us all how it was done. You are even consuming us. Thank you for all your advice over the years. Thank you for dismantling Trust in this: the society I live in.

Yours sincerely,

Kristian Witherkay

PS—No longer required to write absurdly naive letters to the Bank I shall now concentrate on the far more important work of creating Art, Art that you the people with money must eventually Own.

Remember this:
•Art is worth more than Money
•Our relationship is deeply symbiotic
•Your lives without Art are worthless

Art & finance: the latest from the barricades

Last Thursday, October 21, Deloitte sponsored its third annual ‘Art & Finance’ conference, in Paris. The overlap between the worlds of art and finance is, to the discomfort of many people in and around the art world, not insubstantial (though not yet ‘substantial’ either).CLICK LINK FOR MORE

Letter to the Bank #58

Dear Financial Engineer,

We do not expect this to make sense, or for you to understand as I—no fan of banks—do shower down upon you a hail of incomprehensible ponderings on the subjects of money and art, art and poverty, wealth and acquisition, greed and patronage of the arts. As one of your clients I do expect you to sit there squirming, suffering through my abstract tirades, my obscure assaults on your wrong headed approach to life, the Universe and everything. Clearly those whose lifetime pursuit of money finds them sitting pretty must feel  that their chosen path is somewhat justified. They have all the stuff of their dreams and can only hope to acquire the one last item on their list—intelligence, or something that approximates depth. Perhaps there is an outrageously expensive machine that can inject the sum of everything into the brain, a time saving educational device that in much the same way money saving devices like collateralised debt bundles need no further input once turned on to churn out profit, will provide infinite wisdom whilst requiring no book learning or essay writing, no work in fact.


You might detect a hint of frustration in my writing. As an artist I have no interest in trying to grasp the intricacies of your grasping ways and am determined to maintain my oblique tangent on life but I do resent the way once you have money you can with little thought churn out more and more of the stuff. My approach to trying to get through to you is patently absurd and that is the way I like it! I am baffled by what you do and hope you are equally baffled and shut out by the meager but honest meanderings of a creative mind such as my own. The frustration you detect is based on the fact that I would also like to have a money machine at my bedside that required no input from me as it churned out a living, enough at least to keep our family at some distance from fear of starvation.  I'm not interested in the pursuit of money. It bores me. You see I can think of a million things to do with my time. I'd make art. I'd  be ever fascinated by the effort to contribute to the big essay of life. I wouldn't find taking and taking and taking that satisfactory. I only want enough money to fend off constant worry. I understand that is a highly mutable amount but do believe if I were confident I could secure enough to support our basic needs we'd be inclined to send the extra toward the helping of others. My most basic need is peace of mind. If only we could secure peace of mind for everyone. So much human capitol is wasted on worry. Freed of anxiety humans would produce so much more effectively be it in the arts or indeed in industry where a happy employee would surely be happy to work if they were confident that they and theirs could rest secure in the belief they'd be provided for. That may be the kernel of this letter, the core of this thesis.


Your response to this: 
1.—Hmmmm! Perhaps we should spread the wealth? Perhaps having the wealth concentrated in the hands of a tiny minority is wrong!
2.—Hmmm! Clearly we are dealing with a liberal/populist/socialist/communist/atheist and anti-plutocrat! Ah! His address is on the envelope!


Yours sincerely,

Kristian Stillwitherkay

Letter to the Bank #57

From Russell Christian Illustration

My Dear BM,

These letters are turning existential! I think that is the right word. Rather than be mired in the humdrum world of my own crumbling finances I like to look up and out and on. I cannot stand just thinking and breathing anxiety all the time, or being pulled to shreds on the torture rack of the need to make art (and live and breath it as and when moments in the day open up) and make money not only to confront the impossible task of paying down debt but also to keep the little people in my life, at the very least, away from robbing banks i.e.—in modern parlance—off the computer. I’m confident my brood would make fine cyber-hackers given enough incentive and believe me if you deprive them of their candy, their toys, their sugar-bloated cereals they will find a means to acquiring these things themselves. You mark my words. In fact you’ve always known this and that is why, not so long ago, you were giving them credit cards as soon as they could walk. This whole financial crisis is THEIR fault! Let’s blame the toddlers! This isn’t far from the truth either come to think of it. Blaming naive, wannabe homeowners for the crisis, beginners who’d were sold a bill of goods, toddlers who dreamed of home ownership, were What did you expect? You guys didn’t understand what you were doing and still do not understand the half of it so how dare you point at those who fell for your sales pitch? If it was too good to be true then why were you selling it in the first place? And now you want to take their toys away! Simply put your behavior was criminal.

Gosh every time I start writing these letters in hopes of soaring poetical I end up dragged to the ground by these sorry, all too earthy and humdrum truths.

I was going to write about how life is so much more than money but money somehow always inserts itself into the picture. It destabilizes me every time I think ont (sic—I believe this is an acceptable Shakespearian term).

I was going to share with you all the current questions in my head. Some examples:

How would people respond if I burnt the books of Ann Coulter?
What if I framed a book of hers and titled the now completed artwork “Unburnt Book by Ann Coulter”, could I sell them? Make some money?

How about an artwork so insulting to bankers it could never possibly sell? You’d buy it, right?

Do you thinks bands who perform on a nice sunny day at an open air concert are sorry for those who are cancilled the next day due to rain?

Do you know what GOP stand for*? I bet a good fifty per cent of the population has no idea.

Do you like ambient music? That one just popped into my head.

Yours trying so very hard to remain polite,

K.W.

GOP stands for "Grand Old Party". Its a nickname for the Republicans who resent any form of government because it always gets in the way of them having "Fun."

Letter to the Bank #56

Hello Bullrider,

Finally another letter!

Funniest thing is writing these letters is such hard work but I keep doing it anyway. Finding a moment to sit down, getting comfortable (so hard to do when your ceiling is leaking), finding a pen that works, finding a stamp for goodness sakes!

Fortunately I am a patient man and so I go to this effort for you, my bank manager.

Funnier still is the fact that you are, frankly, the last person I wish to write a letter to but here I am, pen in hand, doing just that.

Feel free to explain!

Foolish Harry here certainly has no idea what is going on.

Frankly though I keep writing in hopes an explanation will be forthcoming.

Felicitous greetings aside why do the rich feel so entitled?

Falling stocks, crumbling edifices, collapsing DOW and they keep partying?

Fold your newspaper under your arm and join me for a drink.

Face to Face perhaps we can figure this thing out together.

Ferocious cold aside I think you should touch base with your real clientelle—those like me with nothing to offer but the shirts off our backs because we’ve given everything else.

Sincerish regards,

Kristian Witherkay

PS-To keep things lively I might start a series of letters whereby every sentence begins with the same letter—a madcap creative exercise guaranteed to infuriate my BM (you!) and keep me on my toes and out of  oh I dunno—Debtors’ Prison. Oops! I forgot! I'm already in Debtors' Prison! My own home! I exagerate only a little. Fond of it though I am it is a ball and chain around the neck. 

I’ll work my way through the alphabet in no particular order starting today—it would appear—with F.

Delete All Debt Mug

My first attempt at merchandising.
These are available from me for $25 which includes shipping.
Seems simple enough: Why not delete all debt everywhere all at once one day so everyone can wake up debt free.
I'm sure it would all shake down just fine!