Art

Next week sees the start of the busiest ten days of the year in London’s contemporary art calendar. No less than eight art fairs line up from October 4-14 to sell their drawn, painted or sculpted wares to a siege of collectors, all of whom hope to stumble across the latest star of the scene. Serious buyers arriving with VIP passes to the exclusive first hours of pre-previewing at the Frieze or Zoo fairs will no doubt have a list of potential artists in mind and will be baying for the freshest works (most will likely be dated as recently as 2006 or 2007).

The art world is currently in thrall to ‘neophilia’ – a love of all things new – which derives from a medical term for a chemical imbalance in the brain that genetically predisposes the sufferer to seek out novelties, whether they are the newest gadgets, toys or fashions. Charles Saatchi memorably diagnosed himself as a ‘Neophiliac, a gorger of the briefly new’, but he is by no means the only collector to buy whole swathes of work made by recent graduates or unproven artists. Contemporary art has itself become a muse for the global super-rich and the trend is to acquire a collection of tomorrow’s must-have artists, today.
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The art market is frighteningly fast-moving, so all it takes is one successful showing at an art fair or in a commercial gallery – the artist’s equivalent of a first album or novel – to ensure rising status and reputation. The rewards are potentially mind-blowing for a young artist and include international media attention and possibly representation by a gallery in New York or Zurich, as well as the prospect of seeing your prices double or triple. The flipside of this elevation to ‘hot young thing’ is an immediate pressure to produce more work for more shows and more fairs. And if you don’t burn out, then there’s always the chance that you might fade away.

Locating this treasure trove of artistic talent is not the problem. There is a seemingly endless stream of new artists in the UK; every year, around 4,000 graduates join the ranks of over 60,000 people who call themselves practising artists. Not only are London’s art schools arguably the best in the country (although Glasgow, Norwich and Oxford also have notable courses), but there are now more commercial galleries here than ever before; around 500 would be a cautious estimate. Almost all of Britain’s major collectors and art-world players are based here too, as is the entire mechanism that makes up the art market, which could well be worth close to £1 billion per year.

Despite the great opportunities and exposure that London’s art scene offers, the reality is often much harder to swallow than all the promises of milk and honey. The official figures and statistics from the Arts Council make for depressing reading: artists earn the least of any cultural profession (on average £400 per week but generally less) and most graduates find that they have to hold down numerous low-paid jobs to stay afloat. While many precocious young things expect to be plucked from anonymity straight after their degree shows, only a few galleries will pick up a tiny handful of fresh graduates, and they will almost certainly all be postgraduates educated to at least MA standard. An artist needs to go it alone for a year or two after art school in order to grasp the reality of paying for a studio and supporting their practice without an educational support system to catch them if they fall.

Thankfully, most art-world professionals in this country realise that artists need time to try, to make their own mistakes and even, occasionally, to fail. But there is a trend (primarily in America) that holds newness and youth above all else. The current grip of neophilia originates in New York, the birthplace of Andy Warhol, whose slackerish, style-over-substance ethos has spawned many more than 15 minutes of fame for his numerous acolytes and followers. The latest in Warhol’s lineage is a trio of New Yorkers – Dash Snow, Dan Colen and Ryan McGinley – whose drug-fuelled rock-star antics and loose morals have garnered more column inches than even their bloodied, spit and shit-filled, semen-stained artworks.

London had its fill of shocking art during the heyday of the Young British Artists, so today’s ascendant talents require a little more sophistication. A recent example of an almost overnight success is Conrad Shawcross, who turns 30 this year, but was quickly spotted after graduation and given his first solo show in Cork Street, at the very the heart of the art establishment, nearly five years ago. Two of his large-scale works go on show next week in Selfridges and he was recently treated to a four-page profile in Vogue, in which it was claimed he had planned (and subsequently failed) to win the Turner Prize before the age of 28. Detractors put his considerable achievements down to being so well connected (Saatchi bought up his first exhibition), well bred (he’s the son of writers William Shawcross and Marina Warner) and well educated (Westminster School, Chelsea, the Ruskin and the Slade), but there’s also a streak of confidence and originality in his complicated sculptural systems that has helped to propel him ahead of his art school peers.

The real risk for artists who find themselves suddenly thrust into stardom is that they won’t be able to cope with the demands heaped on them. Also, how long will the grip of newness cling to one artist, and how long before supply outstrips demand and the art industry tips over into mass overproduction? Like any boom, there is potential for bust, so it’s entirely possible to be hot one minute and not the next. As the majority of young artists don’t find themselves on a fast track to fame, they struggle financially. Some leave London for cheaper studios outside the city or in artist-friendly Berlin, or else end up falsely labelled as recent graduates despite having left art school many years ago. Until the art world slows down and the rampaging prices of the art market cool somewhat, neophilia will rule the shopping lists of competitive collectors. In a post-bubble art scene, hopefully making it as far as being a mid-career artist will be the real sign of talent.