Darwinist battles between fairs, survival, and virtual: what the Old Masters world will look like after Covid

In a silent landscape, a village appears abandoned and a church square is empty.

Six characters proceed from left to right. The first has two sticks and advances slowly so as not to bump into the second, who guides him by holding onto one of the two rods. In turn, the second leans on the third, holding onto his shoulder. And so does the latter, who in turn follows the lead of the fourth, who leans forward, dragged by the fifth man who, dumbfounded, plunges into the ditch where the sixth has already smashed through. “They are blind men and guides of blind men. And when a blind man leads a blind man, both will fall into the ditch.” This is the Parable of the Blind as imagined by Pieter Bruegel the Elder in the 16th century, yet nothing seems more apt to describe the cultural, economic and social scenario of this moment.

Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Parable of the Blind (1568; tempera on canvas, 86 x 154 cm; Naples, Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte)

Resilience.

Old Masters are resilient by nature. And they could only be such: survivors of every obscenity of the human parable, promoted by the court of history, they have silently seen, kept silent and witnessed every war, every pestilence, every triumph and every debacle, reminding us that, after all, it does not take that many days to make a century.

Resilience, then, as a constituent element of even the “old art” market and those in the field. Yes, of course, there are fashions and it is undeniable that-in a short perspective, blind precisely-a taste has changed during the first decade of the new millennium. But taste, precisely, does change, and, in our opinion, this will be the first real consequence of the experience we are experiencing now. The change was already taking place before -because the collective unconscious intuits and precedes the stages of History- and the signs were obvious, but the epochal event that with such impetuousness has descended into everyone’s lives is destined to profoundly affect the taste choices that the market will have to follow in the future. If a certain machine of perpetual motion in contemporary art has in fact already collapsed with the lockdown (and is unlikely to resume any time soon) with events that also mark the end of an era and the ideals of the so-called so-called “boomers” (e.g., the demise of the controversial figure of Germano Celant), a “slow food” style of consumption in the artistic sense will result first and foremost in the rediscovery of genres and strands that fell into disuse during the rampant 00s. And this will apply to both Old and Contemporary, assuming that such a division can still make any kind of sense.

Distancing.

More mechanical and heterodirected, on the other hand, will be the “Darwinist battle” that the fair world is about to fight to the death. Much and perhaps too much has already been said about the logjam of trade fair events, even by industry players of very clear renown, who in a hasty manner have been rushing to get their hands on defections, closures and sci-fi reorganizations, as if they had any decision-making power over regional and national bodies. Survival strategy too, but the truth is that no social event (from Pub nights to bus rides) is seriously thinkable, sustainable, livable with the concept of social distancing over too long a time. Illuminating, in this sense, are the words of Iole Siena who, without hypocrisy, had the courage to explain how the operation of exhibitions under the new rules is impossible: impracticable in terms of cost/benefit ratio and unlivable from the point of view of the experience itself, suffice it to cite the example of the capital exhibition on Van Eyck in Ghent, closed permanently with no possibility of reopening due to high costs, impossible extensions and irretrievable economic losses. A fair any exhibition/market is subject to the same problems.

To really restart is necessary, a choice that should be up to a (international) policy, at this moment very frightened, reduced almost to a “condominium administration” by scarce funds, dumbed down by sarabandas of experts (or presumed experts) constantly engaged in shouting opinions one contradicting the other. And this will be the fundamental question that will call Society and Culture into the field in the coming months: To understand whether one is ready to accept a survival made up of essential consumption -reduced to a minimum and carried out in solitude- or whether instead the Aristotelian concept of man as a “social animal” is still valid, with all its cultural, immaterial, and aesthetic implications, ready to reverberate in an induced industry that is (also) the market of art and culture.

In the meantime, half of the useless fair events with which the art world is studded will try to survive and perhaps succeed, but it is not possible to tell now, without the concrete observation of how it will react (or will be left free to react) the market (i.e. the collectors, or rather it would be better to say the consumers tout-court, who after the fair go to the restaurant, to the cinema, to visit a museum, on vacation, to the company, etc. ...).

Certainly, a readjustment of the sector would be desirable: in this sense, sustainability could coincide with an effective rarefaction of events, a reduction of their costs (most often blatantly inflated and loaded on exhibitors) and perhaps a spreading out over necessarily longer times: from the classic three-to-five hectic days to the diluted fifteen?

Virtual.

As far as international market dynamics are concerned, auctions are trying to jump on online, but direct live viewing, with all its issues related to attribution, quality of subject matter, and state of preservation, once again make direct dealings essential, for both sellers and buyers. For that matter, perhaps traditional gallery circles could benefit from a “glocal” turn, but surely here, too, there is a need to recover one’s freedom of movement. A presence on social media, with the help of a good website, is a tautological reality that has long been embraced by every gallery, and the hasty offers to participate in sales platforms-both high-end and shoddier-reiterate the same pitfalls of real fairs: lots of money for gallery owners to spend and no certainty of concrete gains. A clear example was Art Basel’s attempt to launch a digital-only edition of the fair, a disastrous experiment in terms of sales. In contrast to the passive enthusiasm that many are showing for the digital transformation of all sensory experiences (and art is among them, with techies in the field truly convinced that an online visit to an exhibition is almost better than the real thing, a sign of very bleak times), we consider this collective transfer that, almost automatically, is leading to considering pornography use and real relationships, the digital enjoyment of food (and home delivery) with the restaurant experience, the digital visit to the museum and the museum itself as equal. These may be momentary palliatives to keep people from going completely crazy at home, but we are convinced that no lucid person can truly believe that the digital version of all these factors is better than the factors themselves experienced in real life.

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