From Warhol to Murakami: pop art hasn't lost its soul, it's selling it

Pop art has surrendered its seriousness for dazzling mind candy. But it's not alone. Does all art now exist only for the rich?

Welcome to Murakami - Ego, 2012  View larger picture
It's all about me: detail of Takashi Murakami's six-metre balloon self-portrait. Photograph: Chika Okazumi 

The first pop artists were serious people. The late Richard Hamilton was being double-edged and sceptical when he called a painting Hommage à Chrysler Corp. Far from emptily celebrating what Andy Warhol called "all the great modern things", pop art in the 1950s and early 1960s took a quizzical, sideways look at what was still a very new world of consumer goods. Claes Oldenburg made floppy, saggy sculptures of stuff, which rendered the new look worn out. Warhol painted car crashes. These artists saw modern life in the same surreal and eerie way as the science fiction writer JG Ballard does in his stories and novels.

When, then, did pop art become mind candy, bubblegum, an uncritical adoration of bright lights and synthetic colours? Probably when money got involved, and Warhol was shot, never again to be as brave as he was in the 60s, or when Jeff Koons gave Reaganomics its art, or when Damien Hirst made his tenth million. Who knows? The moment when pop art sank from radical criticism to bland adulation is impossible to pinpoint.

So here we are in Qatar, where today's pop art guru Takashi Murakami has a new show. We're not really there, of course, but do we need to be? Murakami is pop for the digital age, a designer of images that make more sense as screensavers than as any kind of high art. In Doha, the artist who celebrated a recent British show with a giveaway cardboard sculpture exhibits a six-metre balloon self-portrait and a 100-metre work inspired by the earthquake in Japan. This follows on from a 2010 exhibition in Versailles, no less. All over the world, in settings old and new, the bright and spectacular art of Murakami is as victorious as Twitter. It is art for computers: all stimuli, no soul.

So what? So nothing, really. All art today is for sale, and the defence of art such as Murakami's is that it accepts this honestly. Instead of deluding himself about inner depths, he denies having them. The big problem for art now is its association with big money. It is so blatant that so much of global art is a thrill for the rich – as easy as fashion, yachts and cars. Everyone is angry at banker's bonuses, but where do you think they spend that free money? At art fairs.

Is art a profound cultural enterprise, or just a very expensive way for the rich to avoid thinking?


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  • bridgetcasati

    9 February 2012 4:30PM

    Stop this simplistic either/or commentary. You are privileged, given a public platform, not to indulge yourself, but to contribute beyond trivia.

  • schwitters

    9 February 2012 4:34PM

    A major Arts Council funded arts organisation informed me that art nowadays is all about "consumer choice".

    Saatchi has won, hasn't he?

  • Masistios

    9 February 2012 4:43PM

    Is art a profound cultural enterprise, or just a very expensive way for the rich to avoid thinking?

    With the help of a bit of publicity, people like Saatchi can turn the bog standard fee for works of new art by selected newsworthy new artists (around £20,000) into something between £500,000 and £1million in a three to five year timespan, while the rest of us look at 0.5% interest on savings against 5% inflation.

    It's not about avoiding thinking, it's a no-brainer. As long as the junk-bond money-addicts agree to play the game by putting their money into assets which depend solely upon confidence for their market value, that's what the entire contemporary artworld will orientate itself toward.

    Money (and the fame potential) sucks in all of the artists at the top, all the way down through the pyramid to the ambitious students at art college.

    I can't even decide if 'art' still exists to any meaningful extent (within that magnetised pyramid), much less know whether or not it is a profound cultural enterprise.

  • gaga

    9 February 2012 4:45PM

    there is just simply shed loads of money about for those who are riding the great wave of globalisation.

    for us lazy good for nothing souls there is nothing.

    and like you say, JJ, they have to spend it somewhere, and they like to buy big ego art to reflect their big egos.

    all is as it should be i guess.

  • guydenning

    9 February 2012 4:45PM

    @ JJ

    "All art today is for sale"

    Oh no it's not. I've made two paintings that I'll never part with. Whatever the offer.

  • gaga

    9 February 2012 4:50PM

    i mean, if i was rich, the last thing i would be wasting my money on is some student tat made out of cardboard.

  • HonestJoeJarvis

    9 February 2012 5:04PM

    Aren't you at the Guardian ever going to get tired of bringing every art discussion back to money, Saatchi, Damien Hirst & Tracy Emin? It's getting a little weird. Money - ok once in a while, but nobody who's really interested in art talks about these people at all.

  • zibibbo

    9 February 2012 5:06PM

    I'm not sure what the point of this article is. Vulgar rich people like to buy cynical pop art from cynical art dealers like Larry Gagosian?

    Well yes, but they also clearly buy the kind of art JJ thinks is proper art with 'soul' like the £17m Freud and £35m Bacon that Abramovich bought a few years ago.

    Also, why the fixation on Murakami in this blog and no mention of Yayoi Kusama who influenced Oldenberg and Warhol and has a huge show at the Tate? Because she actually has some credibility and doesn't fit into the argument that all pop art is cynical and shallow?

  • Dante5

    9 February 2012 5:06PM

    Yes, because for the majority of human history art has never been primarily the province of the rich and powerful as a status symbol...

    Oh, wait a second

  • Ecotosh

    9 February 2012 5:08PM

    Lazy article about lazy art.

    Apart from which, it's a massive generalisation to claim that all pop art lacks soul, it's impossible to be aware of, let alone evaluate the work and motivation of every pop artist.

  • Masistios

    9 February 2012 5:16PM

    i mean, if i was rich, the last thing i would be wasting my money on is some student tat made out of cardboard.

    They're not 'wasting' their money on cardboard tat, they're 'parking' it. As long as the maker of the cardboard tat has the potential to earn artprice.com browny points (earned for press coverage and exhibitions - usually in publicly funded establishments) the money investors put into it can be extracted again for a profit, after the appropriate passage of time (used to be 7-10 years but is getting shorter all the time). The 'artworks' can also be purchased in one currency and then sold again in a more favourable one, thus increasing the return still further.

    Cardboard tat becomes commodity but not one that anybody really wants (like oil or sugar) and not one which could be sold in any other way (if you want to find out the 'intrinsic' value of such work, then take the publicised signature away from it and try selling it at a regional auction. Even an identical but anonymous spot painting would struggle to make, what? £200 at a regional auction without the 'Damien Hirst' signature? Try the same thing with an identical but anonymous Titian - you'll find keen buyers!)

    Thus, they are baseless junk-bonds; tradable - like all junk bonds - for as long as traders silently agree among themselves to play the game. Calling them "works of art" merely validates the game by (empty) trading on the long established reputation of art and artists. The losers will be the last ones holding the bonds when confidence collapses .... and they suddenly (re)discover that the 'work of art' is, after all, just so much cardboard tat.

  • duster

    9 February 2012 5:24PM

    'Is art a profound cultural enterprise, or just a very expensive way for the rich to avoid thinking?'

    ...Surely it's both of these things?

  • gaga

    9 February 2012 5:27PM

    The losers will be the last ones holding the bonds when confidence collapses .... and they suddenly (re)discover that the 'work of art' is, after all, just so much cardboard tat.


    this was my point...

  • Parrotgone

    9 February 2012 5:28PM

    Having a moderate interest in art, though not paying enormous attention, it's taken me to about 10 minutes to arrive at the name Jeremy Deller. So, no, not all art is for sale now.

    Next!

  • Contributor
    jonathanjones

    9 February 2012 5:31PM

    I think Murakami's work takes something to an extreme. It perfectly expresses the state of most art now. It is very honest in that sense. Hence the focus on it.

  • Masistios

    9 February 2012 5:35PM

    Aren't you at the Guardian ever going to get tired of bringing every art discussion back to money, Saatchi, Damien Hirst & Tracy Emin? It's getting a little weird. Money - ok once in a while, but nobody who's really interested in art talks about these people at all.

    While 'them at the Guardian' devote acres of coverage to artists who are producing stuff which is only ever going to be destined for the art money-markets (see the number of articles covering artists represented by White Cube, Gagosian, Lisson, Saatchi et al) - they hardly ever mention the fact that it's stuff which is only ever going to be destined for the art money-markets. Not nearly often enough. In fact, I can't think of more than one or two examples in the last couple of years. Could you point me to the offending articles?

  • ollienorthern

    9 February 2012 5:37PM

    Koons has produced a lot of interesting and innovative art. Warhol produced a lot of commercial rubbish. There's always been artists willing to pander to the market, and others looking to subvert it.

    And also plenty who make a decent living pandering to public institutions and charitable foundations. At least the rich sometimes buy art because they like it; sometimes they even have quirky personal tastes. Those artists who make their reputations and their livings out of an endless series of public commissions, grant applications, prizes, and museum purchases (Rachel Whiteread, Anthony Gormley, Douglas Gordon, or Mark Wallinger) are the real enemies of excellence, with their steady commitment to filling in forms and begging, knowing growth or innovation will spell the end of their careers.

    These days Koons isn't even making much money from his art: as his projects get more ambitious they get more financially risky and he was nearly declared bankrupt a few years ago. Hardly the action of someone who's only in it for the money.

  • DrJazz

    9 February 2012 5:45PM

    All art today is for sale

    Hockney sends his iPad paintings to friends via his iPad. They're free.

  • si15

    9 February 2012 5:59PM

    Art is happening everywhere and all of the time. The rich are welcome to their vacuous art.
    So 'Does all art now exist only for the rich?' seems a pretty pointess question

  • Lollipop

    9 February 2012 6:00PM

    "If think if you don't think all art today is for sale, you are falling for someone's sales talk.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Wilson_%28artist%29

  • pomodo

    9 February 2012 6:09PM

    Tino Sehgal, Santiago Sierra, someone above mentioned Jeremy Deller -- there is a lot of work being made that is ephemeral and/or not object based or not for sale,. Also, despite the preoccupation in theses pages, the art world doesn't begin and end with Larry Gagosian or or Charles Saachi - a majority or artists work and maintain careers outside these kind of headline-grabbing, pundit-baiting (and really superficial) understandings of the the art world. Maybe JJ should do some stories on artist run culture/spaces.

    In any case, nothing wrong in and of itself with selling your work and having a self-sustaining career. But be sure the monetary value of a work of art has very little relationship to its cultural import.

    In anycase, re: art and value - and the role of institutions, here is an interesting debate:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=0qP9Cz5IkVI#!

  • zibibbo

    9 February 2012 6:14PM

    Not least of which because the debate happens at Saatchi's space.

    I get the feeling Saatchi is trying to atone for his sins these days, what with his worthy but dull art initiatives over in Chelsea and his rather desperate self-deprecating articles in the Graun recently.

  • zibibbo

    9 February 2012 6:25PM

    The Orgreave reconstruction is a trojan horse. He packages your interest in it, and 'sells' it for future funding...

    Art as a funded practice has plenty in common with art as a traded commodity.

    Dear God, urardo, Jeremy Deller is hardly a multi-millionaire like Murakami, Hirst or Emin. He lives in the same 2-bed flat on the grimy Holloway Road that he's lived in for 20 years.

    How do you expect him to make any money from his art?

  • Parrotgone

    9 February 2012 6:28PM

    That's a slightly convoluted argument. Though clearly that works in career terms.
    But it's a remove from the argument that all art is produced to be sold to the very rich.
    And the Orgreave re-enactment clearly had a cultural and social aspect, most directly for those invited to take part in it who had been involved in the original events. And you can't buy that element of it. Though, yes, if you like Deller can trade it for future commissions.

  • Chumbaniya

    9 February 2012 6:37PM

    I edited the article for you:

    "So what? So nothing, really"

    When you ask "Does art now exist only for the rich?" I find it very difficult to think of any time when it didn't. You even imply that art can't exist except for the rich when you criticise "art that makes more sense as screensavers" - i.e. art that is actually consumed by a large number of people. For some reason, unlike music, film and literature, 'proper' art seems to resist having any public appeal, so it's almost exclusively aimed at those with more money than sense and doesn't actually have any relevance to the majority of people.

  • gleebitz

    9 February 2012 6:47PM

    Agree with Jonathan

    What happens when a good idea at one point in time gets co-opted and beaten to death at a later point in time?

    Reproduceability, repetition... fine. Great idea, in 1960... but today, these things are no less discernable from any other product in a gift shop.

    it can still be art... but the problem is that shit from gift shops just ends up being litter, strewn all over the world until that's all the eye can see...

  • bridgetcasati

    9 February 2012 7:02PM

    Of course most art is for sale...hardly an original idea. Most art is commodity because the art machine is one of the last intact feudal production engines. It's archaic patronage strategies cling on to dead branches and that's why most of us are deeply dissaffected with the same old market junk - this includes JJ wasting space. To state the obvious is trivial.

  • cortazar

    9 February 2012 7:24PM

    There's a bit of confusion here I think - Jonathan's article makes perfect sense if you keep the first sentence in mind - he's specifically talking about Pop Art, not Art in the most general sense. (I hope he is, anyway).

  • Xenocleia

    9 February 2012 7:50PM

    Let's just hope the balloon pops! I really would enjoy seeing the art market bubble burst. Most artists don't benefit much/at all from the inflated prices and hype. However, the effect of the bubble is to encourage artists to produce facile, dishonest stuff to please the advertising agency types (no names required). Art has always been a commodity traded by the rich, but the Medicis didn't degrade the commodity they invested in.

  • bridgetcasati

    9 February 2012 7:54PM

    JJ's saying (above) "I think if you don't think all art today is for sale, you are falling for someone's sales talk." So he's asking us to get real. Getting real means accepting the status quo, mutations of centuries old exploitation. If we went along with that there would have never been American, French etc revolutions, no Arab Spring...because everybody would heed JJ's advice and stay real. This is why journalists have a public duty, if they water it down asking us to support the power elite, they should be called to account like everybody else and asked to get real.

  • ConBuster

    9 February 2012 8:02PM

    Look forward to much more with tuition fees at £9000 a year and the next generation of artists and influencers all basically rich kids.

    Just the way they want it, a Tory's wet dream. For everyone else, spineless, flaccid art.

  • shakinwilly

    9 February 2012 8:06PM

    So here we are in Qatar, where today's pop art ...

    How terribly exciting! Pop art in the third world!

    Though a blow up camel would be more shaggable than that thing in the photo.

  • spartarotterdam

    9 February 2012 8:10PM

    Because she actually has some credibility and doesn't fit into the argument that all pop art is cynical and shallow?

    She might not be shallow and cynical but she is effervescent froth. Good fun but no deeper than a child's paddling pool.

  • spartarotterdam

    9 February 2012 8:19PM

    The big problem for art now is its association with big money. It is so blatant that so much of global art is a thrill for the rich – as easy as fashion, yachts and cars. Everyone is angry at banker's bonuses, but where do you think they spend that free money? At art fairs.

    As an art collector, albeit a modest collector, even if I had the money I wouldn't buy what big money buys, I would still buy the art I love and not what will give me a return on my investment.

    The problem with critics like JJ and Searle and many others, as far as I can see, is that they don't love art for art's sake, they love successful art, they love establishment art, they love the incestuous metropolitan art world and all its art without any real criticism. Art that gets them invitations, art that enables them to name drop, art that allows them to mix with the art world glitterati.

    Murakami is shite, expensive shite, investable shite but still shite. I can't imagine buing any of his stuff any more that I could imagine myself buying a Take That CD.

  • perhelge

    9 February 2012 8:23PM

    Good point. 40 years old. As any true artist will tell you. (Some will) Keep on trickin…

  • bridgetcasati

    9 February 2012 8:33PM

    Some artists can not collaborate and accept total complicity anymore and kill themselves; e.g. Mike Kelley. It really is a Faustian bargain.
    What was interesting about the reports on Kelley's death was that it was the big collector's who were asked to comment (one of these guys had 15 Kelleys). What does it tell you?
    Why aren't our esteemed critics taking what they do more seriously and engage as grown ups with their readers - who are grown up.

  • Brobat

    9 February 2012 8:42PM

    Jonathan Jones

    When, then, did pop art become mind candy, bubblegum, an uncritical adoration of bright lights and synthetic colours?

    Pop art became "mind candy" when it declared itself pop-art

    It was art made with its tongue firmly stuck in its cheek

    It was art that plundered popular graphics from comics and packaging and stuck them on canvas

    It was art made which cocked a snook at the apparently pompous (art galleried) statements made by J.Jones on this very subject!

  • bridgetcasati

    9 February 2012 8:58PM

    Brobat is right. Which reminds me the latest offering by Adrian Searle who likes Shrigley at the Hayward. The article is adorned with an image of Searle lifting his shirt to show us his very own Shrigley art on his belly. is that why he likes him?
    Pompous, indulgent, self serving... Is it time the Guardian stopped having "regular" critics but adopt a similar strategy to book reviewing... Different people every week... That's how you get rid of this stench of privilege.

  • Brobat

    9 February 2012 9:01PM

    I should add that The Who was formed as

    a musical and theatrical expression of Pop Art

    more info can be seen in this video

    but the landmark was

    The Who Sell Out

    The album sleeve see band members advertising real and imagined products such as Heinz Beanz and Odorono

    they were taking pop art to a fascinating limit - using products as art objects to sell their own!

    The album has many Who classics interspersed with radio jingles and ads (which the band done as a sideline).

    Just goes to show, Jonathan Jones should not be so art-galleried in his views!
    -

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Welcome to Murakami - Ego, 2012 

Takashi Murakami's six-metre balloon self-portrait, part of the artist's latest exhibition in Qatar. Photograph: Chika Okazumi