Gilles Deleuze in Abecedaire complains about the ubiquity of academic conferences, which he thinks are downright silly. The only encounter, he says, that one can really have, are with works of art and not with other intellectuals.

I tend to agree with him. And I've always enjoyed the fact that the august art magazine (and my sometime employer) Artforum has largely stayed out of the intellectual fray when it comes to panels, (us critics have better things to do with our time, like cadging free drinks at openings), but the brand has a certain weight, so when they say they're having a conference, not only can they get some pretty heavyweight actors from the art world to participate but also get the rest of the world, or at least me, looking in their direction to see what they come up.

At Artworld Salon, Jonathan TD Neil introduces the cast of characters at the Artforum panel (titled simply "Art and Money") with aplomb and efficiency:

"The panelists included Tom Crow (much esteemed if somewhat dusty art historian currently installed at NYU’s Institute of Fine Arts), Amy Cappellazzo (International Co-Head of Christies ’s Post-War and Contemporary Art department, art world punching bag and proud mother of the auction house as “big box store” analogy), Yinka Shonibare MBE (perhaps the very definition of the post-historical, post-colonial, post-black artist), Kathy Halbreich (former Director of the Walker and now MoMA’s image disciplinarian-cum-Kultur defender) and Jeffrey Deitch (maestro of the art world spectacle who never met a hipster he didn’t like); it was, to say the least, an almost perfectly diverse array of the art industry’s different player positions. Tim Griffin (Artforum’s soft-spoken editor) moderated the event."

Only editor Tim Griffin, our critical representative to this tea party, comes away unscathed from Neil's assessment of the panelists.

And if Neil's play-by-play of the panel is as accurate as his introduction, it would seem that when it comes to art and money, even the most significant players have nothing interesting to say, or rather things I've heard all before and am simply tired of hearing again.

For one:
if I hear someone say Warhol one more time, I'll reach for my gun.

It's curious that this particular artist has come to so dominate what we talk about when we talk about art (especially in relationship to money). Don't get me wrong I like Andy's shenanigans as much as the next red-blooded American with a penchant for pop. But then I grew up.

Artstars, popstars, money grubbing millionaires, philosophers and charlatans, authentic artists and wheeler dealers. Art and money, again? Can we change the subject? Or at least say something new?

This isn't another tiresome tirade delivered from a golden perch atop the ivory tower about the evils of that bad old market, but then again, such complaints are trite because they're true.

The market is bad, it's always bad. Anything that can turn Picasso into pork bellies and back again, I must say, leaves a vomity taste in the back of my throat. I admit that the killing floors of the art fair or auction house are not quite so messy as their less than metaphorical equivalent (unless of course their hawking the work of a Viennese Actionist).

In the rest of the world, mostly they're just talking about money, I'm glad at least that somewhere, art gets top billing.

Who know, maybe the moneychangers have permanently taken over the temple, maybe they've always had it. Fuck 'em. We'll build another.

I've been living in Italy and they have saying here I've grown to love:
When the pope dies, we make another.

When this art world dies, finally passing it's last stale Warhol into the toilet we call the marketplace, and then keels over dead from its own gluttony, we'll be here, finishing off the last of the free drinks, and we'll make another.

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And for my precious few readers out there, thanks for waiting out the strike.