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Marat Guelman: Thank you very much for coming. I am not a professor; this is not a lecture, but rather a conversation for the sake of understanding. Indeed, a misunderstanding has been growing between the professional art community and the public lately—let's call it that. The misunderstanding is very simple: do criteria exist by which the professional community evaluates art and decides that this is good art and that is bad? And if such criteria do not exist, then what? If there is no God, everything is permitted. If there are no criteria, what determines it then—taste or something else?
If you pose this question to my colleagues, they will honestly tell you that there are no criteria. They will say that evaluation happens only at the exact moment you look at a work of art, something inside you starts working, and you say: "This is good, or this is bad." And in principle, they would be right. At the same time, millions of people, professionals, travel to the Venice Biennale, and they evaluate art more or less identically, saying: "This is good, this is bad." Let's say in 90% of cases, they evaluate it the same way. This means criteria do exist after all; they are just not verbalized.
But the most critical part, of course, is that they are not universal. That is, art is a sphere where the exception is the rule. If you say: "We have a certain rule that always applies, except in these three cases where it doesn't work," well, art is a sphere where the exception is the rule. This means we can say that the criteria that do exist work in, say, 70% of cases. But in reality, that is enough for a person to begin their journey, to start collecting.
My challenging path as a Russian gallerist was tied to constant communication with deeply insecure people, because a collector is the most insecure buyer of all. He always asks: "Why is this valuable? Why does it cost this much? Am I being swindled?"—and that entire complex of questions. It is also worth noting that this applies specifically to a Russian collector. In Russia, the tradition of collecting was severed during the Soviet period, so it wasn't nurtured within families. We always had to deal with the nouveaux riches, to whom everything had to be explained. And so it happened that, unlike my numerous international colleagues, I was forced to constantly talk about this topic: why this is art, why this is good art, why that is bad art, and so on. And I actually realized a few simple things for myself that I want to share today. They are simple, yet non-obvious. You could say that a kind of secret knowledge will be spoken here today.
My perspective, my understanding of this system of criteria, was my working tool as a gallerist. I didn't particularly popularize it because, in a way, it isn't very academic. I gained confidence during COVID, when I spent two years studying digital art and digital artists. Before that, I used to treat it quite snobbishly, just like all my colleagues in the art world, because there are no physical objects, no fetishes, no market, and nothing gets sold. If it doesn't sell, it means there is no expertise. If there is no expertise, it means it's just a bunch of pictures, not art.
During those two years of lockdown, I immersed myself and realized there is a lot of highly fascinating material there. One of the facts I discovered is that digital artists are usually people without an academic art education. They came from other fields; a vast number of them are tech experts. They have seen a lot, they look at a lot, and they are generally very fast compared to us—not in museums or books, but in images. They effectively know all of art history, but for them, it has lost its temporality—meaning its connection to the specific era when it was created. An icon, the Russian Avant-Garde, the Renaissance—all of this coexists in the space of digital art, but it is entirely detached. And it turns out that for these digital artists, art is not a historical narrative, as it is for us, but a kind of cultural landscape where everything exists all at once. And then I understood how it all came to be, because I identified a breaking point for myself—a "before and after"—conventionally speaking, the era before the French Revolution and the era after the French Revolution, functioning as two absolutely distinct processes of criteria formation.
I realize this introduction might seem vague as to where it leads, but my core belief was that all the criteria by which we evaluate art today were, prior to the French Revolution, the criteria of the art patron. We assume that a given criterion has always existed everywhere and came out of nowhere, but it actually emerged at a very specific point in time.
The second highly vital point is that until the mid-15th century, the criteria that existed did not contradict one another; they accumulated, meaning they were added on top of each other. This was due to the fact that every new generation of artists declared themselves as followers. They were either people of progress or people of a golden age. The people of progress said that the artists who came before them were great, but that they would go further. "We are progress, development." And the people of the golden age said: "They achieved perfection, and we hope to approximate how it used to be." But both groups always conceptualized themselves as followers, pupils, and so on.
During the French Revolution, a monumental event occurred: the French Academy of Fine Arts was established. And there were two facts that influenced everything. The first fact was that the only art entering the market was art that had cleared a certain expertise by the Academy itself. For the first time in art history, art began to be evaluated by professionals, not by patrons—whether the church, secular patrons, or the bourgeoisie—but by people of art. This moment marks the beginning of the new history of art; the term "art for art's sake" emerged.
The second fact was that individuals became members of the Academy for life. What happened? In 1617, it was a progressive, young academy that gave a catalyst to the entire development of art. When professionals evaluate, they naturally know better. But 40 years later, those exact same people are old conservatives who let no one in. And they spawned what everyone knows as the Salon des Refusés (Salon of the Refused). The significance of the Salon des Refusés for art history lies not so much in the fact that some new art, new perspectives, or sketch-like quality emerged, but in the fact that for the first time in human history, artists said that the creators who came before them were essentially garbage, archaic, old-hat, and shouldn't be looked at. "We have arrived with brand-new criteria in art, with a new art that rejects the previous one." This moment splits the entire narrative, from my perspective, into two halves. I will only note here once more: we are currently talking not about the history of art, but about the history of the perception of art. This is a parallel lifecycle of relations between Painters and Patrons—the artist and the client.
Therefore, I will first recount the clear narrative that took place up until the 15th century, and together we will recall those criteria that seem obvious to us today. For example, we all evaluate craftsmanship in a work of art—meaning the labor-intensiveness with which it was executed. This labor-intensiveness, the embedded labor, how many days an artist spent making a piece—this came from Egypt. That is a slave-owning system. "Ten slaves wove this carpet for two months. Oh, what a fine carpet!" This labor-intensiveness was a paramount criterion of embedded labor because it was a society that subsisted on slave labor. And I must say, I discovered this exact criterion in digital art: digital artists boast to one another that a given work took two days to render, meaning it required a powerful computer, and so on. So labor-intensiveness as a criterion was born back then and continued to exist.
Next, the earliest art markets were markets of plundered goods. Greek soldiers are given a captured city to sack for a day. What do they seize? They enter the homes of wealthy people and grab jewelry, expensive items, things that can be carried away on a horse and sold later. These markets of plundered goods were the very first art markets. And there, the material—what it was made of—was always vital. It was a fetish: not just the image, but the medium—gold, silver, and so forth. And this criterion still exists on the market today. Many artists love Art Basel. Previously, Art Basel was effectively synchronized with the Venice Biennale. You visited the Biennale and then traveled to the art fair at Art Basel. At the Venice Biennale, oil on canvas accounts for perhaps 10% of the art; at Art Basel, it accounts for 80%. The market says: "We want a medium that is durable, so that we know it won't decay for 500 years." What it is made of—that is a criterion of quality.
Moving further, we look at Greece again—philosophy, idealism. The primary patron of art was the architect. He commissioned art to decorate spaces. And that is where the notion emerged: great art must be harmonious, there must be symmetry, there must be composition. All this harmony, the aspiration toward ideals. Because Greek sculpture was never a literal sculpture of a specific individual. It was always an attempt to forge an ideal female body, a male body, a sphere, and so on.
Next comes Rome. In Rome, the art market was split into two halves: original Greek sculptures and Roman copies. Roman copies were far inferior and far cheaper. Time passed. Today, copies can be made one-to-one with the originals, yet to this day, this fetish of originality remains highly critical for the market: an original item commands a premium, whereas a copy costs as much as it takes to manufacture it.
Then comes the Church. In the 10th century, we see the symphony of the artist and the Church—mysticism. We want a person to step into a church and experience something extraordinary, something divine. Caravaggio's works were rejected: "There is no divine spark." Consequently, all of our evaluation criteria today stating that a work must contain some metaphysics, that it shouldn't be easily decoded, that it shouldn't be fully clear—all of this is the legacy of the era when the primary patron of art was the Church.
What did the aristocracy want? The aristocracy wanted to immortalize themselves—their personas, their wives, their wealth. Consequently, art became figurative. It had to depict things with high resemblance, to produce a portrait of a wife, a landscape of an estate. This mimetic criterion—"looks lifelike"—is the clear outcome of the aristocracy utilizing artists to document their lineage: "This is my grandfather, this is my great-grandfather, and this is my great-great-grandfather, and look how similar they look; there is the exact same dimple on your cheek and his." The artist was a person who, in a certain sense, generated the documentation of life.
In the 6th and 7th centuries, works began to be signed for the first time. This is the second mega-criterion among the three central fetishes of the market. One is uniqueness, which was born in Rome; the second is authorship. Prior to that, artists were known by name, but these specific stylistic traits were viewed rather as liabilities than virtues. In the 7th century, they began signing works, and consequently, the works of certain artists became more sought after, starting to appreciate on the market. The entire market of brands today began with this mega-criterion.
When the shift occurred, and a work of art began to be evaluated not only by what was depicted but also by its recognizable style, artist guilds began to form. In an economic sense, it became advantageous for a highly successful artist to hire other, younger, or less successful artists to reproduce what he did. And then—talent and speed. Imagine a workshop: ten artists sit there, all painting roughly the same picture in the exact same style. What is the difference between them? Speed. One takes a week to make the same picture, while another takes a day. A talented artist was an artist who executed this work faster within the guild. Consequently, that emphasis on speed remained from those times. We highly appreciate it when Picasso generates an image with a single stroke. That was present too.
Then came the bourgeoisie: "Make it look beautiful for us." This coincided with monumental progress in the preservation of paints. Aesthetics, beauty—"make it beautiful"—that belongs to the bourgeoisie. What else? There is, naturally, what I mentioned regarding the aristocracy, but there is also a non-aristocratic sphere—popular prints, narrative—meaning what can or cannot be depicted. There is a fork in the road: academic painting, where the criterion is a correctly selected subject matter, and folk art, which replaces books and the Bible for an illiterate person. Summing all these up, these criteria can be termed traditional, classical, pre-French-Revolutionary criteria. And they can perfectly coexist simultaneously within a single work, accumulating over time. They gave rise to a concept that is frequently criticized, but which exists on the market—quality. There is a work of art, and then there is its quality. A contemporary artist thinks entirely differently, but a contemporary buyer evaluates quality through this exact set of criteria.
What happened next? The French Revolution. Prior to that, the rotation of artistic generations took about half a century. Meaning, as long as a person lives, that was roughly the lifespan of an artistic paradigm shift. We look at France: the first half of the 15th century, the second half of the 16th century. What did this imply? It implied that by the time this artist's art became cultural heritage, the artist himself was already, let's call it, incapacitated. Either he was already dead, or he was very old. This meant that the museum institution did not influence the active artistic process. A museum curator had no impact on the artistic process because when he extracted this painting from somewhere, wiped off the dust, and said: "This is brilliant, and this belongs in a museum," the artist could no longer use that success to buy a larger studio, hire more apprentices, and manufacture more works.
But when, starting from the Salon des Refusés, artists began declaring the new not because an older generation had passed away, but because a certain ideological necessity had arrived, this timeframe began to compress, triggering highly fascinating processes. Artists announced that they were the new wave, that all the old ways must be discarded. Twenty years later, the "newest" artists emerged and said: "The ones who claimed to be new are already dry dust, and their system of criteria is already obsolete. We have arrived now to offer you the newest system of criteria." Ten years later, the "super-new" arrived and said the exact same thing about the newest ones.
And thus, one single criterion began to displace all the others. This single criterion is novelty. The era of Modernism was defined by this cult of the new becoming a kind of weapon. It accelerated the cultural and artistic process. And along the way, it fractured the system of criteria, because a collector or a buyer observes this entire process—the super-new appear, and he is already thinking: "Listen, in five years, they will become old too." The system of criteria, by canceling the previous one, declaring the next, and doing this multiple times, caused the criteria framework itself to fall apart. Yet the market, since large sums of capital are involved, demands some anchor so that a person with money feels confident on this market, believing they are doing something correctly.
In parallel, it must be said that due to the compression of this timeframe, the first heroes of the market emerged—artists who were highly capable and active while already being recognized as cultural heritage. Chagall, Picasso, Manet, Renoir, Dalí—they were all the pioneers of this. Why? Because they were the first who, while already embedded in art history, were completely active and working. Matisse had a waiting list of up to 200 people. Advances had already been collected. But this system, naturally, relied on the fetish of the name, while demanding a replacement for the system of criteria. And that ushered in the era of contextuality—conventionally speaking, the era of the critic. A figure emerged who could position a work of art within a certain context.
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The first context is clear—it is the history of art. Why do people like the “Black Square”? Nobody can look at it and say: "Oh, what a beautiful work, or how spiritual, mystical, or how harmonious." All the existing systems of criteria seem inapplicable. What exists is a justification of the significance of this work. This historical context of art history resembled any other historical context. For example, a queue to touch a shroud. It isn't because this dirty piece of cloth is beautiful or expensive. No, it’s because there is a specific narrative behind it. That is the first context.
The second context was introduced by the Marxists. The Marxists began describing and placing works of art within a social context. "This artist comes from a Parisian working-class suburb, therefore in his works we see x, y, and z," or "Leo Tolstoy is the mirror of the Russian Revolution." The Marxists re-mapped the territory and evaluated art from the standpoint of its social significance. The problem, of course, was that art veered in a different direction, and the initiative was seized by the Freudians. There was a moment when the introductory text of any abstract painting catalog resembled a decoding of dreams. "This element combined with that signifies x; this combined with that signifies y." This was an endless context. Initially, it appeared to be a perfectly viable scenario because it described a work of art through the uniqueness of the artist's inner world—his conscious and subconscious, what the artist intended to say.
But because this was such an infinite topic, and a buyer conversely wants things narrowed down—meaning give them a concrete list—the authority was rapidly seized by the Structuralists and Post-Structuralists. They argued that the language of art is a language just like any other, and it must be studied. "You need to sit at the Sorbonne for five years, and then you can come and we’ll talk." This suited the market because a small circle of individuals emerged who evaluated and dictated what was good and what was bad. But it did not suit the artists. Artists do not like sitting in libraries. And it so happened that this interpreter relegated the artist to the position of a mere laborer, as if to say: "You made your work of art, now step aside, I will explain what you painted." The artist says: "What if I want to explain it too?" And he is told: "That doesn't matter; you have already done your job, and now I, having sat at the Sorbonne for five years, will tell the whole world—and you included—what it is you actually made." There was even a concept that a work of art is a generator of interpretations, and that the artist's interpretation is absolutely equal to any other interpretation, carrying no special weight. This system of criteria support for art grew out of this modern, modernist art.
The next stage was that artists began to revolt. The first rebels were the Simulationists: Jeff Koons, Allan McCollum, residing primarily in America, but not exclusively. And in a certain sense, Damien Hirst belongs there too. Artists began creating works that defy interpretation, or rather, they turned the interpreter into an idiot. I mean, how do you interpret that silver rabbit by Jeff Koons? A children's toy is enlarged, executed in a high-quality medium, and that's it. Nothing is added; there is no hidden meaning. Artists were asserting their independence in this manner. This is a crucial moment, because an inherent dislike exists between the Simulationists and the critics. It began as early as Andy Warhol. This mutual dislike continues, but many fail to comprehend the underlying reason. The reason is a struggle for power. Starting somewhere around the seventies and eighties, artists began wresting power away from the interpreters, from the creators of context.
Today, this system of contexts has led to the most widely accepted principle being the anthropological one. What does that mean? Let's imagine I own a museum of insects, and I have massive display cases. Here I have grasshoppers, here butterflies, here beetles. And then a brand-new insect appears. I rejoice at this; it is new. First, I attempt to categorize it: is it a beetle, a butterfly, or a dragonfly? If it’s none of the above, then it isn't art. Next, if I successfully identify what it relates to, I approach the display case and ask: "Do I already possess the exact same one?" If I already have the exact same one, then it isn't interesting. Consequently, that is how the system of remapping the art world operates today. In a way, it has truly come to resemble a scientific, anthropological principle.
This became possible precisely due to the network, because previously, a rigid dictatorship of the book held sway. In art history, conventionally speaking in terms of time and space, there was room for 50 people. Why? Any compiler of a book titled “The History of Art” roughly understands the physical volume of the book. In the year 2000, they published a book titled “200 Great Artists.” A museum faces an infrastructural limitation—the physical building; a book faces a limitation—its volume. And it turns out that, whether they want to or not, everyone who shapes cultural heritage shapes it within this format. What Ilya Kabakov said: "Not everyone will be taken into the future." That is the mindset of yesterday, when space is scarce. Look at 20th-century Russian art: if you didn't fit into that slot, no space was left for you. A museum, conventionally speaking, has no walls left for you, meaning you are left behind.
Conversely, the new, network-driven situation presupposes an endless branching of regional contexts first and foremost. Previously, to enter this space where they would search for a display case for your specific "beetle," you still had to break through. It required a specific place, art history, 3,000 people, a consensus that dictated what exists and what doesn't. Today, this becomes far simpler because a network system of information distribution exists. We can execute all of this rapidly. The very concept of a scarcity of space vanishes. Along with it, perhaps, the art market as it is currently structured will vanish entirely. This is a vital milestone.
Everything we discussed—this system of criteria—has reassembled itself in the digital era, yet it has reassembled itself while losing its temporality. When the modernist era followed one phase after another, what did it lead to? I travel to Riga, I walk into a local museum, I don't know the names of the artists, but I know with relative precision when a given work was executed because art belonged to time. Today, art has lost this temporality. You cannot determine when it was made unless it is directly bound to specific technologies. Having lost this temporality—meaning its temporal qualities—the sphere of art may well lose everything, because the history of art was constructed precisely as a system of consecutive volumes, one after another.
There is a school of thought that the art market in the form it currently exists simply won't be around in 5 to 10 years. Everything concerning the past will become antiquities. It will be treated not so much as a work of art of a certain quality, but rather as shrouds. Like an antique spoon or an antique painting—as a certain past, our past. We love our past; we preserve our past. As for new art, by losing its temporality, by losing its historicity, it will be organized in some alternative manner. And that is likely the most fascinating aspect for people of art—to attempt to guess it, understand it, foresee it, and perhaps create it.
But for collectors, murky times are ahead, because if there is no system that limits the volume of artists admissible into art history, it remains unclear how pricing is formed on the cultural heritage market. Prior to this, it was always formed based on the principle of scarcity—meaning these are items of which there must inherently be few. And therefore, they cost a lot. That is my message. I wanted an understanding to emerge as to where it all came from, why people say it should be this way or that way. My claim to art: always attempt to comprehend from which patron a given requirement originated. Thank you.
(Applause)
Marat Guelman: Yes, I even finished a bit early, by 10 minutes. Questions first, or perhaps people will have questions about the website first? Yes. Well, fundamentally, it's clear that it represents a long career. And this website is the fifth version of my site. I wanted to draw everyone's attention to the fact that right now, of course, everyone focuses on social networks; they don't browse websites. A website acts rather as a repository, but here I have embedded a minor sensation. And before Denis explains the structure, I will recount this sensation, because I feel it is highly vital. Fundamentally, I initiated our evening tonight precisely to boast.
I was born in Moldova. I recently reclaimed my Moldovan citizenship. I interact extensively with the president. The central political theme in Moldova right now is integration into the European Union—meaning the country is moving directly toward signing the documents. Concurrently, society is debating why we are needed, what we can offer, why we are interesting, how we will integrate, whether we are worthy of it, and whether we possess anything—art, for instance, of a European caliber.
And I faced this situation: multiple collectors requested that I locate a work by an artist named Moldovan, an American artist. In the process of this search via the Jewish Museum in New York, I suddenly discovered that 100 years ago—well, more than that now—55 Jewish immigrants from Moldova (Moldova was within the Pale of Settlement), 55 artists played a pivotal role in global art, and nobody paid attention to it. Everyone knows that Dina Vierny was born in Chisinau, and that's it. But I unearthed these 55 biographies. This is the beginning of a process. I want to mobilize the students of our faculty to expand this situation. In short, there is a section on my website featuring these 55 artists. Moldova is already a part of Europe. And I am very proud. Such a simple concept. I think in two years, when Moldova joins the European Union, an album can be produced, for example.
Consequently, if there are students among us here who are currently seeking a topic for their term papers, a place to apply their efforts, these 55 files are not fully filled out. Only the first step has been executed, so to speak. And it is a literal Klondike—an example of how context is manufactured. In art, a collector always thinks conceptually; he collects something and thereby manufactures a context. This is how the cultural heritage market differs from other art markets—from the commercial salon market, where a person simply decorates walls, or from the market of artifacts, where a person simply collects mementos of their travels. I am attempting to manufacture this context, to resurrect these names. And they are here; I am displaying them now. See, in some places, there aren't even photographs yet. That is the work. And now Denis will say a few words about the website as a whole. Thank you. Subsequently, I will return to the microphone and respond.
Denis: Good evening. I don't fully understand what can be said about a website. It’s a website; it should speak for itself. It contains the primary sections: Chronicle, where everything that is going to transpire or is happening now is published—all exhibitions, articles, and so on. Marat's Curatorial Activity is highlighted separately, featuring links to all exhibitions and events, current and upcoming. Separately, there is a section for Marat's Digital Creativity. At the moment, it houses two projects. You might have heard of them already. One is “Explosions,” our nuclear explosions, a favorite of everyone. And also the project—one second—titled “The Bad, Good Jew.” These are also Marat’s works with neural networks, artistic pieces. We are awaiting more projects on this theme. A separate section houses Marat's Articles. For now, it contains a bloc of five articles on art. I hope there will be more.
Marat Guelman: There will be.
Denis: Yes, the website is ready, but it acts rather as a backbone, a skeleton upon which flesh can now be layered indefinitely. Also, here in the Media section are Marat's interviews, various articles on events, activities, and so forth. This is the media response to the media coverage of all events. Marat’s Public and Political Activity is highlighted separately. This contains the Anti-War Committee, the Free Russia Forum, and his accolades from the Russian government—meaning his foreign agent status, wanted list status, and terrorist-extremist designation. Various public statements will be published here. The latest is an open letter to the President of the Venice Biennale, which Marat signed. And, of course, highlighted separately is the section “Moldova — Radicants.”
Marat Guelman: In three languages.
Denis: Yes, in three languages. The entire website is currently in Russian and English. The primary language is English. But the Moldova section is in three languages. We will certainly appreciate assistance because our Moldovan is not very strong. If there are native speakers who can audit our texts, we will be glad for the help. Fundamentally, if you believe you possess information that belongs on the website, we have a contact form.
Marat Guelman: There is a form, yes? Yes, of course, so that we can receive information, because the website was forged within a very brief timeframe—just over a month—and we simply couldn't physically implement everything we wanted, all the materials we possess and will acquire. I exhibited Moldovan art at Basel for the very first time this year. I wanted the Moldovan section to be ready, which is why I rushed the guys. I am seeing it for the first time myself. If any questions have formed, I am ready to respond. If not, let's go drink. I see a hand over there. Stand up.
Audience Member 1: I have a question as an artist with an academic art education. I would love to know why contemporary art arrived at actionism, for instance. I know you interact with these artists, you curate them, and I’m interested in your perspective, your explanation.
Marat Guelman: Well, on the whole, actionism has several sources. The first source is the Dadaists, who specifically wanted to avoid ending up in a museum. They were against commercialization. An artist creates, then an object appears, and it can be sold. The Dadaists protested against commercialization, against their works being collectible, against them possessing a physical form. The museum grew clever enough to learn to collect even that. First of all, photographs, documentation, and videos are collected. Those same Dadaists had an exhibition at the Pompidou—meaning destroyed works were assembled.
The ultimate symbol of the market's readiness for actionism is when Banksy, during an auction at the exact moment his work was purchased, shredded it. A shredding mechanism had been embedded inside the frame, which shredded the work. The shredded work instantly quadrupled in value. In this manner, the market said: "Okay, artists, we are ready to museum-ify this desire of yours too."
The second source of actionism is, naturally, the poets. In fact, one of the very first poet-actionists was Vito Acconci. He was an American poet who simply perceived that the artistic space is alive. Initially, he merely read his poems at the openings of his friends' exhibitions and discovered that universities were uninterested in poetry, whereas the exhibition space is highly democratic. And he became an actionist; he began staging actions.
And third, of course, is the artist's desire to speak directly to the viewer, bypassing institutions. This applies to the street artist who paints on a wall, who says: "I don't require a museum or a gallery for the viewer to see me," and to the actionist who wants to step outside the boundaries, outside the frame of the artistic space, to be heard.
This art possesses its own system of criteria that determines successful from unsuccessful, good from bad. There too, just as in easel art, there is more bad than good. It is fascinating, and I genuinely like it because the artist wants to overcome mistrust; he wants to be believed. To achieve this—I don't know—a writer uses profanity, an artist cuts himself. He wants you to stop and relate to what he does as a serious statement. Thank you.
Denis: Are there any further questions? Yes. I will try to pass the microphone to you.
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Audience Member 2: Marat, you mentioned that scarcity for an artist is no longer a criterion for why people begin purchasing art, correct? What is this tied to, in your view? Do you believe the market landscape has altered? To me, it looks like an expansion of markets—meaning with the emergence of the digital era. We see NFTs, we see collectors, we see works created in multiple variations. Yet, fundamentally, scarcity has been preserved. Why do you believe that this phenomenon no longer exists on the market?
Marat Guelman: Look at NFTs—CryptoPunks are a series of 15,000 works, right? An artist who works with traditional mediums is constantly selecting, whereas a digital artist runs through permutations. Conventionally speaking, the artist says: female or male, right or left, green or red. And a work of art is generated. Generative art says: "Both green, and red, and blue—it ran through all the options." Meaning, fundamentally, art itself today resists the principle of the unique.
Second, there is artificial intelligence. The entire market used to be structured on the distinction between the unique and the editioned. Artificial intelligence introduces a third type of variation. It is essentially an edition, but from the collector's standpoint, it is unique.
But the main point I wanted to make is that history has ceased to be crowded; our information space has become infinite through social networks. Conventionally speaking, if we look at people who lived 300 years ago, we know about the lives of only those who became great writers, great scientists, or great politicians, while the bulk of humanity vanished into oblivion. It is as though they never existed, because history functioned like a Procrustean bed—only a specific volume fits, and that's it. Today, through the internet, anyone can recount their narrative, preserve it, and restore for centuries—as long as civilization is alive—the memory of their parents.
History has ceased to be crowded; it is infinite today. And none of us knows—let's say in 100 years, a researcher will appear who will be interested precisely in people like us, who seem to dissolve today, and he will unearth us. Therefore, I mean that the market currently constructed on the scarcity of supply of cultural heritage may be dismantled in this form. Perhaps an alternative market will emerge—for instance, a voluntary economy, where an artist creates works and instead of one person purchasing it for a massive sum, 10,000 people buy it for a small fee. That is what I meant.
Audience Member 2: So it turns out that the scarcity of works is still preserved, but rather the number of artists who are admissible—those who are recognized—has altered.
Marat Guelman: Scarcity as a factor has ceased to operate. For instance, I used to own a gallery, a physical venue. It hosted, say, 12 exhibitions a year. Out of those twelve exhibitions, eight were dedicated to artists with whom I worked continuously—meaning I had to give each one a solo exhibition at least once every two years. Consequently, I had four slots left for new artists per year. I received 2,000 CV files from different artists who wanted to exhibit. I told them: "I only have four slots, and there are 2,000 of you." I acted as a proxy for this history of art, saying: "Space is scarce, not everyone will be taken into the future." And this insane competition began. Why it is necessary is a separate question, but on the whole, this model is the model of yesterday's art history.
The model of today's art history is different. We create websites. I can generate 50 virtual rooms instead of one. This crowdedness, this limitation, has vanished. Today we can write the history of everyone. For example, let's say we resolved to write the history of Russian relocants in Montenegro. We can create a situation where we don't have to say: "No, we will only take 10 people, and there are 10,000 of you." We can create a setup where all 10,000 are represented. This is novel; it fundamentally shatters the entire system. Perhaps not everyone has comprehended this yet. Everything that was previously constructed on the scarcity of space—this "not everyone will be taken into the future"—is collapsing. In the art world, it is also collapsing because fetishes are shattering. For instance, the fetish of authorship. Now it's about collaboration. Collaboration is not merely two artists working together, like Komar and Melamid. It is a collaboration of individuals from different professions: you handle the tech, I handle the marketing, and someone else handles the creative input. Collective authors were an absolute non-starter for yesterday's world; today it is the norm. I am simply getting at the fact that everything is changing, we must observe everything with open eyes, and subject everything to critical scrutiny—whether it will endure or recede into the past. We are living in extraordinary times of the new, the premonition of the new. And one of these premonitions, from my perspective, is the disappearance of these walls. Thank you.
Audience Member 3: Hello. Could you state how you evaluate what constitutes a masterpiece for yourself? And over the past several years, have you looked at a contemporary artist and thought to yourself: "This is a masterpiece"? What are the criteria for a masterpiece in contemporary art today?
Marat Guelman: What do you mean, has it happened? I engage in this continuously. Granted, times are different now, but 10 years ago, I could say that out of the twenty globally famous Russian artists, 15 held their very first exhibition at my gallery. That is the primary task—to see a masterpiece in the future.
In fact, at the moment when the generation turnover compressed in time—say, dropped to 10 years—the contemporary art market emerged. Prior to that, the pivotal figure on the market was the connoisseur of the past. A person arrives and says: "Oh, this is an authentic Rembrandt, and that is a pupil’s work." He was the king, the one who could evaluate the past. Since the sixties, conversely, it’s the connoisseur of the future. Leo Castelli was the pioneer of this. He discovered Pop Art, took completely unknown individuals, and transformed them into massive stars—and he accomplished this within five years. Consequently, this model is embedded in everyone's mind now, and anyone operating in art as a producer—this is their primary functionality: to seek out masterpieces. Sometimes it means seeking out not ready-made masterpieces, but individuals capable of creating masterpieces. Because occasionally no ready-made masterpieces exist, but you perceive the potential within a person; they simply need assistance, they need to be transposed into a certain context, provided with certain opportunities, and then they will forge a masterpiece.
As for the criteria, I attempted to explain the environment today. Within that, of course, there are things we haven't touched upon—talent, for instance; we didn't touch upon the qualities you attempt to perceive within an artist. A masterpiece, if we speak of a definition—there is a specific concept: they say that art is more powerful than the author. When you perceive that the work of art contains far more than the author himself holds—well, it turns out it’s a masterpiece. For him, it’s a masterpiece. He created something that is greater than he is.
Audience Member 4: Hello, Marat. I have a different question, very similar yet polar opposite. What is considered bad art or low quality within the community of critics and collectors? I mean the theme of Bad/Good Art.
Marat Guelman: Bad art. There is a collection, and in fact, there is a Museum of Bad Art that travels the world. There is the concept, the term "Bad Painting"—meaning low quality, sloppy, and so forth. But there are several things that were a bugbear for a long time—derivative nature. When Russian art arrived on the global stage in the nineties, this was the primary weapon used to bash us over the head: "Well, this has already happened before."
But it’s interesting what has transpired with this concept now. It’s a fine example of how even bad art evolves. The Africans arrived, exceptionally powerful, and they are also derivative, yet they were so powerful that critics re-conceptualized it and coined the term Metamodernism. What does that imply? Modernism is not only a specific type of art, but it is also a state of society when breakthroughs are achieved in art, and every country must experience this state. When Modernism held sway in New York, Paris, London, and Rome, Bucharest at that exact moment sat completely on the periphery; there was zero Modernism there. It arrived there in the seventies, and its own local Modernism transpired. Today, this is treated not as derivative art, but as Metamodernism—as a specific phenomenon.
The second concept is "salon art." It is also criticized. For the most part, this concerns abstraction. Abstract art began as a revolution, a rejection of figuration, and so forth, but it integrates so beautifully into interiors that interior designers fell in love with it, and it reduced to mere wall decoration. This is also considered a bad sign—when art is created exclusively for this purpose. On the flip side, the commercial salon market sustains the artist within the "gray zone," to use a business term. When you are a beginner, you are supported, and when you are famous, everything is fine and you are purchased. But there is a gray zone when you are no longer a beginner, yet not yet famous. What do you live on? Museums aren't purchasing your work yet, and grants are no longer enough because you have a family, and so on. The salon market is beneficial because it sustains many artists precisely during this gray phase. Therefore, we criticize salon art, but we love the salon infrastructure itself.
What else constitutes bad art? In the context of our Russian Federation, look: during the Soviet era, the Communist Party utilized artists for propaganda. Within that, there could be good and bad art. The current Russian system utilizes propagandists to manufacture art. This is the reverse scenario, where it is pseudo-art, it isn't art at all, and the person isn't an artist. He manufactures items that formally look like art. This can also be an object of study. On the whole, those are the criteria of anti-art. Thank you.
Audience Member 5: Good evening. I have a question regarding interpretation. Let's say a scenario arises where a collector or an art lover arrives at a gallery and wants to purchase a balloon dog by Jeff Koons. As you stated previously, it lacks interpretation, according to Koons himself; that is his exact concept. If the person wanting to purchase it asks me—say I work at the gallery—"What is the meaning? What is the interpretation of this item?" and I know that Koons claims there is none, what am I supposed to say? That this item has neither meaning nor interpretation? People like to buy meaning when they buy a work.
Marat Guelman: Look, up until recently, all art was temporal. In this sense, it can be said that this simulationist movement is a part of art history. The moment they emerged, that’s it—they belong to time, to history; they reside there. The symbolic capital of this dog consists precisely in this. Can a narrative, a story be told about this? The very fact that the artist sought to evade interpretation is the subject matter. The anthropological principle operates like this: "Here we have the Simulationists, here is the first phase of simulationism, here is the second." That is exactly the anthropological principle of collecting.
Artists fight against collecting, as I said, yet that also falls into collections. Artists attempt to shatter the boundaries of what is art and what is not. Marcel Duchamp—there is a major exhibition in New York right now, I was there. He exhibited a different urinal every single time. He was constantly attempting to shatter the boundaries, because the moment he made a urinal, everyone instantly went: "Okay, okay, it’s a museum object." Here it is, and it bears his signature. First of all, it wasn't his signature; his wife signed it. He was constantly working with this. At the extreme, you have the banana taped to a wall—which has to be replaced every three days; a fetish.
On the whole, art is about images, whereas objects are collected. A boundary exists. Maurizio Cattelan wanted to demonstrate: "You don't understand a thing, you collect objects, not art. I will make art for you, but it won't be an object." Well, see, the collectors proved him wrong—they said: "No, we are interested in this too." This is a highly fascinating game with these boundaries. Everything that is expressive, everything that is worthy of our attention, gets collected. A collector will absolutely be found for anything.
Audience Member 5: So instead of context and...
Marat Guelman: Yes, the era of contexts has receded. The era of contexts has receded. This anthropological principle is different: it is far broader, and it is far more focused on the artist rather than the interpreter. Interpretations shift, by the way. It’s highly interesting. A major article just came out in In Focus in New York. My exhibition in Chelsea and Vitaly Komar’s exhibition were running simultaneously. There were works ideologically highly similar to what they did in the eighties. Komar and Melamid are interpreted entirely differently today—these steels, muses—yet the works are identical.
On the whole, I would say the era of interpretation was highly beneficial in its time precisely because the ultimate criterion—novelty—succumbed to Francis Fukuyama, to the end of history. Novelty had scattered all other criteria, and then suddenly it turned out that the new is impossible. That was exactly when I entered the art world, the mid-eighties—the era when the new is impossible. An artist walks into your gallery and says: "I have discovered a new art form," and you think he belongs in a psychiatric ward rather than a gallery. A total standstill occurred. There were no evaluation criteria, while collectors like money to provide concrete criteria. And then this contextuality, let's call it that, rescued the market—it effectively rescued it, served its purpose, and now a new stage arrives.
Audience Member 5: So it can be said that the idea takes its place, appearing more as ideas.
Guelman: Well, that is a matter of debate—meaning there are several competing hypotheses as to what takes its place. Some say media presence (mediynost). There are many different versions, but I believe that for a time, this will be a genuine conclusion precisely because there is no limit—it is infinite. Venice is also limited, understand? There is room to place, say, 300 exhibitions, but 1,000 is impossible. With digital art, there is no limitation. And it will lead to something. One simply needs to foresee what it will lead to. Thank you very much.
Audience Member 6: Good evening. I wanted to ask what specifically influences the shift in value criteria, in your view? For instance, you mentioned Caravaggio; he wasn't embraced by his contemporaries because he orchestrated a revolution, veering away from idealism toward raw realism. Today, when you travel to a museum—say, the Uffizi in Florence—there are separate signs leading to the exact hall where Caravaggio’s paintings hang. What specifically—ideology, politics, economics—influences people to look at a work completely differently and evaluate the artist differently?
Marat Guelman: Well, absolutely anything can influence it. Anything at all. For example, the Russian icon via the Russian Avant-Garde—clearly, although these are entirely different sources, the Russian Avant-Garde promoted the Russian icon globally. Flat depiction. It seemed flat because they didn't know how to paint three-dimensionally, yet suddenly it turned out that it looks highly contemporary.
I believe technology heavily influences how we look at certain things. And philosophy—everything influences it. This process of re-evaluation is a distinct, fascinating narrative. For art historians—I remember perfectly well, it was about 15 years ago—there was an attempt to swap Gauguin and Van Gogh's positions, claiming Gauguin was superior, and so on. This is a distinct sphere of ambitions.
But a great deal depends on whether other artists embrace it. For instance, the Italian Transavantgarde loved Caravaggio. In the sixties, they re-interpreted him—meaning they selected him. And thus they brought his language closer to us; it became more comprehensible to us today. An artist always communicates with other artists. If he selects someone from the past and initiates a dialogue, he unquestionably re-interprets that artist from the past. That is likely the answer.
And conversely, the camera emerges, and a vast number of artists whom we valued for the precision with which they render things vanished. They are no longer interesting to us. That's it. Yes, thank you very much.
