The Value of Art: Money, Power, Beauty. Michael Findlay. Munich, London, New York: Prestel, 2012. 208 pages.
Michael Findlay has the experience in the art world to tackle his declared topic. After many years as the director of Acquavella Galleries, working with artists, collectors, auction houses and museums, his stories reflect on these encounters with thoughtful arguments and gentle mockery. In a book meant for “amateurs, from the Latin amare (to love),” who wonder what appreciation remains in the art world, he discusses how to consider the question of the value of art. He presents an engagement with art through the conceit of the Three Graces: Thalia (whose province is fruitfulness and so, commerce), Euphrosyne (joy and thus, society), Aglaea (beauty). The overall value of art engages these elements, in a constantly shifting balance, influenced by varying tastes at different times and in diverse cultures.
Acknowledging the ties that bind this triangle of ideas, people, or graces–with wonderful stories that alone make the book a pleasure to read–Findlay is largely advocating that we return to looking at art, individually, independently, immediately. The newspapers will ensure that big-hit auction items receive attention, and self-generated publicity will let us know about a new artist or gallery, but the constant among the highs and lows of the art market is a simple, visual appreciation maintained across time by spectators. One can begin to appreciate why this is, not by reading a biography of an artist, a gallery press release, or a theoretical underpinning for the work, but simply by taking the time to look. After ten minutes, Findlay warns, you may be bored, but after twenty you will find something unexpected, and after forty, you may no longer be keeping track of time.
This is the advantage that art collectors have against those who visit museums: time. Time permits a relationship with an individual work that will be there after a bad day at work, or the best day, in the morning and at night, glowing under professional lighting or shadowy in a night walk through the house. This advantage however can be allayed by a patient, focused visit to a museum. Findlay remembers his high school art teacher, Anthony Kerr, sending his less talented students into London for museum visits, after which each boy was expected to discuss what he had seen. These trips permitted Findlay, who was one of these less talented, to find compelling works and wonder why he found them so. Museum guests could likewise select a work to view for an extended period of time rather than rushing through the rooms to have seen everything the museum contains and, yet, be able to discuss none of it. The point is well made.
Findlay acknowledges a general discomfort with imagery in favor of textual knowledge, but encourages his reader to reconsider, titling one subsection “Perception trumps Information.” Approximately 20% of the information that the brain receives about a visual image, such as color and form, comes from the retina. We fill out what we see with other areas of the brain, including memory, which helps explain the subjective response to works of art. Reading placards may help us see, but it may equally influence what we see, diminishing our own vision. Seeing a lot of art and growing a personal repertoire of references will, however, develop a better eye than any amount of reading can, and Findlay is careful never to provide an opinion of the works whose stories he tells, instead encouraging his reader to consider them independently.
Towards the end of his book, Findlay states, “I am convinced that in modern times the most exciting and innovative art occurs in concert with events (invention, war, migration) that mark tectonic shifts in humane behavior and thought,” which he reiterates in several places. His forty plus years as a gallerist undeniably provide him with a breadth of experience about the art world, both the established blue-chip and truly bohemian. The importance placed on art’s response to the socio-political world, however, is an attitude whose importance in the 20th century may no longer serve a generation raised by political imagery. The politics of the Cold War, the fight against AIDS, the celebrity culture of certain diseases from autism to Parkinson’s, and then, of course, 9/11 have been projected like a slideshow onto our psyches. News cameras, impressive photo journalism, cell phone images, tweets, Facebook posts, all provide us with a constant barrage of information about the world in which we live. Art need not reinforce that disillusionment; otherwise it simply repeats a message already presented. In the 21st century, therefore, art may need to consider an alternate approach to the significant socio-political perceptions of the previous century.
In keeping with Findlay’s argument, we need stillness–a return to the self pausing to reflect on the world in which we live. Art has always been a place where this can occur. However, works in response to 9/11, which he seeks, may not appear as obviously political. To traverse contemporary concerns may require the quieter concentration of the beautiful, with respect for the perspective produced within the art work. We have seen the world’s cruelty; art may need instead to show us an alternate vision so that we have something to cherish as we fight for change. Outspoken works of art propagate action, which is certainly important, but so is consideration for the desired outcome, before hand. Some political motivated paintings and sculptures manage to make us pause, but many choose language and concept over the visual that Findlay so eloquently insists is, finally, the one inherent value in a work of art. After a century of cultural and political revolutions, the “most exciting and innovative” art of these modern times may have something new (again) to propose about the personal and the political by providing us a framed space for private reflection, a place from which to position our own perspective.
I only voice this small disagreement because Findlay’s book is the most arresting argument on behalf of the pleasure of art that I have read in a long time. He does not denigrate an economic art market that allows so many artists to earn a living, nor the social market that ensures their work remains appreciated, even as he recognizes the inherent foibles of the participants in both of these. The value of art lies in the eyes of the beholder, which means beauty can only be appreciated, its economic and social value understood, if after reading this review and his book, you go look at a painting in your home, one you noticed in a gallery, or a work in your favorite museum, and look at it, and look at it, and forty minutes later have forgotten that you were wondering why, because looking at it is just that good.
Supergirl No More! Book Review: Supergirls Speak Out: Inside the Crisis of Overachieving Girls by Liz Funk
Supergirls Speak Out: Inside the Crisis of Overachieving Girls. Liz Funk. New York: A Touchstone Book, 2009. 244 pages.
Accused of being an occasional Supergirl myself, I was intrigued by Liz Funk’s Supergirls Speak Out, a book offering to reveal the Supergirl psyche through interviews and case studies. There are many books about Supergirls, perfect girls, those girls that seem to always get it right–whatever it is. We have read about the connection to eating disorders, self-hatred, anxiety, exhaustion and now Liz Funk joins the bandwagon with a how-to guide for those desiring to take it down a notch.
Let me begin then by saying that this book should under no condition be given to any young woman you think might be a Supergirl, if you do not want to encourage a storm of masochism that might well lead her into the sanatarium. The adolescent girls in this book will make any Wonder Woman you know seem relaxed. Liz Funk worked so hard that besides the usual list (an A student, editor of the school newspaper, president of a foreign cultures club, class treasurer, etc.) she had a literary agent by tenth grade. At the wise age of nineteen, she has published this book on her overachievements on the way to taking it easy. She now lives in Manhattan with a seemingly successful writing career that many college students would envy. Her overachieving self seems to have brought her many rewards...why is she discouraging others from doing the same?
Her bio claims she spent a long time wishing she were Carrie Bradshaw, to learn that “it would be more fun (and more fulfilling) to just be herself” and certainly herself seems to have succeeded at that. The five girls she follows closely, and many of the 100 women she interviewed for the book, are exemplars of adolescent perfection. The problem she explains is that these women are fulfilling goals without a sense of pleasure in their accomplishments, or life. Her book hopes to encourage these women to laugh, and take life a little more lightly. Undoubtedly these young women deserve to cut themselves some slack but, given the case studies she shares, they can afford to do so since their hard work has borne fruit.
Many Supergirls, in fact, do not see results like the ones described here, and far more difficult is explaining to those girls why they should not work as hard as they do. Despite their dieting, they are not a size 0 (since the goal is obviously to disappear). Despite their makeup, clothes and hair stylist they are not attracting hordes of admirers (since constant recognition is the requirement). Despite their grades, extra-curricular activities, charity work and part-time internships, they did not get into the school of their choice (since there are only a dozen or so acceptable colleges to attend). These girls worked hard, and for naught.
This book will only make those girls feel worse.
Not because those girls did not work hard enough but because there has never been the competition for school admittance or jobs as there is today. Every girl, and every boy, who does not have the advantage of a trust fund and a parent who will ensure that every one of their contacts is notified about the brilliance and availability of John or Jane Junior, needs to work harder, better, faster, smarter than others. The race begins earlier than a young mind can apprehend which is why parents manage and manipulate their children into the right schools, activities, therapists, friendships. Is this ideal? No! Is it what you see if you live in Liz Funk or Carrie Bradshaw’s Manhattan? Most certainly, yes.
In her chapter on feminism, Liz Funk points out, these Supergirls are on auto-pilot, meeting deadlines and goals, despite Betty Friedan’s warning years ago that living through someone else is easier than “to become complete yourself.” She explains that society needs to learn to accept women for who they are, “to not punish women for being born female, and to stop expecting them to compensate for their gender with resumés,” a tired and true statement among many that fill this book. Funk seems to believe that her trite repetition of past feminist sayings will break through the hard shell of Supergirls’ success drive so that they will begin “sleeping late and reading Cosmopolitan”–a statement which leads me to doubt she has altogether absorbed some of the underlying messages of the feminists she quotes. Betty Friedan was right in her time and because she was, the nature of the problem has subtly changed so that the equivalences Funk presents–superachiever is linked to popularity, dieting is for love and attention–are simplistic. Her work would have benefited from reflecting on these overachieving women not from the standards of the women’s rights movement several decades ago, but through the altered lens of today.
Her book concludes with advice from other Supergirls on how to relax. Planning time off is key, she explains. Doing it until it feels natural is the only way to make it normal. Think about who you are, what you want and what life you desire, she adds. This advice is good, available in most women’s monthly magazines, and unfortunately avoids addressing the complicated fear of what happens when you do pick a different life, one not scripted, not even by a Supergirl like Liz Funk.
Accused of being an occasional Supergirl myself, I was intrigued by Liz Funk’s Supergirls Speak Out, a book offering to reveal the Supergirl psyche through interviews and case studies. There are many books about Supergirls, perfect girls, those girls that seem to always get it right–whatever it is. We have read about the connection to eating disorders, self-hatred, anxiety, exhaustion and now Liz Funk joins the bandwagon with a how-to guide for those desiring to take it down a notch.
Let me begin then by saying that this book should under no condition be given to any young woman you think might be a Supergirl, if you do not want to encourage a storm of masochism that might well lead her into the sanatarium. The adolescent girls in this book will make any Wonder Woman you know seem relaxed. Liz Funk worked so hard that besides the usual list (an A student, editor of the school newspaper, president of a foreign cultures club, class treasurer, etc.) she had a literary agent by tenth grade. At the wise age of nineteen, she has published this book on her overachievements on the way to taking it easy. She now lives in Manhattan with a seemingly successful writing career that many college students would envy. Her overachieving self seems to have brought her many rewards...why is she discouraging others from doing the same?
Her bio claims she spent a long time wishing she were Carrie Bradshaw, to learn that “it would be more fun (and more fulfilling) to just be herself” and certainly herself seems to have succeeded at that. The five girls she follows closely, and many of the 100 women she interviewed for the book, are exemplars of adolescent perfection. The problem she explains is that these women are fulfilling goals without a sense of pleasure in their accomplishments, or life. Her book hopes to encourage these women to laugh, and take life a little more lightly. Undoubtedly these young women deserve to cut themselves some slack but, given the case studies she shares, they can afford to do so since their hard work has borne fruit.
Many Supergirls, in fact, do not see results like the ones described here, and far more difficult is explaining to those girls why they should not work as hard as they do. Despite their dieting, they are not a size 0 (since the goal is obviously to disappear). Despite their makeup, clothes and hair stylist they are not attracting hordes of admirers (since constant recognition is the requirement). Despite their grades, extra-curricular activities, charity work and part-time internships, they did not get into the school of their choice (since there are only a dozen or so acceptable colleges to attend). These girls worked hard, and for naught.
This book will only make those girls feel worse.
Not because those girls did not work hard enough but because there has never been the competition for school admittance or jobs as there is today. Every girl, and every boy, who does not have the advantage of a trust fund and a parent who will ensure that every one of their contacts is notified about the brilliance and availability of John or Jane Junior, needs to work harder, better, faster, smarter than others. The race begins earlier than a young mind can apprehend which is why parents manage and manipulate their children into the right schools, activities, therapists, friendships. Is this ideal? No! Is it what you see if you live in Liz Funk or Carrie Bradshaw’s Manhattan? Most certainly, yes.
In her chapter on feminism, Liz Funk points out, these Supergirls are on auto-pilot, meeting deadlines and goals, despite Betty Friedan’s warning years ago that living through someone else is easier than “to become complete yourself.” She explains that society needs to learn to accept women for who they are, “to not punish women for being born female, and to stop expecting them to compensate for their gender with resumés,” a tired and true statement among many that fill this book. Funk seems to believe that her trite repetition of past feminist sayings will break through the hard shell of Supergirls’ success drive so that they will begin “sleeping late and reading Cosmopolitan”–a statement which leads me to doubt she has altogether absorbed some of the underlying messages of the feminists she quotes. Betty Friedan was right in her time and because she was, the nature of the problem has subtly changed so that the equivalences Funk presents–superachiever is linked to popularity, dieting is for love and attention–are simplistic. Her work would have benefited from reflecting on these overachieving women not from the standards of the women’s rights movement several decades ago, but through the altered lens of today.
Her book concludes with advice from other Supergirls on how to relax. Planning time off is key, she explains. Doing it until it feels natural is the only way to make it normal. Think about who you are, what you want and what life you desire, she adds. This advice is good, available in most women’s monthly magazines, and unfortunately avoids addressing the complicated fear of what happens when you do pick a different life, one not scripted, not even by a Supergirl like Liz Funk.
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