Auction Performance - Auctioneer’s Presentation Andrew James Paterson
Good evening, and welcome to Des
Fleurs Pour Decorer. And why are we here? You are here perhaps because I am
giving a performance? Well, yes, but why are we really here? You are here for
the entertainment? Entertainment is merely a means to an end. You are here
because you both want and need to buy art. You live in modern environments that
have been sold to you as artistic - you cannot be an artist unless you live in
an artistic environment. And how can that environment be artistic without art
in it - on your walls, on your kitchen tables, your floors, and on your
screens? How can you be a host or a player in the art economy unless you own
and buy art? Of course we all know the answer - you can’t. This is not a matter
of art being life; rather, your life itself must be art. Art is not the
everyday, but the everyday must be art. Those leftists of the twentieth century
- the Marxists, Situationists, the Relational Aesthetics crowd … have got it
all backwards.
We have before us both art and meta-art. Art about art within art
etcetera etcetera. One can purchase for oneself or a friend art objects that
are art objects themselves or part of a larger art object. One can even buy the
whole installation - the entire art environment with its micro commodities, if
one is in a position to take the plunge. One can buy a big deed or a variety of
little deeds - small lots with trade value both economic and beyond simplistic
economies. Here today we have many art objects that may not initially seem to
resemble what you have known to be art objects. But they are, because they can
be both decorative and practical. They are beautiful in their own right and
they are functional. If you want to be a host, then you must have options of décor.
You have to be able to create environments. Sometimes you have to change your
environments very quickly - such is the reality of revolving door culture.
Often, this means that you must purchase more than one option, as that is the
reality of being an artist and a player in the art economies.
Now that we are in the twentieth century, definitions of what exactly
might qualify as an art object have changed significantly. Please note that
electronic and/or digital art is and should be of at least equal value as
paintings, sculptures, and classical photographs. Video installation or
projection is indeed the art form of the twenty-first century, because it is so
transparent and transitional. If your date likes landscapes, the up goes a
landscape. If your date likes, portraits, well …. And never forget abstracts
and abstractionism. Abstractionism is the classic art mode of the free world -
art free from social or political obligations. And speaking of the free world,
now it is time to begin our auction. And our first lot is…
This
monologue serves as an introduction to an “art-auction” performed in tandem
with Sylvie Belanger’s exhibition Des Fleurs Pour Decors. This
exhibition and performance has been presented at Big Orbit Gallery in Buffalo
and Birch/Libralato Gallery in Toronto.
