"Being good in business is the most fascinating kind of art," Andy Warhol famously said. "Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art." Having gotten his start as an immensely successful commercial artist selling product illustrations to advertisers and department stores, Warhol bent the American consumerist system to artistic ends throughout his career -- embracing capitalism at a time when many in the creative sphere viewed it skeptically, if not with outright hostility. Now a new exhibition at the Indianapolis Museum of Art called "Andy Warhol Enterprises" has seized upon a recent resurgence of interest in the artist's work to closely examine just how Warhol treated business, commerce, and, above all, money in his art and life.
At an economic moment when the art market is booming -- with a Warhol painting selling for $63.4 million at Phillips de Pury last month -- as the rest of the country struggles through a grueling recession, wealthy businessmen have been demonstrating extraordinary confidence in art as a liquid financial asset. Warhol, it could be said, took the opposite approach -- he saw business as a dependable artistic asset. To discuss the ways in which the Pop artist approached this sweeping subject, ARTINFO executive editor Andrew M. Goldstein spoke to the exhibition's co-curator Sarah Urist Green, who organized the show with art critic Allison Unruh.
Andy Warhol for Sony Beta cassette tapes, 1981 / © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.
One of the interesting things about your exhibition is that it is sponsored by PNC Bank, which is in itself a commentary of a kind on the relationship between business and art.
When I got a call from Max Anderson, our director, asking if I would be interested in curating a show in conjunction with PNC bank and the Warhol Museum, my first reaction was a little bit hesitant. But I thought, "Warhol certainly wouldn't mind having a show sponsored by a bank. He would probably have really liked it." And I love the fact that Warhol had the corporation Andy Warhol Enterprises -- it has always stood out to me as a really fine example of Warhol as an entrepreneur -- and Andy loved money. So I though lets do a show about Andy loving money, but in a critical, engaged way.
Did they have any part in coming up with the show's conceit?
No, this is something that we pitched to them. And they loved it. I especially thought it was hilarious that for once we would be able to even flaunt a sponsor's name and logo in conjunction with the exhibition. Whenever we were creating collateral for the show I was able to say "don't forget the logo" and "make the logo bigger."
The exhibition catalogue shows Warhol as a shameless self-promoter, even appearing on Japanese film ads like the cliché of Bill Murray's character going to sell Japanese whiskey in "Lost in Translation."
That's perfect, right? But he was doing that from the beginning. Something we didn't have an image of in the catalogue but that was always in my mind in developing the show was the classified ad he put in the Village Voice in 1966 that said, "I will endorse with my name any of the following" and then it was just a list of all of the things he was happy to endorse, which included "anything." So he was a bit of a whore, as it were, from the beginning. One of the ideas that we have really tried to work against in this exhibition is that there was a turning point in Warhol's career -- this idea that before he was shot there was a certain integrity to his work and after a turning point it all dissipated and he became a servant to celebrities and society members. I don't believe that that is true. He even said later in his career, "I was always a commercial artist."
That is so interesting because that recent biography of him, Pop: The Genius of Andy Warhol, ends when he was shot in 1968, essentially condensing the last two decades of his career into a few paragraphs, largely dismissing it as commercial work.
I know. It's a great book, it's excellently researched, has great material, but it just ends! He was shot in 1968 but he didn't die until 1987. It is really incredible that that perception persists -- I mean, it is really prevalent, especially, of that generation. This exhibition is one of several in the past few years that is re-examining his later work including the "Last Decade" show and "Pop Life." These other exhibitions are looking at his later work in a fresh light. But I feel sometimes that the members of Warhol's own generation, or the people who were there, were sometimes clouded in their judgment and unable to see the irony of his later work.
I think it is so interesting your catalogue opens with a picture of Warhol sitting behind a desk. I can't think of another artist, like that, sitting behind a desk. Even Jeff Koons or Damien Hirst wouldn't take that picture.
Oh, no. You have seen pictures of them at their desk in their studios, maybe sitting with desks or papers or tables behind them, or maybe at a computer, but not this -- in such an officious role! I love that photo. It hasn't been published very much, and it was really important to us to include it. There is actually another version of this photo that is backed up a little more and it shows that, to the right of the telephone, there is a TV facing him.
The essays in the catalogue present Warhol as this businessman sitting behind a desk, running Warhol Enterprises, concocting a new moneymaking scheme every day, wearing a tie, and flying by Concorde. And it certainly worked: the final valuation of his estate was $228 million.
That's correct, though I'm not sure exactly how the Warhol Museum came to that figure. I am pretty sure that it is the valuation of his work at the time of his death plus all of the other art work he collected, because he had quite a collection of decorative art and some work by other artists, as well. Also, it includes his real estate holdings.
So, just like any other CEO.
Exactly. In the exhibition we have a portfolio that says "Andrew Warhol Enterprises Inc." on the front and it sort of goes through the value of his estate in 1965, and lists artworks that he owned -- some small Rauschenberg works and other items. But he did amass quite a bit of wealth in his days. Even in the 50s, in the first decade of his career, he did amazingly well as a commercial artist. So he was very well off even before he became famous.
What was he like as a boss?
[Laughs] As a boss? Well, we interviewed Vincent Fremont in the catalog and that is one account of many accounts, but at a certain point in my research it became unhelpful to read the accounts of everyone who worked for him. The people who were very close to him seemed to love him, like Pat Hackett [Warhol's secretary]. While they had not an uncomplicated relationship with Warhol, they certainly had extreme fondness for him. But then you read accounts like Bob Colacello's "Holy Terror" and you see a different side but one that is cited often, the flip side of Andy Warhol, where while he could be incredibly encouraging to other people, to other employees, other artists, he was also pretty cruel in certain regards as well.
What fascinates me is that while he presents this image as a business man -- "the business artist" -- his own management of his affairs was much more like an artist. He hardly paid anyone except with drugs, or parties, or the occasional lunch money.
Part of Warhol's brilliance at an early age was getting people to help him for free. In the 50s he would have these coloring parties where he would invite his friends to Serendipity 3 to help him hand-color his blotted line drawings, and he had his mother help him as well. He certainly had paid assistants, too. All of his films made it look like people in the factory were just sitting around, but he was certainly very good at getting people to work for him for free, and I'm sure it was mutually beneficial. It turned from the "Factory" into the "Office", and his staff members grew as his life progressed. But he certainly did know how to run a business and get the most out of his employees.
Did they have health care? Or anything like that?
I don't know, but there is a great Warhol quote: "Employees made the best dates. You don't have to pick them up and they are always tax deductible."
It is funny to think about how much of a chaotic mess his workplace was.
Well, you see the time capsules, and you get a small glimpse of his business life because the time capsules were basically his sweeping off his desk every so often and putting it in a box. And if you go to the Warhol Museum archives and you take a peek in those time capsules, it is really astounding the amount of stuff that almost anyone would throw away that Warhol kept.
What stands out in your memory?
Ticket stubs, taxi receipts, small notes about his finances. If you look in his diaries, you will see that the "Andy Warhol Diaries" actually originated because his accountant wanted him to track his daily expenses, and then it expanded from there. But it will say "taxi, 3 dollars" and so on. That is in the "Andy Warhol Diaries" that Pat edited. He would call her in the mornings and she would transcribe his day-to-day activities for many years. And some of them... I mean, it's funny, but pretty tedious at a certain point. He will say who he went out with the night before, who was at Studio 54, et cetera. They also found in the time capsules over a thousand dollars in cash that he just stuck in one of the boxes. I tried to get that for the show, actually, but I think they gave it to the Warhol Foundation.
Continued...
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Visit "The Business Artist: How Andy Warhol Turned a Love of Money Into a $228 Million Art Career" on ARTINFO for the rest of Andrew Goldstein's interview with IMA curator Sarah Urist Green about the themes in her probing exhibition, including a discussion of Warhol's role as Factory foreman, his money paintings, and his vulgarity, and to see a slide show of Andy Warhol's most famous money-making works.
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China has been ranked as the top growing country among the G20 since 2001 and is expected to retain that title for at least another five years (See Growth Chart). However, the news coming out of China for the past three months has not been good. It is looking more and more that it is not a question of if China is a bubble and going to burst, but when.
The country has major infrastructure issues, troubling population dynamics, poorly aligned employment outcomes, inflation problems, a real estate bubble, an opaque and potentially insolvent banking system (had mark-to-market accounting been applied), geo-political problems with North Korea and Taiwan, and an underperforming stock market in 2010 (see stock comparison chart).
Smart Money Rushing Out
While the hot money is flooding into China, the smart local money is doing everything they can to get their money outside of China, which partly explains why Shanghai SE Composite has underperformed other markets for the past year or so (see Comparison Chart).
The many issues of China could conspire to become the biggest train wreck waiting to happen, and potentially dwarf any little budget problems in Europe by a factor of ten.
Big Trouble In Big China
China has a population related societal structural problem. The nation has tried to utilize the vast manpower to its advantage over the last two decades building a powerhouse manufacturing economy through the availability of low cost workers, which supplied the world with lower cost goods.
Nevertheless, the harsh reality is that the nation's infrastructure, quality jobs, food, and overall resources are too scarce to support such mass population, while achieving the government`s goal of a smooth transition to a developed middle class to sustain an internal demand model going forward.
If you think you have riots in Greece over the pension retirement age being raised is bad, just wait till riots breaking out in Beijing and other cities over the fact that a 90 cent bowl of noodle soup now costs four dollars due to food shortages, and a runaway inflation problem.
Loose Lending = Non-performing Projects
This is only reinforced by some of the news events taking place over the last three months. Let`s start with the raising of banks reserve requirements by the central bank, which is the sixth such increase in 2010.
These measures are meant to curb the excess lending which has fueled much of the overbuilding and real estate speculation occurred over the past two years as China`s central bank initially wanted to avert a recession by artificially creating demand for workers and construction projects to replace lagging demand from the developed economies.
The problem is that too much lending has occurred, and bad lending at that. Because of the cheap available credit, now you have cement companies and manufacturing firms getting bank loans to invest in endeavors such as real estate, which is outside of their core expertise and competency.
Real Estate Misery Loves Company – China & Spain
The result is a bunch of excess inventory and poorly thought-out construction projects which have no means of recouping the initial investment needed to repay the bank loans.
This practice is similar to Spain`s situation now where they have entire uninhabited building complexes that have yet to be marked to market, and will probably ultimately be demolished. But at least in Spain, even though it was a construction boom, it was engineered by developers in Spain, and not by some manufacturing outfits like those in China.
So, multiply the bad business project factor by ten and you get an understanding of the magnitude of bad loans on the books of Chinese banks. The problem is being further exacerbated by the practice similar to Spain`s of banks making additional loans to the businesses just so that they can then turnaround and pay back the interest owed on the original loans.
The only way this would work out is if these projects magically develop revenue streams. Unfortunately, in the case of Spain, a 20% unemployment rate, coupled with a still overvalued housing market in which prices still need to come down significantly, would suggest that by the time the Spanish economy recovers enough to support the excess inventory, the abandoned projects are run down and uninhabitable.
A similar scenario could play out in China as well.
True Smart Money Wary of the Write-off Domino
Furthermore, China`s practice of overbuilding at the height of real estate valuations makes even haircuts on loan write-offs an untenable practice for banks, and by further throwing good money after bad, the ultimate mark- to-market effect could be catastrophic for Chinese Banks.
This is the main reason all the major Chinese banks have gone to the market in 2010 to raise more capital before investors wise up to the underlying deficits these banks face, as these bad loans eventually would need to be written off the books.
Victor Shih, a Northwestern University professor estimates that Chinese local governments borrowed some 11.4 trillion renminbi at the end of 2009, and that local government financing loans to be roughly one-third of China's 2009 GDP. The most likely scenario over the next few years is that there would be increases of non-performing loans ratio from local governments. This would require a large scale of recapitalization of the Chinese banking system, which would eat up a large share of China's foreign exchange reserves and possibly slow down growth.
Although Beijing is quite capable of a few bailouts and surviving a widespread banking crisis, it most definitely will not bode well for the financial markets. So, insiders are removing capital from direct exposure to the inevitable re-pricing that will happen throughout Chinese markets from real estate to the stock market, and can be seen at this early stage by the underperformance of the Chinese stock market compared to other global markets. Remember, foreigners cannot invest directly in these markets, so these capital outflows are truly the smart money.
Logistic Gridlock Crimping the Middle Class
Next let`s look at the recent news regarding a severe cutback in automobile registrations in Beijing to 240,000 in 2011 from 700,000 registered in 2010 by the municipal government. Other large cities in China are bound to follow. This is most likely related to the reported 9-day traffic jam on the Beijing-Tibet expressway in August, and other extended traffic jams throughout China in 2010.
China is trying to build infrastructure projects after the fact; whereas with proper central planning these should have been established far ahead of the massive transition from a rural, agricultural based populous to that of a modern, large city based business and manufacturing concentration.
Simply put, it is impossible for all the Chinese citizens who want and can afford automobiles to be able to own and utilize this form of transport without a total breakdown in the transportation system. We are seeing the early stages of complete and counterproductive gridlock in the transportation system of China, and it is only going to get worse over the next decade.
No Jobs for College Grads
For all the talk about how China graduates more engineers each year, and other college educated young people who have strong backgrounds in the hard sciences than most developed nations combined, this is actually another sign of problems to come over the next decade in China.
China`s wealth and emergence into the second largest business economy hasn`t been built around the need for these types of mind and skill set. So literally you have a large mismatch between the types of available jobs in China, that are supported by the heavy manufacturing and construction intensive focus of the past twenty years, to that of the recently educated pool of graduates who have grown in sizable numbers over the past five years.
The Mind Is A Terrible Thing To Waste
This results in a large human asset class that China is currently wasting, as most of the newly educated workforce is working in jobs which require little or no advanced education at the university level. So you have highly educated university graduates in areas like engineering and accounting working low level service and sales jobs that pay less than many manufacturing jobs.
In short, there are too many highly educated Chinese citizens graduating each year for the number of jobs available needing their skill set because China`s economic model isn`t built around these type of jobs. This type of misaligned employment outcomes never ends well; it usually manifests itself in increased civil and social unrest.
8% Inflation in 2011
The next major challenge for China is a skyrocketing inflation, which at its root is the fact that there are too many people chasing too few resources. This fundamental flaw in population dynamics underpins many of the problems that China faces going forward.
Recent CPI data for November illustrates the inflation problem in China with a reading of 5.1% from a year ago comparison, this is up from a 4.4% reading for the previous month. Couple this with the latest 4% hike in fuel prices in China because of rising oil prices, you could expect future CPI and PPI reports to reflect even higher rates of inflation.
For now, most of the year over year spike has revolved around higher food prices as energy has mainly been flat for 2010 thanks mostly to government subsidies. Now that energy prices have entered the picture, China will start to experience even more inflation pressures in 2011.
Furthermore, with the undervalued yuan pegged to the dollar, it is only getting worse for China in 2011 due to Fed's QE2 pressures on the dollar. The real inflation rate for Chinese citizens for 2011 will probably approach 8% next year.
An Asian Contagion by China?
This escalating inflation concern is further compounded by Beijing's lack of decisive action to combat the problem by delaying a much needed currency appreciation, and hiking interest rates in a timely fashion. There is no getting around the fact that these two things need to occur as soon as possible.
By the time the Chinese government is forced to implement these tightening tools, the damage to the economy is most likely already done. The longer China delays the inevitable serious tightening measures, the harder the economic crash that will occur in the aftermath of these policy changes. And it is unlikely to end well. The resultant impact will probably take the rest of the Asian economies down with it – an Asian Contagion scenario.
History Repeats Itself
Eventually central planners and finance ministers around the world might start to understand that policies which lead to bubbles being formed in the first place are counterproductive in the long run. But until that lesson is learned, it seems like we are doomed to repeat the same mistakes over and over again.
Right now, there are more and more signs coming out of China that all is not well with its economy, and the likelihood of a more severe downturn in the future is a distinct possibility, unless its policy makers take decisive and prudent actions to minimize the damage of a hard landing.
Dian L. Chu, | Mobile Reader, Website | | Facebook | Twitter
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