The art world can be a space of wonder, beauty, courage, connection and community. As an art critic and art historian, I have been swimming in these waters for the past decade. But it can also feel like a poorly written joke: formed by the 1%, populated by the shrinking middle class, pickled by anarchists and run by unpaid interns. Perhaps “art worlds” is a better way to describe the barely overlapping spheres. It can be difficult to find the point between the contradictions between clean wine and conspicuous consumption.
It is this underside, full of friction and contradiction, that has caught the attention of two Australian authors who have new books out this month: Bri Lee’s The Work and Liam Pieper’s Appreciation. Are the worlds they create for readers factual or fantasy?
Related: The Work by Bri Lee review – satirical art world romp tries to check too many boxes
The protagonist of Lee’s first novel is Lally, a young gallerist in New York who must deal with the death of one of her artists—a financial boon for her—and the public disapproval of another, who faces accusations of sexual assault. Before the storm hits, she meets Pat, who is trying to rise to the top of a prestigious Sydney auction house by securing the assets of an elderly divorcee by any means necessary.
Lee has clearly done a lot of research: she mentions Jerry Saltz and Artforum, recalls the strict phone policy of the Frick Collection’s guards, and often appears to be describing real-world figures. “Any resemblance to actual events, locations or persons… is entirely coincidental,” her opening disclaimer said. But Lee’s fictional director of Sydney Contemporary – a bald man named Harry – sounds remarkably like the art fair’s inaugural (smooth) head, Barry Keldoulis.
Yet Lee’s story also has an unmistakable touch of unreality. There is a narrative ease – something of the endless finances of Sex and the City‘s Carrie Bradshaw – making Lally an inexplicable cultural master: young, beautiful, who sells works of art to the Museum of Modern Art and runs what we think is the hottest gallery in New York. Mostly, this industry is the setting for the painfully easy romance between Lally and Pat; despite the studied details, you can never quite shake the feeling that we are consuming an idea rather than a reality.
Lally himself deals in this economy of optics. In one scene she notes that “having an Asian American with a pixie cut on the desk was a really good look for the gallery”. In another, Lally reveals that she has teamed up with two art critics – the worst kind of cultural invertebrates – to create a synthetic controversy to boost the hype around her show, with one claiming they loved it and the other wanted to burn the show down. In this case, my coupled existence as an Asian-Australian art critic puts me a little closer to the story than most, and a lot of it rings false.
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For starters, pixie cuts have had their day – and art writers wouldn’t be so grossly manipulated; Although sensitive to subtler coercions and the commercial pressures that come from publications that rely on galleries to buy advertising, the criticism operates under the myth of its own integrity.
In the endnote of his book, Pieper admits: “This book is not actually about art at all.” I’m inclined to disagree. The novel is a portrait of Oli Darling: “a queer artist from the country” (his agent explains that merely being “bisexual” doesn’t play well in press releases) whose career is built on his ability to navigate the dual positions of “a true blue Australian and a minority”. This turns out to be an alchemical combination. Oli’s life is that of the charming narcissist, who constantly plays the game of identity politics in search of superficial virtues, and whose radicalism is a public achievement rather than a personal conviction.
Pieper also seems to have borrowed from real people to make up parts of Oli. There’s a bit of Ben Quilty’s salt-of-the-earth Aussie battler-everyman; something of the cultivated celebrity of Andy Warhol; and a (self-proclaimed) pastiche of Jean-Michel Basquiat’s aesthetic rawness. But it is the artist, not the author, who is distracted: Oli is that rare example of someone who should have imposter syndrome, but don’t.
Pieper’s book focuses on Oli’s fall from grace, when he is publicly canceled for being dismissive about the Anzacs on live TV. The reality of cancellation is taking particular hold in the Australian arts scene, which blends the national pastime of tall poppy syndrome with ever-shrinking arts funding and ever-increasing competition. One only has to think of the rather theatrical image of Quilty, stylized as Christ, on the cover of Good Weekend magazine in 2019, which sparked outrage and ironically saw him crucified by many. Pieper’s main character has even less chance.
Although Pieper is less specific than Lee when it comes to the people who populate these spaces, he is more observant and playful. Oli constantly forgets the names of his interlocutors, identifying them with shorthand that underlines their usefulness to him and is recognizable to anyone who has come into contact in this world.
We meet ‘the Money’, a patron of the arts, whose unspeakable wealth has given her influence on the Australian art canon; “the Paperman”, an arts editor and critic, a recognizable gatekeeper of culture, who hates our changing world; and “the Baron, the third-generation squatter who had inherited enormous wealth and with it unlimited reserves of white guilt.” The names are ridiculous and the descriptions become outrageous, but Pieper has captured the golden umbilical cord that connects the artist to these figures and nourishes the creative life.
Related: Appreciation by Liam Pieper review – a sharp satire on stamp culture and the art world
Both The Work and Appreciation paint a recognizable portrait of the art industry: its obsession with the circulation of capital, the incremental compromises made in the pursuit of creative success, and the insignificance of the individual when faced with the force majeure of cancellation. But it is Pieper’s book that takes this messy world beyond the concept of art as property, and gives us back a little bit of the magic of art.