FIRlnGLlne WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY, JR.

Transcription

1 of the United States (Title 17, U.S. Code) governs the making of photocopies or other reproductions of copyrighted material. If a user uses a photocopy or reproduction (including handwritten copies) for purposes in excess of fair use, that user may be liable for copyri to obtain permission from the copyright owner before any re-use of this material. l is for private, non-commercial, and educational purposes; additional reprints and further distribution is prohibited. Copies are not for r information, contact Director, Hoover Institution Library and Archives, Stanford University, Stanford, CA FIRlnGLlne HOST: of the Leland Stanford Jr. University. GUEST: SUBJECT: WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY, JR. MORLEY SAFER "CAN JUST EVERYONE UNDERSTAND MODERN ART?" FIRING LINE is produced and directed by WARREN STEIBEL. This is a transcript of FIRING LINE program #2819/1186, taped at HBO Studios in New York City, November 12, 1998, and telecast later on public television stations. Copyright 1998 FJRJNG LJNE Traru;cripts and videocassettes are nvailnblc through Producers Incorporated for Television Cypress Street, Columhia. SC 2920l 803n

2 MR. BUCKLEY: Our guest today is, of course, a famous journalist seen weekly on 60 Minutes, but he has an entirely other little cachet. He is an artist who pokes quite devastating fun and nicely modulated scorn at what he thinks of as extremities to which, under the rubric of art, we have in recent years and decades been taken. Morley Safer was born in Toronto and attended the University of Western Ontario. He practiced journalism in Canada before beginning his long career with CBS News in He's won many awards for his documentaries, and is the author of the book, Flashbacks: On Returning to Vietnam. Now we want to be very careful on this program to stress a distinction that should be obvious but isn't always observed. Having said that, it could be that it is over-observed. We all know that that which we now acknowledge as art treasure didn't make it into the world with immediate acclamation. Vincent Van Gogh sold one painting before committing suicide at age 37. His paintings now sell for $10 million minimum. Igor Stravinsky noted in his autobiography that it takes as a rule 50 years for the listening public to catch on to what a composer is up to. Taking all that into consideration, we want to devote the hour to the question, Are we being hornswoggled? [laughter] I mean, is there stuff out there bidding for the attention of the public and the museums which we can say at this point with real confidence will not 50 years from now be revered, that if it is noticed at all, it will be to document the naivete and gullibility oflate 20th century curators and dealers. [laughter J Mr. Safer, you've made this point from time to time publicly on 60 Minutes and elsewhere. What has been the reaction when you make it? Surprise? Hostility? MR. SAFER: Hostility of a kind that one would not encounter in a discussion about sex, about politics, about religion. [laughter] And I think at the bottom of it is that when one pokes fun at a particular artist's work, you are attacking not the artist, but the admirer's taste and, in a way, his very humanity comes under question at this point. MR. BUCKLEY: And some admirers who may have paid half a million dollars for it. MR. SAFER: Indeed, as paid for, for example, Jeff Koons' vacuum cleaner, which was much more. MR. BUCKLEY: Well, I have a picture of that for you. [laughter] This is an unrehearsed program, but we took this one liberty. Would you describe that, Mr. Safer? MR. SAFER: That is something called a Shop-Vac, which I am sure many viewers have in their garage as we speak. That happens to be a new, virginal Shop-Vac. [laughter] Never been used. I can't remember the precise price. I think it was $500,000 or $600,000, anyway in the hundreds of thousands. Now, what makes it different from your Shop-Vac? Nothing. [laughter] Nothing. Nothing at all other than

3 that it has been declared a piece of art by Mr. Koons and certainly by Mr. Koons' dealers, and more remarkably, by some of the most distinguished critics out there. MR. BUCKLEY: Okay, well, let's go on with our special exposition. Here you are looking at a painting by Damion Hirst. MR. SAFER: No, no, that is Terri Smith. MR. BUCKLEY: Oh, I should have known [laughter] MR. SAFER: This one is Terri Smith. This is, in fact--could have been but wasn't-the dust collected by one ofjeff Koons' vacuum cleaners. [laughier] It was not. It was collected by a different vacuum cleaner in London at a gallery, at an art exposition, and the day before the cleaners went around to make the place spic and span. Mr. Smith then took the collection, put glue on the wall and stuck the gallery floor dust to the wall. MR. BUCKLEY: And that was solemnly received. MR. SAFER: Oh, Terri Smith is considered a very, very important young, British, European artist. MR. BUCKLEY: Well, the vacuum cleaner was virginal, but the dust was sort of assembled, so it had a human hand in it. What about Robert Ryan's-- MR. SAFER: Ryman. MR. BUCKLEY: --Ryman's White Canvas? MR. SAFER: Well now, Robert Ryman is considered in the American pantheon a very, very important artist, and all ofryman's work is distinguished by being white. [laughter] I mean, there may be occasional blushes of beige. MR. BUCKLEY: Imitators sometimes don't make it quite white enough? MR. SAFER: Well, it's a triumph for Benjamin Moore, I suppose. [laughter] MR. BUCKLEY: He used only Benjamin Moore? MR. SAFER: Well, it could be Benjamin Moore. MR. BUCKLEY: This one-- But go ahead on him, because-- MR. SAFER: You see, Ryman is considered among the critics in this--well, in all of the world really--as an American master. The Museum of Modem Art only a few years ago

4 did a retrospective. The catalog in the smaller program was written in language which would defy even your powers of perception. [laughter} It was-- MR. BUCKLEY: Oh, that stuff, yes. MR. SAFER: --the most remarkably opaque artspeak that you could possibly have read. Now Ryman is considered a genius in this country. I don't get it. [laughter] MR. BUCKLEY: Yes, we'll quote some of those here in just a second, but let's have a final look at-- This definitely required human intervention, did it not? MR. SAFER: This is-- MR. BUCKLEY: Damion Hirst. MR. SAFER: Damion Hirst. Damion Hirst is the hottest of the hot of the so-called young Brit artists, British artists. What Hirst does-- MR. BUCKLEY: Tell them what it is though. MR. SAFER: Well, I'll tell you what it is, but I want you to be ready for it. [laughter} What Hirst does is he puts into tanks of formaldehyde various domestic animals like cattle and sheep. In the case of the one Bill is holding, these are slices of a cow cut in separate tanks. MR. BUCKLEY: Artistic slices. [laughter} MR. SAFER: Yes. And he does sharks in formaldehyde and that kind of thing. He just sold for a huge amount of money a medicine cabinet filled with stuff from drug stores. [laughter} A few years ago he sold to the museum in Denver a big ashtray filled with his cigarette butts. [laughter} For a lot of money. It was on show here and it was bought by the gallery in Denver. Now to start to answer your question, will these people be remembered in any important aesthetic way? I think not a chance. [laughter} MR. BUCKLEY: Okay now, I suppose the arresting question is, Is it possible to spot the line between this kind of thing and somebody like, say, Frank Stella or Mark Rothko, who aren't instantly appreciated, certainly not by me. MR. SAFER: Very difficult. MR. BUCKLEY: Yes. So that's what the legitimate investigation should focus on. But this.exaltation of this stuff, is that simply a surrender or is it genuinely a lapse of taste? It has to be at least a lapse of taste. MR. SAFER: Well, I think it's a surrender, a lapse of taste and an extraordinarily effective result of marketing, advertising or marketing or whatever you want to call it, all

5 of which, as we know-- The nature of that industry is to promise more than it can possibly deliver. Now in the case of art, in order for people to accept the promise of, say, dust on the wall or a black canvas, you've got to soften them up with the idea that they're stupid if they don't get it. [laughter] And they do a fairly effective job, aided, I am ashamed to say, by some very knowledgeable critics. And what's interesting to me is that you will find, among the most distinguished art critics in the country, one would have to include the critic of The New York Times, one would certainly have to include Robert Hughes, very talented men, very perceptive men. But what neither of them does, and neither do many critics, is go out and see what's happening in the world of art. They review the artists who are already--not necessarily talented, but certainly successful. So they review the big stuff. They don't go finding artists, and there are some wonderful artists out there in this country and in Europe as well who don't have a chance at getting a show. MR BUCKLEY: Why don't they have a chance? MR SAFER: Because they're not hip. They're not what one of the artists we haven't talked about, a woman named Susan Rothenberg, called, they don't have "the juice." Whatever "the juice" is, I don't know. MR BUCKLEY: It's the thing that makes vacuum cleaners go, right? [laughter] MR. SAFER: Yes, that's very good. But as an example, The New York Times, over the past couple of years, Michael Kimmel man, the chief art critic, who is a very bright man, has done a series ofwalk-throughs of important museums with "important" contemporary artists. And he took Susan Rothenberg, who is an artist--self-proclaimed, as anyone who-- Art is like journalism. You say you're a journalist and you're a journalist, you say you're an artist and you're an artist. Anyway, he took her and he took her husband, a man named Bruce Nauman. Bruce Nauman's art consists of neon signs repeating kind of dirty schoolboy cracks on and off in an irregular way. And he took them through to look at the Matisses and the Vermeers and the Rembrandts, many of which they kind of didn't get or sneered at, and Ms. Rothenberg said of Vermeer that he just didn't have the juice, meaning--i guess not having the juice means you actually can paint. [laughter] MR. BUCKLEY: I remember years ago one of the kids in that whole San Francisco cultural revolution said that he couldn't stand the music of Johann Sebastian Bach because he was obviously just sort of a punk who didn't make it. [laughter] But he didn't become an art critic or a music critic, and that's kind of important, isn't it? But some people do become-- Now, as you say, people like Robert Hughes, they are terribly talented and very, very learned. But there's got to be a screw loose there, doesn't there? [laughter] I don't know. Do you know any human being who really likes this stuff? [laughter] MR. SAFER: Oh certainly.

6 MR. BUCKLEY: Defends it, yes, but likes it? MR. SAFER: Defends it-- I mean the Saatchi Brothers in Lo.ndon have built an enormous museum to "it." I mean, "it" largely being in their collection. And the work travels the world to great reviews in Paris, in London certainly, here. And I think what has happened- I'm not- I can't answer the question. I don't think Robert Hughes has a screw loose. I think he feels, as many critics do, it is important-- MR. BUCKLEY: He has something other than a screw loose. [laughter] MR. SAFER: It may be important, it is important, or feels important to be out there on the cutting edge. Even if the cutting edge doesn't have any edge, it's important to be there. MR. BUCKLEY: And he has enough heft to make it certain that the revisionism won't set in until he is off the scene. MR. SAFER: Yes, we11, now but here is a man who is really, I daresay, a thoughtful scholar-- MR. BUCKLEY: Yes. MR. SAFER: --on art and other things. And I just feel that they feel--the critics feel- the worst trap they can fall into is the trap of old fogeyism. MR. BUCKLEY: Yes, of having laughed at Aida or something. MR. SAFER: Yes. MR. BUCKLEY: Well, Jet's move up just a stage from this stuff to pop art. Now here's something that arrested my attention--in fact I wrote a piece about it a few months ago. It was Marilyn Monroe done by Andy Warhol--we all know it-and this was called Warhol's Orange Marilyn, and it was sold by Sotheby. And the surveyor on the catalog described it in one sentence: "Undoubtedly one of the most important paintings of the 20th century and a work of psychological power, physical beauty, and technical brilliance." It then sold for $17.3 million. Now that's earthshaking, it seems to me. [laughter j Because I could understand buying that because it's historically important, but I can't think of buying it for any other reason. [laughter} I'm serious--certainly not to look at, except once. MR. SAFER: I think aesthetics, as you know, don't have that much to do with it. Ownership has a great deal to do with it. MR. BUCKLEY: Yes. 5

7 MR. SAFER: I mean, there are so many scalps on the wall. Art, your art, says who you are. So if you have a Warhol on the wall, it says you are among those hip people indeed who would believe with a distinguished critic and philosopher like Arthur Danto, who says that Andy Warhol had one of the great minds of the century--the same Warhol who in his diary- I mean, indeed he may have had one of the great minds of the century, because in his diary he wrote, "I just stuck roll-on flowers"--you know, those vinyl flowers--"on a BMW. I hope they find some significance in that." [laughter} Don't worry, Andy. [laughter] MR. BUCKLEY: On the point you make, which is very interesting, the aesthetic versus the proprietary interests of painting, it seems to me that if you had bought that Andy Warhol for $250 twenty-five years ago, you, I think, would be acknowledged as somebody who had a certain foretaste of what this guy might end up doing, but that's very different from paying $17 million for it. In one case you are a proprietor--all that means is that you've got a huge amount of money. It doesn't mean that you see in Warhol something that will be El Greco a generation hence. MR. SAFER: No, I think what you might see in it is, if you are an industrialist who wants to join the-- MR. BUCKLEY: The artsy class. MR. SAFER: No. --society by being a member of the board ofa major museum. MR. BUCKLEY: You give it away. MR. SAFER: You give it away. Look, this is not to deny-- MR. BUCKLEY: You advertise how much you paid for it. [laughter] MR. SAFER: Oh yes. You advertise it-- You may not necessarily advertise how much you paid for it, but you certainly will advertise its worth when you give it away. [laughter] MR. BUCKLEY: Right, right, right, right. There was a scholar who wrote a very provocative book a few years ago, and he said-- You know, the technology of reproduction is so refined that you really can't tell an original from a reproduction of it if you do it via this expensive technology. It's for that reason that they are required to be an inch shorter or an inch longer to be able to distinguish the original from a copy. So he said, You have an extraordinary situation where in Dallas somebody who had a big collection, they turned out to be fake when one expert said, That's not an El Greco. What do you mean it's not an El Greco? Well, it turned out it wasn't, i.e., they had five experts. Three said it wasn't and two said it was. So its value went from $25 million to $25 as a result simply of taking its provenance away from it. Now said this wonderfully 6

8 amusing scholar, if you take one of these paintings and exhibit it, people will say, Well, it's wonderful to see a $25 million painting; it's just extraordinary; the crowds come in to see it. He said, Well, actually, if you put $25 million in $100 bills, they would come see that. [laughter] So the point is what you are really staring at in a museum if in fact the reproductive sciences are so effective. MR. SAFER: Well, they are really not. I mean, I don't think-- MR. BUCKLEY: You don't-- MR. SAFER: I think that you might-- The reproductive sciences in terms of this print versus that print--is this an original-- MR. BUCKLEY: No, I meant re-creation. MR. SAFER: I think there are some very, very, very talented forgers and that is quite a different matter. MR. BUCKLEY: Yes, I wasn't talking about that. In other words you deny this thing because-- Then I'm misinformed in that case. MR. SAFER: I don't think a machine-- I've seen some of these machine-made-- You know, complete with the impasto in every thickness and every tone. Somehow together it misses, it completely misses. It does not-- I've seen Van Goghs reproduced in this way and they are lifeless. MR. BUCKLEY: I went to the house of the editor oflook--1 can't remember his name right now--and he said, Well, I'll bet you want most of all before lunch to see my Renoir. I said, as a matter of fact, I do. So I stared at it. He said, You really love it? I said, it's gorgeous. He said, Well, it's a fake. [laughter] I gave the real one two months ago to the Metropolitan Museum and they recreated it. He said it cost $6,000--this was 20 years ago--to make it look this way. I mean, you ran your fingers across it and it was three-dimensional. Anyway, he claimed that an expert couldn't tell which was the original. You simply deny this? MR. SAFER: Well, I would say it's quite possible to do it if it happens to be a Robert Ryman that you're doing. [laughter] MR. BUCKLEY: lfit happens to be what? MR. SAFER: A Robert Ryman. MR. BUCKLEY: Oh yes.

9 MR. SAFER: I think it's-- Somehow I think the life is missing. Now, we're all susceptible, and if it's there and it's hanging, for example, in the Metropolitan Museum, I think you are programmed to accept it. MR. BUCKLEY: Oh, sure, sure, sure, sure. Sure. You don't need an x-ray machine for these. In any case, let's leave that and simply return to the marketing point. According to this scholar, it's collectors and museums that have this vested interest in maintaining these extraordinary values on this art. MR. SAFER: Well, you've one key player. MR. BUCKLEY: Where? MR. SAFER: And that's the dealer. MR. BUCKLEY: And the dealer, sorry. MR. SAFER: There is. And there is, as in the old military industrial complex, the revolving door that exists, that goes on among-- Certainly among dealers and curators there is a revolving door and it is in their interest to maintain the value of the goods. MR. BUCKLEY: Sure. MR. SAFER: And I think that dealers are like dealers in any used commodity. Cars, horses, anything. They are trying to get the highest possible price for the goods. Now if they are dealing in Old Masters, there is a known market and known value. They're provided over the centuries. MR. BUCKLEY: Sort of certified by-- MR. SAFER: Yes. And if you're a dealer dealing in the drawings ofraphael, for example, the paintings, you have to pay an awful lot of money yourself before you sell it for a little bit more. MR. BUCKLEY: Right. MR. SAFER: The trick, the pig heaven for a dealer is to "discover" or launch an artist. For example, there was a young man named Basquiat who was portrayed as a kind of street urchin taken in by Warhol, who had this genius. He was a very young man, this poor, slum kid. In fact it turns out he came from a middle-class family. His father was an accountant. MR. BUCKLEY: [laughing] Went to Groton. MR. SAFER: I don't know ifhe went to Groton, but he went to good schools--

10 MR. BUCKLEY: Yes. MR. SAFER: --and all of that. He died very young of excessive drug use. He had a marginal, tiny talent. He had a magnificent capacity to market himself to the extent that, for example, the Whitney Museum gave him a huge retrospective. I think comic strips- MR. BUCKLEY: How much does his stuff sell for? MR. SAFER: Well, there is a fight going on over the estate right now, as in most of these young artists, artists who-- MR. BUCKLEY: Seven figures? MR. SAFER: No, the many hundreds of thousands certainly. MR. BUCKLEY: Yes. Well, now, the collector who wants to discover somebody has to launch him. How does he get that to happen? The kind of guy who did this, what would the discoverer of this artist do- MR. SAFER: Which one are we talking about? The Koons? MR. BUCKLEY: This is Jeff Koons, yes. MR. SAFER: Well, Koons is Koons. He is a remarkable self-promoter. And Koons admits, as do many, that he can't paint. He can't draw. [laughter} Which is one reason why he goes and buys a Shop-Vac. [laughter} And he also does these extraordinarily huge porcelain sculptures, for example, of--one of Michael Jackson and his pet chimp done in very gaudy colors. Well, he doesn't do it. He hires craftsmen in Italy to make these things. He unashamedly admits this. MR. BUCKLEY: And he signs them? MR. SAFER: And he signs them, yes. MR. BUCKLEY: And he gets retrospectives. MR. SAFER: And he gets retrospectives and he gets very distinguished collectors- He did one, it was a stainless steel ball. It went--this was some years ago--i guess it's about that big- MR. BUCKLEY: We have 15 seconds. MR. SAFER: --for $4 million. 9

11 .... MR. BUCKLEY: Four million dollars? Gee whiz. Maybe we should tum this into a painting class. [laughter] Thank you very much, Morley Safer, on the subject of modem--some modem art; thank you, ladies and gentlemen. 10