Jerry Saltz has a good description of how the new global galleries are driving down quality as they pump up output:
Too often, the artists are brought in at mid-career, and—like 34-year-olds signed by the Yankees—they are poised for a decline. Every show of living artists in these galleries is ushered in like a career retrospective, a quasi coronation, with everything often already sold or spoken for. There’s no space for debate about the merits. Many of these shows are too big by half, filled with dross. No matter. PR staffs crank up; bells and whistles go off; critics give wet kisses and write jargon-filled texts that disguise the fact that what is written and what is written about are often both meaningless, or they take the easy way out and just write screeds. The artist is a brand, and the brand supersedes the art. The scale and pace of these places often turn artists into happy little factories with herds of busy assistants turning out reams of weak work. It’s the new Capitalist Realism.
Saltz on the Trouble with Mega-Galleries (New York Magazine)
