Final thoughts on Babylon07

Yesterday I started to discuss Jerry Saltz's Babylon07 column. Some final thoughts...

Saltz writes that this is an unprecedented moment in the history of art markets (for lack of a better phrase). In one anecdote, he tells us about a cheering auction audience "understanding that art had become a currency to manage. Perhaps it was ever thus; it's just more thus than ever." As New Yorkers are want to do, Saltz falls into the trap of the superlative present: Now is the "-est": the biggest, the most-est, and so on.

An art history moment, please: In 1650, in the middle of the Dutch golden age, Amsterdamers were so art-buying-mad that the average home owned 10 paintings. The late 16th/early 17th-century Roman art market was particularly awash in scudi as cardinals, merchants, and various cardinal-and merchant-affiliated off-shoots of the Catholic Church competed for painters and publicity (and the related coffers-filling donations to churches with splashy new art). Heck, the excesses of the early Italian Baroque oft resulted in fights between rival gangs of painters, not to mention the churchly doctrine-vs.-art battles that were a part of the Counter Reformation.

I don't think that the average New Yorker hangs ten paintings in his home and I don't see gangs of painters outside the Shake Shack rumbling over who got a Public Art Fund commission. (An aside: Money-soaked ages are rarely a bad thing for art and artists. Look at the two examples above. Those two periods -- or, ahem, those two art markets -- gave us Hals (above, at the unlinkable Rijksmuseum), Rembrandt, Steen, Vermeer, van Ruisdael, Caravaggio, Gentileschi, and Bernini.)

Also, Saltz: "Meanwhile, do we think less of an artist whose art sells for less or doesn't sell at all?" Why is an art critic even considering this question? The whole underpinning criticdom (and not a collector) is that the critic is endowed with the imperative of ignoring this question. (Let alone the answer.)

Finally, was I the only one who thought Saltz's drive through MASSMoCA/Buchel was a little strange in a piece that has always been about New York? It's easy to read Saltz's detour as a response to the blowback after Roberta Smith's Buchel write-up. True: Every art critic on the planet -- even those of us who resisted -- have been sucked into this story, so maybe it's not a huge surprise that Saltz weighed in. But usually the firm of Saltz & Smith does an honorable job of not using its multi-platform megaphones in concert.

Related: I just found out about this today and wanted to be sure to mention it: Anaba discussed some of same territory that I've covered, and did it last week.