must we?

 

must we? art, money, and a very strange little word

There is a certain irony in life.

Recently, I was thinking about money laundering. I had also shared — or perhaps deleted, or perhaps it was removed; I honestly can't remember — a joke by an artist who said he was going to work for the cartel.

Why?

Because Gustavo sells bad art online and pays better than the fine art world.

Or so the joke went.

Funny? Perhaps. But it also raises questions about money, art, value, and the sometimes peculiar relationship between them.

Then I came across this.

John Baldessari: “I Will Not Make Any More Boring Art.”

A promise worth repeating, apparently.

Baldessari's 1971 work is among his most iconic pieces. The sentence is repeated like lines written on a classroom chalkboard, reflecting his characteristic humour and his questioning of what constitutes art.

The auction listing gives it an estimated value of $40,000–$60,000.

And suddenly, I was thinking about Grade 5.

must. must. must.

We had recently got swings at school. Naturally, we were excited. So excited that we raced outside BEFORE the bell to get to them.

We all got in trouble.

My punishment was to write 100 times:

I must not leave class before the bell.

One hundred times.

I suspect this may be why I get writers' cramp.

But halfway through, something strange happened.

I started questioning the word must.

Must.

What a weird word.

I stopped to puzzle over it. Must. Must. Must.

Why must I?

Who decided I must?

And why did repeating a word over and over make it look increasingly strange?

Unfortunately, I had to hurry. The stupid bus was coming, and there would be no swings for me that day.

I didn't know it then, but that little moment of questioning would stick with me.

I wrote more about that childhood memory in a separate post called The Swings.

i will not make any more boring art

Years later, I come across an artist who turned a sentence about not making boring art into a work estimated at tens of thousands of dollars.

I wonder how many people would have considered my 100 lines a work of art.

Would it have mattered if someone had framed them? Would the price have changed if I had been a famous artist?

Probably.

But that is the curious thing about art.

Sometimes the value isn't in the materials, the hours spent working, or even the beauty of the finished piece. Sometimes it is in the idea, the context, the artist's reputation, the history behind the work, or the questions it makes us ask.

Baldessari took a familiar classroom exercise and transformed it into something that challenges our ideas about creativity, conformity, and what we call art.

And I can appreciate that.

Although I can't help wondering how many of us have been told to repeat something without ever being encouraged to question it.

money, art, and the price of an idea

This brings me back to that joke about the cartel and the artist who supposedly pays better than the fine art world.

I'm not suggesting that the joke proves anything about money laundering, or that an expensive artwork is evidence of wrongdoing. It isn't.

But the relationship between art, money, reputation, and perceived value is worth thinking about.

Who decides what art is worth?

Who decides which artists deserve recognition?

And why can one person struggle to sell an original painting while another person's written sentence becomes a highly valued work of art?

An auction estimate isn't necessarily the final selling price, either. It is an estimate of what a work might fetch.

Still, $40,000–$60,000 is a considerable sum for a sentence.

Perhaps that is part of the point.

Art doesn't always have to be pretty. It doesn't always have to make immediate sense. Sometimes it makes us laugh. Sometimes it irritates us. Sometimes it asks us to reconsider something we thought we understood.

Sometimes, apparently, it makes us think about Grade 5 and the peculiarities of the English language.

Must.

Must we?

I don't have all the answers. I'm an artist, not an auction house.

But I do know that a painting's value isn't the same thing as its price, and that an artist's worth cannot be measured by an auction estimate.

Some of us make art because we have something to say. Some of us make it because we see the world differently. Some of us make it because we can't help ourselves.

And sometimes, we make it because we have questions.

I still have plenty.

I also have paintings to sell, a bus to catch, and absolutely no intention of writing that sentence another 100 times.

Besides, I have always preferred making my own art.

Zipolita