Art of cash cows

Published on July 30, 2011 by E H · No Comments

Stu Saw sees modern art as a breeding ground for cash cows

SO MUCH of modern art appears a spent and useless force, a breeding ground for Lucian Freud cash cows.

Lucian Freud was a one trick pony with a remarkable talent for making all his subjects appear spectacularly ugly by a clever use of light and shade – chiaroscuro by any other name.

Freud dude pseudo
Talented? Definitely. His painting is lauded as towering above his peers.

However that’s not difficult when the peers are the likes of Cy Twombly and David “smokes-too-much” Hockney. There is more of a case for Francis Bacon but Freud is essentially a pseud churning out the emperor’s new portraits by the case.

F… art
The art world is simply an investment market and one whose bubble is still inflating as money seeks a safe haven.

Its objects are lent credence by the intellectually bankrupt meta-narratives of critics whose livelihoods are superglued like incubi to the artists they critique. It’s the aesthetic version of fox hunting – the unspeakable pursuing the indelible.

Who benefits?
The real question isn’t: Is Lucien Freud any good but rather why would he exist at all other than to generate profits?

“Benefits Advisor Sleeping” (pictured), for example, is an ironic trope which summarises the grotesque reversal of the suffering artist immersed in the demi-monde. Presumably she is sleeping because she’s so exhausted at advising all those welfare scroungers?

Ergo superego
Freud is no impoverished outsider, looking in; a witness among the dispossessed rabble. He is an aristocratic patrician at the court of the Sun King, paid handsomely, whose work at best parodies the glittering classes who pay him.

He’s a peddler of gewgaws, gimcrackery, baubles and bibelots to the addled. It would have been fascinating to see what his grandfather Sigmund would have made of all this nonsense.

After all, the rules-based hysteria of the art world is a form of madness.

A selection of the Freud earners…

Stu Saw is wowdewow excavator of all that is mad and sad in the world

Are you a fan of modern art or do you prefer your art raw rather that Freud? Feedback welcome