Art and Oil: A Tragedy in 5 Parts
The following posting germinated out of a forwarded email to Richard Gleaves, fellow Art as Authority contributor, that I received from Mark Vallen's weblog: www.art-for-a-change.com/blog concerning BP's (British Petroleum) recent $25 million dollar donation to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). The museum according to Vallen's article, "plans to dedicate a new entry gate and pavilion to the energy Goliath. To be christened the 'BP Grand Entrance', the construction is nothing more than an edifice to big oil and the clearest example yet of the increasing corporatization of the arts in America." Vallen continues by noting, "historically, the largesse of wealthy benefactors has always played a role in the arts, with the names of well-heeled patrons gracing museum wings and collections. But there is something unseemly about naming part of an art museum after a transnational oil conglomerate - especially when considering the increasingly toxic role of oil companies in today’s world. President of BP America, Bob Malone, said the donation represents the energy giant’s 'commitment to the arts' - but scrutiny of the oil-smeared endowment reveals a public relations campaign designed to erase public memory of BP’s dirty doings."
Those "dirty doings" according to Vallen's fact findings, are being settled and paid out in millions of dollars of legal settlements and fees nationwide due to pollution from leaking gasoline storage tanks, smog forming chemicals, a Texas refinery explosion, OSHA violations, pipeline leaks whilst millions of dollars more are being made worldwide through "production-sharing agreements with the host governments, neo-colonial contracts that bypass respective national environmental and social laws and place the overwhelming majority of profits in the hands of BP and its partners" from the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline to the the Ocensa pipeline in Colombia to present day Iraq.
So, since it is often customary and necessary for several of Art as Authority's contributing editors to make "art runs" up to Los Angeles for a spot of culture and world class exhibitions (uhh .. what's wrong with San Diego? - insert sarcasm) I thought it only appropriate to warn Mr. Gleaves of an impending faux pas and potentially hazardous and sticky - avoiding if you will, a tarring with the same brush - situation. What I got in return was a lesson in perception. (image: John D. Rockefeller satirized in a 1901 Puck cartoon)
ART AND OIL: A TRAGEDY in 5 PARTS (a response to Mark Vallen)
1. The Artist as Hero
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) has received $25 million from oil giant British Petroleum (BP), said to be one of the biggest corporate donations to any museum ever. The funds are earmarked for a new "BP Grand Entrance" to the remodeled museum.
But not everyone is jumping on the BP bandwagon. Calling the museum gift a PR maneuver, artist and blogger Mark Vallen reminds his readers that BP has paid out some $125 million in legal settlements for pollution and other environmental violations in California since 2002.
Source: http://www.artnet.com/magazineus/news/artnetnews/artnetnews3-16-07.asp
2. The Oil Museum
"The misconduct of BP and other oil companies is continually and determinedly exposed through art exhibits, educational forums and public protests mounted by the artist activists of Art Not Oil. It is unquestionably time to establish a similar organization in Los Angeles - either that or get used to calling LACMA 'The Oil Museum'."
Mark Vallen, Art for a Change
Source: http://art-for-a-change.com/blog/
3. A Brief History of Art Museums
- The Getty Museum exists solely because of J. Paul Getty and Getty Oil.
- The Hammer Museum exists solely because of Armand Hammer and Occidental Oil.
- The Gulbenkian Museum exists solely because of Calouste Gulbenkian and (among others) Royal Dutch/Shell Oil.
- The Museum of Modern Art exists in part (1/3 to be precise) because of Mrs. John D. Rockefeller Jr. and Standard Oil.
Source: http://www.google.com
4. The Oil Artist
Mark Vallen
Dia de los Muertos
(Day of the Dead)
2003
Oil on wood panel 11 x 14
Source: http://www.markvallen.com/gallery/vallen1.htm
5. A Koan
Once upon a time a genie appeared in a small village. He went to the village square, set up a table, and began selling bottles of magic potion. A village man approached the genie and asked, "What can this potion of yours do?" And the genie said, "Everything! It will light your lamps at night, power your carts, fertilize your crops. It can be woven into beautiful cloth, and baked into wonderful tools and medicines. Yes, this potion will change your life for the better!"
The villageman was impressed, so he bought two bottles and took them home. And in the following days and nights he discovered the genie was right: lo! the potion did indeed light his lamps, and power his carts, and fertilize his crops. And the villageman's wife used the potion to weave strong warm cloth, and she cooked with it, and made powerful medicines and remedies.
The villageman knew a good thing when he saw it, so he became a regular customer of the genie's, and -- as villagemen are wont to do -- told all the other villagers how his life had changed for the better. Soon the whole village was crowding around the genie's table, demanding as many bottles of potion as they could afford.
The genie grew rich and powerful, and the villagers prospered with him, all from the potion. But the genie soon had a problem: he bottled the potion from a magic spring, and the spring was running low. But because the genie was now rich and powerful, and smart to boot, he simply hired emissaries and sent them far and wide across the land, and soon enough the genie gained control over potion springs on the four corners of the earth.
But by now the world too knew of the magic potion and wanted it for themselves. This posed an even greater problem for the genie: he loved his wealth and power, but knew that if he couldn't keep delivering all the potion that everyone wanted, the people (not to mention the shareholders) would grow angry and rise up against him. So the genie began dealing with thugs, shady persons, and virtually anyone he could find who could help him procure a continuing and ever-greater supply of potion. And thus the genie -- without necessarily meaning to do so -- soon became as corrupt as he was wealthy, and each fed the other until soon the wealth and corruption were together more powerful than the genie himself.
After a few years the potion springs began drying up, and soon disappeared altogether. The villagers of the world, already furious at the genie for the ever-higher prices and limited supplies, stormed the genie's castle and killed him. Then they returned to their villages, where they starved by day and froze by night. Their world as they knew it was ending, and they blamed all their woes on the genie.
Mumon's comment:
Who is to blame: the monster, or the doctor that created it?
A couple of behind-the-scenes facts: ART AND OIL: A TRAGEDY in 5 PARTS (a response to Mark Vallen) was what I received in response to the email, of which the Koan, was part #5. I responded in turn to the question "Who's to blame?" by answering Jeff Koons.
RG: Gleaves responded:
Exactly - we have faced Jeff Koons, and he is us. After I sent the email I realized the Moral is more a Zen koan. The answer is "neither and both", since the monster made the doctor as much as the doctor made the monster.
Or to put it another way: (from Art Not Oil)
Art Not Oil is designed in part to paint a truer portrait of an oil company than the caring image manufactured by events such as the BP Portrait Award, The Shell Wildlife Photographer of the Year, and other 'cultural activities' of the oil multinationals.
Will that be painted in oil? Or acrylic (an oil derivative)?
Or to put it yet another way: reducing complex system phenomena to binary schema will not effectively address the problem. My radical motto: avoid binary thought.
RG: Gleaves followed up with this:
In terms of things petroleum (oil ergo sum), I recalled reading an article in the NY Times a week ago which I think offers at least a glimmer of concrete evidence supporting my assertion of the need for a non-binary approach to the problem: namely, the Silicon Valley guys have been eyeing the oil company profits and thinking about how to do things their way, and for the most part they seem to get the "green" part of the equation.
They may be onto something since the oil guys have essentially built their business around the somewhat-dated practice of digging a hole in the ground, collecting the sticky shit that oozes out, and torching it. Given the right amount of direction and effort, it's possible that digital- and nanotech-based energy production may be able to obsolete this barbaric practice.
Here's the relevant quote from one of the Silicon Valley guys:
He said the entrenched oil, coal and gas companies could not ultimately compete with the more efficient and environmentally friendly concepts Silicon Valley envisions. "The idea of them turning a supertanker is an apt analogy," he said. "They cannot take us over, they can only try to resist."
But I know that even this will not suffice: Silicon Valley itself is notorious for generating a boatload of toxics as a byproduct of hi-tech manufacturing, so if they try to scale their own practices up to world energy production levels, a whole new set of Pandora-like problems will arise and in turn need addressing.
And finally at the top of all this, as firmly as I am embedded (as a comp sci major and employee) in current hi-technology corporate practice, I ultimately have grave reservations about capitalism itself, and wonder if it is ultimately (and unwittingly) designed to eat itself, and us with it.
But all that aside, if a solution can be found I believe/hope it will come from human knowledge and intelligence (not corrupt sociopath Republican war-criminal oilmen), and so am rooting for the Silicon Valley guys (some of whom are probably Republican), if just as a first step back to sustainable societal sanity.
KF: I responded with the following:
I guess I'm begging the question a bit in asking would we be just as happy (meaning LACMA) to get funding from the silicone guys as they would from the oil mongers? Money has no odor as they say? Should the arts always be dependant on wealthy fat balding men from the south to fund them? Can the arts become a "corporate identity"
within themselves? self-reliant and self-sufficient?
RG: And finally, again by Gleaves:
In an absurd sort of way this debate reminds me of the old classist distinction between old money and new money: old money of course being respectable, and new money unavoidably tacky.
To the best of my knowledge no one is making any fuss over these world-class art museums, and the only reason I can see why this is so is because they were founded with old oil not new.
Regarding your last question about the possibility of separating art from evil, during the art run Maura and I were talking about an interesting correlation:
-- The red-hot market for contemporary art the past few years (as exemplified by the art fairs)
-- The red-hot amount of wealth in the hands of the American economic elite (read: the art buyers) due to a) greatly-increased returns on their investment portfolios from petroleum and defense companies feeding off the estimated 400 billion dollars shoveled "into" Iraq (that's how the media always state it: that the money goes "into" the
war, without ever pointing out that almost all of that money comes right back into US corporate coffers and then out again as shareholder dividends; and b) the vast tax breaks acquired in the past 7 years from Bush Administration policy goals being codified as tax law changes.
And now, your thoughts to this discussion - leave a comment below.
For further details and an interesting perspective of oil for money for art please refer to Vallen's Art for a Change weblog and Art Not Oil.