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

BULLRIDER 38 Art and the Bouncy Banker. Art Loves His ATM

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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.

A Day In The Life Of The Bouncy Banker-He's creative and loving!!

Money...or Porn?

...or Art?

Wolf Geyr-IN GOD WE TRU$T

At Occupy Wall Street there is a wonderful process in play that, for all its problems, can be best described as Democracy in action. The stance of most of the activists is apolitical in that they find the current rusting infrastructure of politics to be one they no longer wish to work within. Neither do they wish to come at it from the left or right. This is bubbling up from underneath. Understandably they do not see the roads and bridges we now have in place standing up for long. The current crop of politicians give the appearance of desperately trying to maintain the current system but show a complete unwillingness to inject real change (monetary or visionary) into the process. The Masses are now the 99%. Socialism is now, at its simplest, people wanting to see people treated with respect. To continue using these words as a form of insult will only show up the thrower of those insults as a dinosaur stuck in old patterns, unable to escape a dualistic approach to politics that is failing to function effectively. There is a kind of political exegesis going on. Break down the current system, look at all the parts, and cyber-nurd it back together, whilst making sure to throw new parts thrown in and stir, vigorously.

I see so many people energized by a sense that change might be possible if applied with great caution. Burned once people hold their hope close to their chest. Artists, economists, university lecturers, whoever is involved must show a willingness to make mistakes, and be open to criticism, the horizontal process, and consensual thinking. It is way too soon to say any of us have figured this thing out to the point where clear demands, open and shut, can be made.

One artist at the No Comment Art show, Wolf Geyr, has clearly been struggling with the issues of art and money for a while now. My take on biting the hand that feeds i.e. making art that one hopes is pretty insulting to the very people who might one day buy that same art, has been fairly consistent. Think Steve Bell, brilliant satirical cartoonist who has been a presence in the British paper, the Guardian, for a good thirty years. I believe, though I may have my facts wrong, that Margaret Thatcher, whom he satirized viciously in his strip Maggie’s Farm, bought some of his originals. I guess that is one way to stifle criticism, rather than getting all upset in public. This does not really succeed unless the cartoonist/artist gives up, and Steve Bell is, mercifully, as biting as ever.

I’d like to point out that many of those in the financial industry who are also patrons of the arts have been biting your hand all along. You put your money in their bank where they make it grow to their own benefit whilst charging you for the privilege of doing so. Curious don’t you think?

Letter to the Bank #78 (Keep Your Hands out of my Wallet)

Dear BM,

In my efforts to not demonize the whole banking infrastructure, or every individual working in that system, I work hard to make it clear my target is specifically those who look down sneeringly at us masses and, whilst cleaning out the cash registers, believe that their ability to do so only proves their superiority. Though I address these letters to my fictional bank manager you nonetheless represent my best hope of what a financial advisor might be. I wish to believe that I am addressing a human being behind that daunting edifice who is only trying to make a living and who has some sense of moral obligation vis-a-vis his clients. That is all I ask—some sense. As the holder of my securities you wield power and with all the doubt out there regarding those who do it is high time you distinguished yourself from the rotten apples in your barrel. The You in these letters refers to the Rotten Apples and you may decide you fit that profile or... certainly do not. You are unavoidably part of that massive amorphous target that is the banks and will occasionally suffer from the collateral fall out inevitable in my tirades. So, on that understanding here goes:

My relationship to you, dear banker, feels much like that of a petulant child to a cold and uncomprehending, distant parent. I want to lash out but know I’m dependent on you for food and lodging and so as I strain to be heard I also make great efforts to do so in such a way as to not have you cut me off entirely from my holdings, my 401K, my pension, that which amounts to my thin inheritance. With your hooks in all organs of power—politics (both parties), law enforcement (and surveillance), the Bench (bought by that remarkable individual known as The Corporation), it is hard as an individual to speak truth to power and takes enormous courage, a courage we say taking root with Occupy Wall Street. Their ability to remain civil despite the condescension pouring down on them is an inspiration. As you well know if I am rude, it is with civility. I offend politely. For not truly altruistic reasons I come to you in a spirit of cooperation and suggest means by which we might better work together. Perhaps you could not slap on that extra fee? How about giving some relief to that mortgage burden? You might avoid having to deal with the pain of adding yet another crumbling home to your overloaded books. I’ve heard you are bulldozing whole communities of foreclosed homes because it is cheaper than fixing them up. Why didn’t you fix them up when people still lived in those homes? Would that not have been a better solution all round? It looks a lot like stubborn behavior on your part. If you believe rules is rules then surely you should apply them to yourselves as well. That would certainly mean no more bailing out the big banks. You must be confused at times by the anger that seeps out despite my best efforts to keep it buried but you have so much power and you use it in a disgracefully poor manner and, as even you with your thick skin cannot have helped noticing, the fury cannot be tamped down any more. To not be so compromised by our complicity with the banks we look to the notion of removing our assets from your institutions. You naturally thought of this a long time ago and people are finding it very difficult to extricate themselves from your grip. It’s nasty of you to hold on to our little wallets, wallets that keep yielding nickels and dimes that amount to billions when you look at your massive client base. If they all got up and left your party you’d be destitute.

Yours sincerely,

Kristian Witherkay

PS-My colleague, Art O'Connor, normally a retiring and elusive soul, will read more of these letters loud in  public soon.

Letter to the Bank #76 (Trouble With The Hand That Feeds)

Dear Mr. Bullrider,

I’ve long discussed with you the troubled relationship my elusive friend, Art, has with money. There he is struggling to beautify or/and enlighten the world through his bizarre inclination to make art objects. His objects become objects of desire and naturally he is happy to see them find homes as people deign to acquire them. They do so for a prearranged price or through an entertaining transaction, or by barter, mechanisms for exchange as old as the hills. Naturally with the cost of living almost impossible to aspire to at this point in the millennium he hopes the exchange is advantageous enough that he is able to feed his children using the proceeds from the sale. Now as it happens those able to part with money over such frivolous transactions as the acquisition of Art may often be in the enviable position to do so on a regular basis. They become patrons of art. They build art collections. Some of that art has strained to be pleasing often in a very canny way, appearing confrontational whilst, with a knowing wink, working for the owner, whoever that may be, as a status symbol. This kind of art is referred to as Blue Chip art. It has become as dubious as the money used to acquire it. The two are in cahoots. They may come from new or old money and in either case are like pet owners, the artists being their pets. But the bigger the pet and the bigger the art, the less patronizing and more equal the relationship between the two. Naturally the owner of a great dane is respectful enough to not invite the ire of a dog so big. Meanwhile many of us little artists are scurrying around looking for owners, for galleries, for soap boxes from which to express and scream, talk and dream, troubled by the compromise that is inevitable in the symbiotic relationship between art and art owner. Now once in a while the pet gets unreasonable doesn’t like the food being proffered and feels an inclination to bite the hand that feeds, a hand that is likely as not deep in the till of the financial system that is burning us all. Art is compromised. Art feels sick. Art is suffering. Art will lash out. Art might defecate on the stoops of the very galleries that, purportedly support his/her actions.

Art has no choice but to keep being rude and keep hoping their patrons will turn the other cheek and hand over a check as they do so. Art then, with clothespin on nose, accepts the check graciously and heads off to pay the mortgage on his underwater domicile.

Yours sincerely,


Kristian Witherkay

PS—Art is home in bed as we write, suffering from a nasty head cold (could it be strep?) and a debt crisis. Perhaps you could help? Maybe you could...buy some of his objects, objects made only with the intent to communicate, to get through (to you), though admittedly, at times, in a thoroughly oblique way. What can I say: He/She is elusive.

PPS—Why do I say She? Thing is the Art I know is a strange fellow with theatrical mutton chops (think that’s the correct term), but he is anxious you should know he has a sister in arms, Artemis, who is out there disturbing the peace with challenging objects of her own. I’ve not met her in person but see her work everywhere.

Letter to the Bank #74 (No Comment Art Show, 23 Wall Street)

Dear Mr. Bullrider, my very own personal bank manager (am I right?),

Thank you for inviting us in to the very belly of Wall Street last night so Art and all his (Arthur’s) and her (Artemis’s) friends could express themselves without reserve in face of the financial calamity that we are all confronting. I’m not a realtor and cannot begin to fully understand how it is that last night a pop-up exhibition occurred at the old J. P. Morgan bank building at 23 Wall Street, but happen it did and what a joy. Certainly there was fury—burning dollar bills, protest signs—in spades. There was also a young woman playing a beautiful rendition of the Jimi Hendrix Star Spangled Banner, live gambling, body artworks, graphitti (on the spot murals), puppeteers and performance. The building, a gargantuan yet vacant space that even bankers can’t afford I’m guessing (I already know I’m wrong—when you can make money out of nothing what’s to not afford?) was filled with what can for the most part be described as anti-corporate art. There was plenty of humor and a ton of energy. Even the barriers and excessive police presence outside (including mounted police) failed to discourage a large attendance. Be encouraged! There is Life on other planets. You just have to look harder.

I left before a silent auction planned by the organizers, No-Comment-Art, took place. Though allied with the Art Committee of the Occupy Wall Street movement some saw the auction as yet another Capitalist Enterprise and therefore dubious. Considering the movement is in a beautiful infancy and has a lifetime (I hope—full of hope) to figure out what its demands are we urge such thoughts to be picked up as conversations and discussed heatedly but in mutual respect. Some of the money will go to the protesters, some to the artists and organizers and some, possibly, down a black hole. The show was happening, after all, across the street from the New York Stock Exchange. Such is life and life isn’t perfect but it is life, pumping veins and all. Whether Occupy should build a list of demands, whether those demands should be mutable, inchoate or wide open is already a matter being tested out in the blogosphere. I do know divide and conquer is a great way to sow discord in a movement and that for now it would probably be for the best if tolerance/give-and-take ruled the day.

Enjoy some images of the show.My dear BM, you should run down there. If you went now you could snap up the art for nothing I expect!

Though ever a thorn in your side I remain none the less most sincerely yours,

Kristian Witherkay

The banner image for this letter is a half sign, a symbol of expression finding voice. It is okay if the message is unclear. The emotion is very clear.

From No Comment Art Show at 23 Wall Street, 10.9.11

The elusive Art read letters to the Bouncy Banker at No Comment Art exhibit in the old J. P. Morgan building on Wall Street Friday night, a block or two from the Occupy Wall Street encampment in Zuccotti Park. PHOTO: Kevin Pyle

In one pop-up performance piece, a man from New Jersey who calls himself Art O’Connor read a mock letter he wrote as a frustrated artist to the banks who have screwed him over. His act was a mixture of frightening rage and vaudeville comedy. Dressed in a tattered suit and roaring from a make-shift soap box, O’Conner looked like he belonged in a Broadway show about the Great Depression. My heartfelt thanks to Hyperallergic for this write up.

Letter to the Bank #73 (Occupying a little of Wall Street's Valuable Time))

Letter to the Bank

Dear Mr. Bullrider, My beloved bank manager, my very own BM,

Throw me a bone here.
Do you not manage my money? Is that not why I deposit my money with you? Am I not your client? Do you not work for me? Are you not, in effect, my employee—our employee? Are you not indeed a public servant? Was this not supposed to be the case? Do I not give you my money—albeit a paltry sum—so that you might invest it wisely? You guys are magicians! We stare at you in wonderment. You have us in the palm of your hands. Pull the bunny out of the hat! Go on! Make my money grow! I’ve seen you do it. You are amazing how you take nothing i.e. what I give you—the aforementioned paltry earnings of a toiler—and end up with bonuses for everyone but me! One moment your financial edifice is teetering on the edge of financial ruin, the next you’re riding high! That poor bull of yours is plum tuckered out! Then you bounce right back! Your manic energy is an inspiration to us all! What fabulous tricks you do perform and I look on in amazement. But then I ask: where’s my ice cream?

I am not naive. I know you are all in it for yourselves but you are in it with our money! You get your hands wicked dirty for pathetic little investors like me, but as owners of feeble checking accounts that never, ever grow it is hard to applaud you for the evil you do on our behalf.  Actually you must be quite bitter. See? That is your opening. That is where you can screw us good and proper—by hoisting us on our own moral petards* (see note). We are compromised. Banking as we do with you we are therefore culpable and thus you can render us mute, voiceless. Or we could insist you take our monies and make ethical investments. These days I am really trying to fathom why we have our money in your banks in the first place. At the best of times you were clearly an inspiration to us all. Suddenly everyone wanted to become a banker, a financial engineer, a ...mortgage broker. And apparently it wasn’t about intelligence or skill, it was all to do with who you knew. Any Tom, Dick or Jane could get wealthy over night if they weren’t encumbered by scruples and had the right connections. And because there was no money to be made anywhere else even the brightest amongst us sold our souls to become derivatives traders. Suddenly getting a Master of Business Administration degree was the way to go. It was the best of times...for you and continued to be the not so good times for everyone else. But now it isn’t looking so good for you either. The suits arew in trouble! Once more money is evaporating everywhere. Thanks to new regulations gouging your customers is not so easy so now you have had to find another trick. You are no doubt mad at the regulators and decrying their crimping of the flow of currency from our accounts into yours. If you’re so mad at big government meddling then perhaps you should show yourselves up to the task of handling our monies in a fiscally responsible manner and go after the few bad apples that are giving your industry such a bad, bad, bad, bad, so terribly bad name! Instead, in another example of your shining brilliance, you intend to charge us for spending our money, tax us for using our debit cards! Now if ever seems like a good time to forgo the banks and withdraw all ones money and stuff it under the..., up the, in the.... Look all I am saying is if there should be a run on the banks you’d only have yourselves to blame. With your hidden fees and smoldering agendas you have lost the trust of the people entirely, lock, stock, and two smoking barrels.

I trust you understand that I care about you and that is why I share these thoughts with you my very own, if elusive, possibly non-existent bank manager. I’m trying to save you from yourself
, or an MFA, which was seen as a kind of MBA  but that is another story)

In these letters I’ve tried so hard to keep my tone reasoned and polite, and intrapersonal, between you and me. I’ve tried for the most part to avoid going down the rabbit holes of politics and religion and keep the message simple: From one human being to another. We are alike in so many ways, you and me.

We are not provincial thinkers. We both think big. We see this as a world wide crisis and this spot as its epicenter. This isn’t just about America. This is about the whole planet. Where on this planet can we hide our money these days—in your case to avoid taxes in ours to avoid those pesky debit fees.

Another thing we have in common is our need to make money. How we make it is another matter. I make art and you invent financial instruments. We are both so creative. But never forget art is worth more than money.

Yours sincerely,

Art O’Connor on behalf of the Bruxist Collective

The First Great Bank Run of 2011

Letter to the Bank #72 (Being Jacked and the Beans Talk)

Dear my very own (all mine I tell you! Mine! MINE!) personal, assigned to me, focused on me, concerned only for me and my particular situation vis-a-vis...money—Mr.Bullrider, my Bank Manager,

Guess what? I’m uncovering vats, hoards of letters I’ve written to you over the past few years that never saw the light of day. Writing to you became an obsession, one I might add that has worn off of late as the wisdom, brilliance of my magical thoughts on finance become common currency. What is remarkable is how relevant the same things stated over and over again remain! Each letter more or less repeats the essence of the previous one only in a slightly different way. Writing them feels like polishing and organizing the arsenal so that it will be ready the day we need to bring out the big guns—the perfect sentence that says it all—that sort of thing. I’m sure you’ve missed them so here goes—one such letter with some spontaneous additions. More to come later:

“Dear BM,

Just to be clear now—it is not your piñada I’m bashing when I get all vitriolic and mad at the banks. I’m the first to admit to a terrible habit of conflating all institutions and/or individuals who make obscene amounts of money using cruel, sharp and vicious financial instruments and outrageous numerical methodologies. Smells like middle aged angst! I’d suggest that is perfectly appropriate on the 20ieth anniversary of Nirvana’s Nevermind.

I’m all too inclined to roll the whole kit and caboodle into one big bundle: The Banks (commercial, corporate, community), Wall Street, Hedge Funds, Mortgage Brokers, I could go on and on and on. To me they are all Bouncy Bankers. They all started with somewhat imaginative career aspirations as chemists, philosophers, dancers and even poets but then saw no money (anywhere—not what they’d cal money) so switched to finance and gleefully fell into that big black hole where greed festers and white swans never see the light of day. In that underverse they thrive! They even float. Indeed they fly. Pop them they patch themselves back together with ease. Bash them with your pitchforks and clubs until all the candy falls out, they’ll still find a way to syphon it all back in and fly. Their balloons cannot be popped. They may wobble but, as I have noted before, they will never fall down. The basic assumption is that somebody has to handle the money preferably an expert who can make it grow. These days these magicians will not give you magic beans for your scrawny cow. They prefer to throw the beans through the window and reap the rewards to be found in the giant’s castle for themselves. They might lack the courage or the cunning but they don’t need either. They have massive unregulated instruments to work with, financial tools so big they can even make a giant feel small and, because they are unencumbered by scruples, they can come at him from behind and stab him in the back with small print that proves the chicken that lays the golden eggs belongs to them and take everything. Criminal right? They argue before Congress that they are being unjustly maligned. They look aggrieved and are affronted by a public that fails to comprehend the burden they carry but somehow the pain in their eyes carries no weight.”

Again I should stress that as you are my bank manager I keep coming back to you and I trust (as I must) that you are one of the sensitive ones. Why else would I trust you with my finances, you who are in essence the mortgagee of my children. And why else would I share with you my magical financial thinking?

Sincerely,

Kristian Witherkay

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.

Art as ATM

Artists and Money

On the whole, money does artists much more good than harm. The idea that one benefits from cold water, crusts and debt collectors is now almost extinct, like belief in the reformatory power of flogging.
 

Song of Loss by William Blake

The idea that money, patronage and trade automatically corrupts the wells of imagination is a pious fiction, believed by some utopian lefties and a few people of genius such as (William) Blake but flatly contradicted by history itself.

-quote from Robert Hughes

Thanks to Artquotes.net. See link above for more. 

I should add that I couldn't agree more. I'm sure most artists who find themselves wrestling with debt collectors and bills and eating crusts would enjoy not having to worry about money. Who, really, wouldn't? The point surely is that the anxiety that comes along with seeking it and the time required to make it thwarts them from the very thing it is they wish to sink their energies into—the making of art. Call it romantic or anarchic or lazy or a stupid waste of time but the truth is there are many in this world saddled with the desire to make profound objects and cannot survive if the pursuit of money does not jive with the pursuit of their dreams. Being truly creative means finding a way to do this. The solution will be different with each and every individual and will not always be noble. I personally like the idea of not feeling ashamed by the approach I choose. I want to be look money in the eye, not be tying its shoe laces. Is that utopian?