How is a painting modeled on a science fiction book cover worth nearly $5.7 million?
This question demanded internet attention back in October when Glenn Brown’s Ornamental Despair (Painting for Ian Curtis, After Chris Foss) sold for £3,554,500 at Sotheby’s auction. The “after” part of Brown’s title refers to the painting’s inspiration, Nemo’s Castle, an illustration crafted by popular artist Chris Foss that graces the cover of a 1986 edition of Isaac Asimov’s The Stars Like Dust.
Foss’s version sells on his website for £400.
How is this so? How is this fair? Several internet articles asked these questions while juxtaposing images of Brown’s and Foss’s works. The juxtaposition of the images simply stoked the internet’s curiosity and raised its ire.
Truth be told, these images look the same. They really, really do.
Who does Brown think he is, the internet wanted to know. Where’s Foss’s cut? How is Brown’s painting art? How is Brown’s use of Foss’s image legal?
Add in Sotheby’s video promoting the painting, and the internet cried foul. Science fiction author Scott Edelman was particularly cross, calling Sotheby’s curator James Sevier’s evaluation of Brown’s work “laughable.” No, Brown did not transform Foss’s work, Edelman determined. He pushed this criticism further, claiming that the Sotheby’s video is merely “the sort of hyperbolic thing one must say when hoping to excite bidders at auction.” He challenged Brown to share profits from the sale with Foss, mocked Sotheby’s and Brown for disabling public comments on the video, and charged Brown with an “artistic crime.”
Edelman’s conclusions convinced Michael Ward, a commenter on Edelman’s site. That, or Sotheby’s video was unconvincing. Regardless, Ward stirred up further questions: “There has to be some other story hidden away here: who is Glenn Brown? Who is pushing his art to the auction houses? Is [he] the boyfriend of some major art critic? Does he have blackmail photos of the head of an auction house?”
Other articles received similar feedback, calling Brown’s painting “disgusting” and the painter a thief. One response suggested copying Brown’s painting in an attempt to expose the painter as a fraud. The most colorful response recommended “slowly dissolv[ing] [Brown] in an acid bath, starting with his feet and moving up.”
Amidst this outrage, the initial question, how can a copy of another person’s work sell for $5.7 million, has long been discharged. Assumed is that the only account for such apparent injustice is that the fine art world’s standards are artifice constructed to maintain the divide between the elite and the masses. Brown has clearly taken advantage of such conditions, exploiting Foss and unethically profiting on that exploitation. The internet denizens intuit injustice and demand it be set right. But what if the evidence posed for Brown’s guilt, for Foss’s mistreatment, is specious? What if the conclusion rests on faulty premises? What if a substantial discussion of this situation requires knowledge and training beyond the typical internet user’s ken? Shouldn’t calls for justice, the most weighty of claims, be based on more than one’s gut? Shouldn’t we resist mixing ignorance with dogmatism?
While most people would respond affirmatively to these questions, living that “yes” is difficult in our media-saturated world that disseminates information without context or instructions for its use. Such seems to be the case with Brown’s painting.
To varying degrees the bloggers and commenters discussing Brown’s painting don’t know the truth of that situation. While the internet images present Brown’s and Foss’s paintings as the same size, Brown’s dwarfs Foss’s at six and a half feet high and almost ten feet wide. Foss’s print is a little over one foot high by two feet wide. That enlargement clarifies Sevier’s point about Brown’s invitation for the viewer to explore a foreign space; Brown’s painting would command the viewer’s field of vision in a way Foss’s could not. The painting’s dimensions also make sense of Brown’s need to add detail to Foss’s original image. The Tate Modern which displayed a Brown exhibit back in 2009 underscores the artist’s unique qualities of “[s]ize, colour, surface texture and brushwork,” qualities that would not transfer to the internet display.
As critics Rochelle Steiner and Alison Gingeras note, Brown’s distinguishing trait is trompe l’oeil, an optical illusion that forces the eye to perceive a flat surface as three-dimensional. Brown uses this technique as part of his appropriation of earlier works (that range from pop culture to high art).
Internet representations of the two images obscure these differences, yet these differences are essential to the art trade. A fuller understanding of Brown’s use of Foss’s work and the price difference between them would require first-hand engagement with the painting and training in art history. To do so, however, would require recognizing and accepting our current limitations, a difficult admission to make.
As a teacher, I know all too well the difficulty we all have with accepting our limitations, but as a teacher, I also know that growth comes only with such acceptance. If students want to improve their writing, for example, they should be open to correction. Rejecting the correction as merely the teacher’s opinion—as has happened to me—discounts the role of experience and expertise. When our limited experiences and expertise reveal gaps in our understanding, then our deliberation must be tempered with humility.
While authority can be abused and skepticism can be healthy, checking our pride when entering unfamiliar epistemic territory is also important. We need neither to defer to authority nor demur; rather, we should contend with it, approaching a new subject with humility and willingness to learn and grow before we presume to pontificate. There is probably much to critique about the fine art world, critiques that are perhaps linked to the sale of Brown’s painting, but those critiques would fall flat without much more substantial understanding of the world of fine art. With that knowledge, better insight into legitimate problems would come, and that critique would carry more weight.