MAKING A KILLING

Documentary and satirical horror examine cost of high-end art market

Warning: The following contains spoilers.

The high-profile art market is fertile ground for intrigue and drama with its cast of gallerists, critics and big-money collectors. The lowest form of life, it seems, and certainly the least rewarded­­­, are the artists.

Two recent movies have turned their lenses on the market — the documentary “The Price of Everything” and the satirical horror “Velvet Buzzsaw.” Both have a lot to say, with the documentary being more interesting and the fiction being just a lot of fun.

However, there are themes that bind the two films together. “The Price of Everything” is a brilliant guide to the major players, and all the aforementioned heavy hitters are represented.

The title comes from collector Stefan Edlis, who smiles as he looks at the camera and says, “Lots of people know the price of everything and the value of nothing,” borrowing from Oscar Wilde’s “Lady Windermere’s Fan.”

By contrast, “Velvet Buzzsaw” follows a group of dealers and critics who completely understand the value of what they have — although in this case, they do not understand the malevolent spirit that infuses the art they are seeking to profit from, with ghastly results.

Of course, no one wants to see the real collectors, critics and gallerists murdered, but “The Price of Everything” offers some context to the satire. As in “Buzzsaw,” the artists are the heroes of the documentary, especially 81-year old Larry Poons, once a darling of the New York scene but now reduced to an afterthought — “They think I’m dead. It’s not my fault,” he says. Poons’ “dot’ paintings of the early 1960s saw him associated with the Op Art movement, but when he shifted his style, he found he was no longer marketable.

That is the key to documentary. How are the pieces marketed for maximum value? It’s a symbiotic process between galleries, critics and collectors, with the artists having little to do with it — although one notable exception is Jeff Koons, but more of that later.

Amy Cappellazzo, of Sotheby’s Auction House, is shown preparing a sale. She carefully prepares a catalogue, meticulously looking for “comps,” works of comparable style or genre that already have an established value. It’s like watching a house-flipping show on HGTV, albeit with much higher values — Gerhardt Richter points at a painting in the auction showroom, saying, “It’s not good when this is the value of a house, it’s not fair. I like it, but it’s not a house.”

In “Velvet Buzzsaw,” the artists are just commodities to be promoted, used and fought over. Jake Gyllenhaal plays the splendidly-named critic Morf Vanderwalt — “Critique is limiting and mentally draining,” he says. His reviews for “Artweb” can make or break careers, and Gyllenhaal is all affectation and caricature.

Gallerist Rhodora Haze (Rene Russo), was once in a punk band but has sold out. Now she wheels and deals, although there are moments when she seems to be sympathetic to the art.

Her counterpart in the documentary is far more sympathetic. When Cappellazzo waxes lyrical about a Gerhardt Richter painting it is clear she loves the work. Her job just happens to be maximizing the value.

In “Buzzsaw,” Rhodora’s assistant Josefina, stumbles across the “outsider” art of Vetril Dease, a neighbor who lives and dies alone, and steals his work — which he had expressly insisted be destroyed. It is when certain players seek to profit from the work that mayhem ensues and art becomes killer — although, as Rhodora says, “All art is dangerous” — but “Velvet Buzzsaw” takes that sentiment literally.

John Malkovich plays Piers, an older established artist whose star is on the wane, and Daveed Diggs plays Damrish, an up-and-coming street artist. They are merely pawns to be played as the galleries seek to one-up each other. Rival Jon Dondon wants to steal Piers from Rhodora’s Haze Gallery, while she sets her sights on the younger street artist, stealing him away from the cooperative intent on bringing art to the people.

The basic tension in these two films is the battle between the art-for-art’s-sake and art-for-finance “gangs.” The question is which one speaks for art? And what is art, anyway? When Jon Dondon steals Piers away from Haze, he visits the artist’s new studio. When Dondon sees a stack of black plastic bags in the center, he comments, “This is remarkable.” “It’s not art,” Piers says, dismissively, as he walks by the trash pile. It is a hilarious moment in the film that is full of little nuggets for the self-aware art lover.

“Buzzsaw” opens at Miami’s Art Basel show, complete with all the standard art tropes. There are abstract paintings, giant assemblages, slick pop-art sculptures. There is even an automaton, “Hoboman,” who limps around on crutches wearing a ragged suit of stars and stripes. It is a parody of heavy-handed social conscience art, especially when it recites the chorus opening lines of the Depression-era song, “Buddy, Can You Spare a Dime?” More ominously, it says, “I can’t help you,” as Morf dismisses the work as derivative — “No originality, no courage.” His review kills the work’s value, dooming it to obscurity in storage.

In “The Price of Everything,” we are treated to the king of commodification, Jeff Koons, who along with Damien Hirst, has built a career on self-promotion, creating what art historian Barbara Rose calls a “luxury brand.” Koons, appropriately, had a career as a commodities broker before entering the art world.

Known for his works that explore cultural “kitsch” (although is his work a commentary or simply kitsch itself?), Koons is shown in his studio where an army of workers faithfully reproduce old masters, upon which the artist will attach a reflective globe. He talks delightedly about a suspended steam train that reflects human breathing with its whooshing in-and-out pistons, which he could probably make for $25-$50 million.

Fittingly, Koons collaborated with another luxury brand, Louis Vuitton, on a series of handbags featuring works by old masters such as Leonardo and Van Gogh. Personally, I find Koons’ work neither original nor clever, but he, probably more than any other artist, has made commodification an art form in itself.

So the world of “Velvet Buzzsaw” has the same premise as “The Price of Everything.” Art needs to be seen and, in order to be seen, someone has to buy it, presumably. The reality is that most of the artists whose work sells for huge sums do not see that money. It is a sell-on price. The documentary mentions that some collectors, who may own multiples of a particular artist, are willing to pay a high price at auction to set a value for their collection. Art is worth as much as someone is willing to pay, but who can pay it? Art is effectively squeezed into the possession of the few. Richter says he prefer to see his work in a museum and available to all.

Pulitzer prize-winning critic Jerry Saltz acknowledges that he is unlikely to see the auctioned works again. “What I’m doing in those showrooms is saying goodbye, for the rest of my life, to every work of art I’m seeing, because all of it now is too expensive for any institution to buy.”

  Vetril Dease’s work is infused with evil and kills, yet at the end of “Velvet Buzzsaw,” we see his work is being sold by an unemployed man who, based on earlier reports, found the art abandoned. Are we to believe that this art, which is sold cheap to a young couple who see it hanging on the chain fence and simply like it, will take a toll on the man or the couple? I think not. The work is not sold for exorbitant sums, nor bought as a commodity, but simply because the couple like it. The purity of purpose — art-for-art’s-sake — may keep them safe.

Similarly, Piers, who settles in Rhodora’s beach house with instructions to simply do what makes him happy, and Damrish, who rejects the gallery and returns to the cooperative, are both spared. Damrish can walk away because he sees the value of the cooperative, the communal creativity. He is tempted off the path but returns to the way, and as such is saved. That sentence sounds very biblical, but there is an argument to be made for the “spiritual” satisfaction of the creative process.

The tendency is to ascribe hero status to the artists and to paint the marketers as villains, but that is overly simplistic. The 1973 Scull auction is credited with kicking the modern art market into gear. In a clip from that time, Robert C. Scull says, “Ownership is involvement, and with art it’s probably the most exciting kind of involvement — of course, owning a nice share of IBM is involvement, too.”

He is correct that ownership is involvement, and for someone to support an artists by actually parting with their hard-earned cash is a wonderful way to show appreciation for the work. But the sell-on is the gray area. Art Historian Barbara Rose says Robert Rauschenburg was incensed because the artists got nothing out of it, except the $600 for the original sale (the documentary implies the Port Arthur-native’s piece sold for $85,000). In a clip from the sale, Rauschenburg “playfully” pushes Scull and says, “You need to send me flowers.” Scull replies, “For what?” Rauschenburg says, “It’s a great mark up. I’ve been working my ass off for you to make that profit?” Sculls says, “You’re right. How about yours that you’re going to sell now? I’ve been working for you, too. We work for each other.”

Of course, artists want exposure for their work, but that can be a double-edged sword. Nigerian-born Njideka Akunyili Crosby, who works in Los Angeles-based, is an up-and-coming artist who is certainly marketable. Her work is stunning, and she talks about the pressure to produce either too much work to chase the money or to retain the drive to continually evolve rather than stick to a tried and true method of success. Collector Holly Peterson talks about Crosby’s piece at auction. She would like to buy it but her limit is the $300,000 reserve. The gallery is nervous, she says, “And I don’t want to be that kind of jerk…who goes so high and out-prices the artist and contributes to, potentially, a crash-and-burn situation for that artist.”

The documentary shows Crosby watching bemused as the auction on a laptop as her piece “Drown” eventually sells for $900,000. The work was originally sold it in 2012 and it was “flipped” as she says.

At the end of “Buzzsaw,” we see Piers happily creating patterns on the beach as the waves wash them away. Near the end of “The Price of Everything,” Poons walks by the Louis Vuitton store with Koons’ handbag line on display. In the next scene he walks into a gallery showing his recent work.

The contrast could not be more stark. Instead of the slick, ostentatiously glib designs, Poons’ abstracts are full of vitality and color. They trigger an emotional response among the gallerygoers, as well as from the viewer — a feeling of joy that comes from a labor of love on its own terms.

So what is the result of all this? Each film ends with an “artist” at peace with his creativity. That’s really all that matters, I suppose.

“Velvet Buzzsaw” is available on Netflix. “The Price of Everything” is available on HBO.

Story by Andy Coughlan, ISSUE editor