The [Art] World is Flat...Superflat

I'm reading NY Times columnist Thomas Friedman's newest book "The World is Flat - A Brief History of the 21st Century" where Mr. Friedman  explores how technology has leveled the global competitive playing field.  Were you one of the 400,000 Americans who had their tax returns prepared in India this year?  Or have you ordered at a McDonald's drive through in Missouri where your order was taken at a call center in Colorado Springs? The point is that technology has made the world very tiny and brought opportunities to every corner of the globe that only fifteen years ago were barely imaginable.
I wondered how this "flattening" has affected the art world.  I do believe that it is largely responsible for the current mega boom in demand and resulting ever increasing prices.  Art galleries, even little ones, can have a global presence via the Internet.  Art lovers world-wide can experience art created by artists everywhere.  Artnet is the ultimate in catalog shopping for the well-to-do. 
The only hiccup in all of this is that art must been seen personally to be truly experienced fully.  The new flat world has created legions of people who experience and buy art via digital reproductions of the pieces.  The explosion of art fairs has been the art world's response to this.  View digitally and buy at the art mall. This is all great for business but in many ways has diluted art's impact.
I found a great example of what I'm talking about right at home.  My partner Bryan complained once about a recent photographic work by Thomas Demand saying that "it didn't look realistic".  Bryan had experienced the work of Demand solely through digital images and reproductions in books and concluded that a cornerstone of the work was to completely fool the eye.  When one sees Demand's work in person though (as we did recently at the MOMA) , it is immediately clear that Demand's works are sculptural fictions and are not intended to deceive. 
Friedman also wrote an article about our new flat society recently for the New York Times Magazine that was immediately followed by a profile of Japanese artist Takashi Murakami who is proposing that our world is not just flat, but superflat.
Murakami's superflat philosophy argues that the distinctions between high and low culture are meaningless and that art is art regardless of where it's found or how it's made.  To that end, Murakami makes stickers, t-shirts and posters as well as art to be sold in galleries.  To many this may be seen as a marketing strategy, but to me it makes sense for all artists to follow this path in the new flat world.  Murakami's posters, dolls, soccer balls, Monopoly games etc  are nothing short of fantastic and are priced affordably. The point is that an artist has a choice: have his or her artwork experienced on a global scale through lousy digital reproductions on the Internet or create a line of artworks at all price points that can be enjoyed as real works of art by both rich and poor in all corners of the world. 
If you don't agree, then you've also got to stop whining about how elitist and exclusionary the art world is.  Give Murakami the crown, because Takashi is the new king.  Superflat is where its at.

Comments

[Rose von Perbandt]

In an ironic twist, Friedman's book was a perfect example of how new technologies pose a particular danger to artists. The book was first released with a cover featuring the painting "I Told You So" by artist Ed Miracle. But Mr.Friedman's publishers never asked Miracle for permission to use his work, despite the fact that it is registered in the Library of Congress and the poster they got the image from contained Miracle's copyright notice. They claimed to have purchased permission for a nominal sum, from a small (2 man) publishing company (with a p.o. box for an adress)that turned out to have been producing and selling poor quality (off-color, blurred signature) prints for under $20.00. Despite being notified 2 days after the books release in April 2005-and even after we filed a lawsuit in November 2005-the publishers continued to release hundreds of thousands of copies with the infringing covers around the world-only stopping in March of 2006. So for an entire year, a bestselling book by an influential pulitzer prize winning author, was promoting the pirates in the book's credits (they listed Miracle as the artist, along with his copyright notice, but included the name and webaddress of the pirates as the source of his work) Every major print distributor was inadvertently selling pirated prints of Miracle's work (with not a cent going to the artist)It was absolutely devastating-Miracle has been a professional artist for over 40 years-his work is in museum and prestigious private collections around the world-he has spent the past 8 years preparing for the release of over 60 of his classic and newer paintings as giclees, and completing public sculpture projects on the west coast of Florida. It's outrageous that it took over a year to correct the flagrant violation of his copyrights.The agencies responsible for enforcing our nation's copyright laws refused to get involved-despite overwhelming evidence of criminal activity. We would not have been successful without our extremely expensive legal counsel. If this can happen to an established, respected artist-how can emerging artists ever hope to succeed when they must compete with cheap, pirated copies of their own work, and pirates that are allowed to traffic in stolen goods freely?