The buffoons in government who continue indefinite detentions without charge at the lawless US gulag in Guantanamo, Cuba have now added an additional layer of humiliation and subjugation – the confiscation of artwork made by inmates there with threats to destroy it. According to an article in The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/dec/08/guantanamo-bay-art-new-york-exhibition,  authorities have begun to confiscate artwork by detainees after the success of an ongoing exhibition ‘Ode to the Sea’ at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York which runs through January 26, 2018. The authorities now claim all artwork produced by detainees belongs to them and are confiscating and preventing their transfer outside the prison. Originally they announced plans to ‘incinerate’ the artwork but the Miami Herald reported http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/guantanamo/article186891663.html that it may just be ‘archived’ in unknown fashion, leading to charges of censorship, further dehumanization, and violation of human rights. Detainee attorney Wells Dixon declared “Let’s see who can destroy works of art and culture faster, ISIS or @DeptofDefense”, while the National Coalition Against Censorship stated “This baseless policy change uses art as a political football in an effort to prevent these works — and a deeper understanding of those who created them — from informing public discussion of the policies the U.S. government makes in its citizens’ names”. The art program was the prison’s most popular and until this exhibition presented no significant controversy over process or content. All the artwork on exhibit was inspected and put through a rigorous vetting and approval procedure. It is a sad comment on the drift of our democracy that Guantanamo still exists, much less that artwork produced there is now being confiscated with threats of destruction by the fascists in charge.

I was intrigued by a recent Artnet article that analyzed artist by auction sales: https://news.artnet.com/market/25-artists-account-nearly-50-percent-postwar-contemporary-auction-sales-1077026. The conclusion the pair of reporters came to was that only twenty five artists account for nearly fifty percent of all postwar and contemporary art auction sales. Of these artists more than half are American, two are women (Agnes Martin & Yayoi Kusama), one is black (Basquiat), and only nine are living. Other conclusions drawn by the article is that the auction art market is ‘winner takes all’,  practically unchanged in its makeup over the last decade, and subject to supply and demand – or how prolific an artist is and how often their work comes up for auction. Although an interesting read, I don’t believe it is a good measure of artistic success to look only at auction sales where profits are driven exclusively by collectors and capitalism. I am hoping they conduct another analysis of Contemporary art that only includes living artists and takes into account gallery and direct studio sales if possible. That would provide a more accurate picture of the actual market for living artists selling art and provide encouragement to a lot more people struggling with creativity in the present.

While skimming through the Hyperallergic site I found this gem of a link… https://hyperallergic.com/382547/study-claims-80-5-of-artists-represented-by-nycs-top-45-galleries-are-white/ It seems CUNY Guttman College professor James Case-Leal conducted a study with his class to determine racial and gender representation in the top 45 New York galleries and found 80.5% are white and 70% are male. Guerilla Girls have been bringing attention to such gross disparity since 1985 with apparently not much changing in the art scene in 30 plus years. The same study found that when including only American artists, white dominance climbs to 88.1%, while only 1.2% of Latinos are represented – even though Latinos as a national minority group number about 16% and surpassed African Americans years ago as the largest minority in the US. Just so you get an idea of the gulf in disparity, Latinos represent more than 27% of NYC’s population. BTW African-Americans were at 8.8% representation in these top galleries. I suppose Trump sympathizers will immediately scream about faults in methodology, micro statistics, and political correctness but the study is nevertheless troubling in how it demonstrates the insistence of white male privilege within the art world and among collectors. Museums rarely hold shows on women artists or contemporary minority artists. Are there really that many more talented white male artists in America or does this only expose the blatant bias of curators and museum directors? Maybe we need a companion study on the racial makeup of these groups plus gallery owners and their corresponding preference for certain artists.

According to Hyperallergic http://hyperallergic.com/324466/appropriated-images-of-black-people-spark-boycott-of-st-louis-museum/  there are protests at the St. Louis Museum from an exhibit of a white southern-born artist appropriating images of African-Americans and then defacing them with toothpaste and chocolate – which he then labels as ‘fine contemporary art’ and the museum honors with a solo show. Museum director Lisa Melandri is SHOCKED, JUST SHOCKED the black community would find Kelley Walker’s art offensive – probably because she is brain dead. What could possibly be wrong with a white southern appropriation artist defacing racially charged black imagery to sell tickets to rich white museum goers? It could only be worse if Walker had decided to use images of lynchings. Didn’t anybody on the museum staff even consider how this show might convey a message of white privilege and arrogance? Worse, at an ‘Artist Talk’ at the museum, the artist apparently could not, or would not, explain his use of black images and of racial injustice, preferring to concentrate on ‘technical aspects’ of his work. COWARD! If you’re going to steal images from others, at least know WHY YOU CHOOSE THEM! Many local artists are offended by the show and the artist’s ‘rude and defensive manner’ and are calling for a boycott of the museum. It is obvious this show is insensitive to blacks and the local community but it is also insensitive to the original artists who produced the appropriated magazine covers and photographs. How long has this artist labored in the isolation of the New York Art World to become blind to people and to stealing images? There really is no justification for such callousness. It is not only just but necessary to boycott ANY appropriation artist at any museum or gallery show, especially if the theft offends the disadvantaged to benefit the powerful. Call this appropriation a ‘visual gentrification’ – and I hope a protest in the Midwest is just the start of opposition to this social opportunism.

Besides appropriation art, there is no topic that enrages me more than modern art factories. Isn’t it disgusting what capitalist artists will do for profit? I guess it’s to be expected that American Corporate art CEOs will protect their bottom line. I worked for a CEO who pretended to admire Cesar Chavez while busting any attempts to unionize – the same hypocrisy that apparently drives Jeff Koons in this post from ArtFcity… http://artfcity.com/2016/07/18/jeff-koons-lays-off-workers-amidst-reports-of-impropriety/ .  Long past seem to be the days of Picasso Communism and famous artists championing social justice. In my view, authentic artists just want solitude to concentrate and produce personal pieces but capitalist artists count on slave low wage labor to create and produce theirs. I hope the demise of art factories (and capitalist artist’s dependence on them) is as certain as gentrification following artist colonies. BTW let’s put to rest the myth that these factories have always existed in the art world. Artist “workshops” were originally used to train and educate artists by copying or completing their master’s works, have been discredited since Rubens and Rembrandt, and have only served to obscure and confuse the talent and reputation of the artists who utilize them in order to serve the art market. The latest entry in art factories, thanks to desperate artists in China, is ‘My DaVinci’ check out this link: http://www.mydavinci.com/artistlist.html. It feels like you may as well use an app to create art for all the creativity that comes from captivity… or exploitation. At least such sites are obvious in their commercialism, unlike ‘factories’ like Koons’ who use the same techniques to con the art world and its gullible collectors. Are such things as ‘My DaVinci’ a natural product of globalization? Western CEO’s exploiting Asian artists to produce and market classic kitch? Is this the new economic colonization? It’s all rather depressing to consider.