More money, more problems

The Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II on June 2, 1953

The history of the English Crown, the Monarchy explains is made up of the Union of Crowns from 1603. The concept is based on a single ruler developed from the eighth and ninth century. Figure heads such as Offa and Alfred the Great began to create a centralised system of government. Following the Norman Conquest, the rules developed a national institution including the formation of Parliament.

During the Middle Ages there were many contests over the Crown, which culminated in the Wars of the Roses, which lasted for a century. The conflict ended with the advent of the Tudors, a dynasty which produced some of England's prominent rulers. The death of the 'Virgin Queen' in 1603 ended Tudor family line and brought about the Union of the Crowns with Scotland.
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Last year the artist Damian Hirst created a stir by overlaying a skull with diamonds. Another artist has recently done a bushel of corn to real scale in diamonds. The piece is quite whimsical, and has less of a sinister quality than Hirst’s piece, because it is not a body part. Yet, the idea of using precious material in Art is quite provocative at this time.

In a world where there are more millionaires and billionaires than ever before, and airlines like Singapore Airlines are creating Above First Class as a class on their airline and billionaires are buying L1011’s to trick them out with bedrooms, bathrooms and boardrooms, the mind can spin at the thought.

You might hear yourself say incredulously, but shouldn’t we be thinking about global warming and famine? Prince Charles struggles to come to terms with using his private jet to go to meetings on sustainable agriculture and his wife Camilla Parker Bowles complains of the heat while walking around a little third world Caribbean island, from their private yatch.

Money is a great thing. It can help humanity tremendously. But what are we doing with it? Why is it that more money is spent on war than on joy? Why are we still so paranoid? Actually that is easily answered, just look at how we deal with each other on a daily basis. The way some people drive, I am glad that they do not wield political power. Using precious materials in the world of Art is not new, but what is interesting about their use today is the patron it will go to. I am sure that after the surprise of the Hirst head, the next expectation was, who would collect it?

Obviously there are people in the world very willing to purchase such objects for whatever reason, the ability to do so comfortably, the desire to have something that will continue to appreciate in value, bragging rights…maybe all of the above. What does this say about the artist? Is the artist right to play this commodities game when we are supposed to be the people who keep the reigns of society mindful of itself? Is Mr. Hirst’s head and Mircea Cantor's corn may be just a humorous analogy of all that is excessive in the world and moreso a statement of questionable taste? Is the purchaser in on the joke and ‘gets’ it? Working in diamonds or bronze or whatever expensive material available to artists who can afford to create costly visions may be more about wanting to push the limits of their ability, concept and our expectations.

I think that that is why we have seen huge blow up structures like Paul Mc Cartney’s piece that framed the Tate Museum in 2004. It may be why artists work so large right now. It is about competing with all the other media out there and reminding their public that a gynormous painting is way more flashy than a flat screen television when it’s off, and it is always impressive no matter what time of day or mood you are in after a day of stock trading.

The world of the rich makes you feel as though you never got the memo for the race. The gulf between the haves and have not’s is a Gulf Stream jet of air fuel. Yet this is not a pity party. Somehow, we all manage to live with poverty, vagrancy and insanity lying side by side as we smartly talk on our cellphones to friends complaining that we have no time and we wish that life was much simpler.

The artists who work with expensive materials are giving the patron value, and as Andy Warhol knew when he silk screenprinted money, artists are just giving that rareified group what they want. Whether it gives something back to art history in the process is an entirely other matter. - Adele

Money -Art -Integrity

A public painting as a billboard, Diego Martin, Trinidad

Of the many conversations that I have with artists, one of the most contentious is about money, not to be confused with making a living. Most artists are not specific about their financial needs, so much as they are interested in the alleged financial successes of others.

This may come from living in a small place, or from the fact that the artist community is also so very small, that it cannot be helped that many people in and around the arts have a tendency to focus on how much money is being made in it. Yet, when these conversations come up, I find artists to be both prudish and shrewd. Many people assume that when an artist has a show, everything sells. Many believe that whatever they make at the show, they get to keep. Neither of these statements is true. Looking deeper, one also has to observe the number of people practicing art and the number of new people cropping up every day, vying for the same small pie.

Everyone knows that Trinidad and Tobago is oil rich, but how many of us know how many of our wealthy citizens actually support Art? So many buildings are being built and have been built and very little Art ills these structures. I can assume that many people who buy art do so for their homes, and so artists should really not get too upset when their patrons want that work because it matches their couch and curtains.

What about the cost of a lot of what is out in the gallery spaces for sale? Sometimes you wonder how did that piece of work fetch that price? Overall, I find that the local patrons of art are very kind in their choice of purchases. I have seen works fetch ten and fifteen thousand dollars, knowing that it would be a better buy from another artist of greater skill. Does the patron know this? Are they buying for love or for sentiment or are they purchasing because they want to just spend money?

Of the patrons I know, it can be a bit of all of the above. Yet there is a real tiny market of people who do make very good livings on art investments. However, they have their own challenges, as they have to do a lot of homework to find quality. So what invariably happens is buying a lot of specific names and trading based on that name, and doing some ambulance chasing as well.

The artist LeRoy Clarke has enough work made, and enough of a mystique surrounding himself as to be the equivalent of a Naipaul in terms of cache. Whether you like his body of work or not, he has been working for a very long time, making Art that has met with a certain level of acceptance in our society. His art has even managed to cause great controversy over cost, a controversy that for many may now seem particularly absurd.

I believe that artists should talk about money, because they should talk about value, and they
should educate their patrons about value. Artists should determine these standards, although anyone may seem to be able to, as the saying goes, ‘wash their foot and jump in…” to the art arena, and clearly the arena is willing and able to absorb them. The art world of Trinidad and Tobago needs to set standards of quality. If so, everyone will rise to the level that they are comfortable with, and things would not be so ambiguous as they presently seem to be.

The vending machine

The Art Society of Trinidad and Tobago Gallery host the painter, Karen Sylvester, 2005

From the moment she entered the arena of Art making and selling, Karen Sylvester has generated much talk and speculation. The emotion is mostly of the green kind. People huddle with you in corners of the gallery and talk about how much money she is making and what they have heard about her private life. This is not so unusual in Trinidad and Tobago. The Art community is small and going to shows is like going to a family outing, there are always characters to encounter, people to duck, people to air kiss and people to approach like long lost family. Behaviour is to be monitored, food and drink to talk over and lots of empty conversation to fill awkward spaces.

Yet, with Karen Sylvester and her work, I have found an artist who is consistently and unexpectedly controversial because she is perceived as a success. It is said that heavy is the crown of the King. But in this case, heavy is the emotion of the court. At her last show held at the newly named Art Society of Trinidad and Tobago by the master of selling art, Mark Perriera, I found myself looking at her work with the vaguest memory of the whispers. No one ever says Ms. Sylvester cannot paint. No one ever says that she is unable to convince you that her plants and rolling hills are not nearly photorealistic in nature. What everyone gets up in arms about is how well she is doing. Is this a representation of how we in Trinidad treat each others success? I went in search of the answers to the questions that keeps coming up about the artist.


An oval view of tranquil quaintness of Trinidad and Tobago

There is a violent divide about what art should be in Trinidad and Tobago, and some how Miss Sylvester is caught up in the hailstorm. I don’t hear the wrangling questions against photorealism at a Neal Massy show? I don’t hear it at a Larry Mosca show? But at a Karen Sylvester show there is no middle ground. There are either people who love her pastoral poetry or those who hate it. Everyone is a critic.

I was asked to write about Miss Sylvester many years ago when a large painting she had done of the Wildflower Trust of lotus flowers was priced at TT$200,000. No one could stop talking about the cost of the work. Unlike the American artist W.H.McNeill Whistler’s Nocturne more than a century ago, no one was getting up in arms and stating publicly that she should justify her price. People were just agog at what a painting could fetch. The work was not sold at that show. It has subsequently been sold. Yet, it was a big moment in local art history.


LeRoy Clarke’s current exhibition at the National Museum of Trinidad and Tobago

It harkened back to LeRoy Clarke’s million dollar sale of his work that did cause much brow beating and nashing of teeth. This begs another question, should artists have to justify their prices? Why does the art community and the art buying public get so sensitive when an artist can actually ‘make a living’? Why get up in arms when an artist calls a price?


The envy in any Trinidadian's living room

As I walked around the gallery space, so much improved from the years of dusty, none descript raw space, now sparkling new with good light and air conditioning, I saw some new developments in her work. Her ‘Mash Dog” and “Cane Cutter” are examples. There are people inhabiting the land, unlike much of her work in the past that featured only nature. But this is not the development. Looking more closely at the latter painting, one can see an attempt to break out of a tried, tested and proven technique, an attempt to bring more expression to composition and use of media.


Cutting through the technique of what she is capable of painting

It cannot be easy being so successful with a style of work. I asked Neal Massy at his last show this year, how he handles doing new things. He too has steadily explored new ideas in his work, for example the use of sfumato, a hazy middle ground invented by Leonardo Di Vinci. Mr. Massy is also now adding a bit of typography in signage where his lone birds perch, as well as looking at interior spaces. These works are introduced in small ways into the show, practically placed first or last in an attempt to not jolt the buyer into seeing something too radically different from a steady style of work.

This begs the next question. All artists work to make a living, ie. Make money. So why is it that so many artist have a hard time with the artists who make successful livings selling work of a particular nature? Yes I have seen a million landscapes, Magnificent Seven, old house, black woman with turban until I can draw them in my sleep. As a commodity our society does not tire of these representations of our ‘culture’ and ‘heritage.’ For many buyers the thought expressed is that they want the uncomplicated and pretty, and the more ‘radical’ contemporary artists take up their toys and setups, accusing them of bad taste, no taste and god forbid, nouveau riche ways. But if these same people were to turn around and say let me see your work again…well! The arguments are that her work is soulless. That she uses a projector that she traces from photography. There is too much of that photorealism around. She’s polluting the market with same old, same old. This is a circular argument.


The Coca-Cola formula of painting

Our is an ambivalent crowd. On the one hand there are the pretty painters, the Sunday painters and on the other hand there are the Abstract Expressionists and the New Media specialists. With very little ground and no tolerance it is plain to see that works that do not tear or interfere with the social fabric of the nation shall always be with us.

Everyone can work, everyone is different. So why is Karen Sylvester always in the headlights? This shall not end here, but I shall do so by stating, Miss. Sylvester’s career unwittingly encourages many questions. Holding up many opinions to serious scrutiny, all pointing outward at us, and in the life of an artist, is that not what good work is supposed to do anyway? - Adele. Also see the article on Photorealism versus Paintrealism