By one of my fifth grade students.
I’m sitting over my morning coffee, preparing myself for another day with kids making art.
It won’t be art with a capital A.
Much of Art in the real world is not much more than a plaything for the 1%.
In fact, what feels so good about the Occupy Wall Street movement is the explosion of people’s art that I haven’t experienced since the sixties. Street Art. Art that’s not for sale or a commodity. The art that I love.
Saturday’s New York Times reported on a federal inquiry into the phony deal. A painting was fraudulently sold as having been painted by the great Abstract Expressionist Robert Motherwell. Some billionaire had forked over $17 million for what he or she thought was an actual painting by Motherwell. But a chemical test of the paint uncovered that it was a fraud.
Federal authorities are investigating whether a parade of paintings and drawings, sold for years by some of New York’s most elite art dealers as the work of Modernist masters like Robert Motherwell and Jackson Pollock actually consists of expert forgeries, according to people who have been interviewed or briefed by the investigators.
Somebody separated one of the 1% from $17 million for a painting that needed a chemical test to decide it wasn’t authentic.
Should I care?
Robert Motherwell, by the way, created a series of paintings called Elegy for the Spanish Republic. In 1937 in San Francisco Motherwell heard André Malraux speak at a rally supporting democracy under attack in the Spanish Civil War. Like other artists of his generation, Motherwell was moved to create art that reflected a great moral issue. It would influence his work for many years.
Despite the flatlined economy, the art market has been roaring. In the first half of this year, total worldwide art sales hit a record of €4.3 billion ($5.8 billion), up 34 percent from 2010, according to the French Web site Artprice.com. The same site reports that 663 works jumped past the million-euro mark during that period, 200 more than in the first six months of 2008, which once held the record.
What does all this have to do with what I will do with my kids this morning?
Everything and nothing.
Fred Klonsky 
So art is not just a plaything for the 1 %. It’s an investment, and like many others, not always a sound investment. Are the sellers of the counterfeit masterpiece so different from the fakers of Enron or from Bernie Madoff? (Whoever crafted the fake probably couldn’t get health insurance as an unemployed artist, or pay of his/her student loans.)
It’s both a plaything and an investment. It’s a plaything like a fancy car. No better than a cheaper car. Just more prestigious to own. A fetish.
I love your student’s design! Before I went into special ed., I was an art ed. major (that’s what my B.A. is). Art is how I got interested in special ed. While in college, I did volunteer art therapy with developmentally disabled students, & I just loved it, so went on to sp.ed.
Student art work is incredible!!
(I know this really has nothing to do with the gist of your post today, but I just had to comment on student art.)
P.S.–I worked at a restructured school in the south suburbs–this school did not make AYP for years, mostly due to the special ed. subgroup, but one year we made Safe Harbor. However, that year the ELL subgroup did not make it–that was the year that the feds. told the states that either each state had to make a test for ELL students; otherwise, those students would have to take the ISATs (no longer permitted to use LOGORAMOS). Well, good ole ISBE did NOT have a test ready, of course, & all ILLAnnoy ELL teachers were told–& to the best of my recollection–a MONTH before ISAT administration–that their kids would have to take ISATs. We had been prepping for the tests starting in AUGUST, & these poor guys had ONLY a month (& no materials). So, of course, that subgroup totally failed.
BUT–as a result of all these non-AYP years, teachers were transferred from our school, INCLUDING our most excellent & beloved Art Teacher, who had been there for 15 years, had a special & wonderful way with the middle schoolers (in my opinion, the most difficult group to teach–any Art Teacher who couldn’t cut mustard would be having paint & clay all over the students & the room–NOT her). This teacher stayed after school almost daily with kids to help them make up work. She sponsored Art Club. She took detentions. She traveled to the other middle school to help supervise the building of scenery for the joint school play–AND she spent money out of her own pocket to purchase the materials.
As one of the students so wisely said, “What’s Art got to do with it?” (The ISAT scores.)
The teacher was sent to travel two or three elementary schools, at least one being “Art on A Cart,” whereby she had no Art Room (for those of you who don’t know this term.)
She had planned to work until she physically would be unable (she’s a grandma many times over & in her sixties–which was, we think, the reason they sent her away). Her husband would even come to help her pack up, or bring supplies, or help with the play sets.
She is retiring either this year or next year. What a loss.