There seems to be a perception among participants in U.S. financial markets that if a large banking organization were to get in trouble, the government would, under most circumstances, intervene to prevent its failure (or limit the losses to uninsured creditors upon failure). This possibility of a government bailout is commonly referred to as the “too-big-to-fail” policy. The idea behind this belief is that, in general, policymakers will be inclined to bail out institutions which are considered to be of “systemic” importance; that is, institutions whose potential failure could threaten the stability of the entire financial system.
Jerry Saltz and Ben Davis are busy playing the part of federal regulators for the now defaulting and deflating Postmodern generation of artists. For Jerry the TBTF moment comes with the re-interpretation of Koons as a mystic in which his paintings have become the mandalas and 60’s psychedelic record covers that Jerry loves to see on canvas…”But although the paintings are still pointless [bold is mine] if looked at only iconographically, they come alive as 21st-century versions of proto-modernism if you confine your gaze to the surface itself. There are no lines to be seen: Koons has meticulously separated every area of paint into a well-defined mass or island that interlocks perfectly with every other area without ever overlapping it. It’s like looking in a microscope and seeing what had formerly been a blur resolve into distinct forms.” With these few words and the admonition not to look beyond the surface of the billboard, Postmodern theoretic, economic and corporate power transforms the participant with instant understanding - satori. I really have issues with Jerry when he backtracks to the 90s, lately he’s been doing it a bit less and I’ve been grateful. However, this withering and inexcusable defense of Koons is beyond the pale. As Jerry describes Koons’ work it begins to resemble the same shell game behind repackaged subprime mortgage debt - “…vacillate between gleaming fact and mirage…material turns into light, color and reflectivity…familiar objects take on the aura of the unknown….” All of these descriptors are nothing more than cautionary statements to aesthetic investors - “don’t mind the man behind the curtain…” Jerry also touches on the Eventocracy - an idea put forward by Francesco Bonami describing art specifically made for the corporate buying experience. In this regard I prefer Ben Davis’s idea of the Superartist (extremely clever idea.)
It’s his idea that artists are now making art directly for the corporate public bypassing the quaint idea of private delectation. He concedes that this sort of art is popular in nature, event driven (like Bonami) and accessibly expensive. The Superartist is indeed the artist that can direct a production and create a sensation for mass consumption. Ben discusses both Eliasson and Murakami (among others) as embodying this aesthetic, and there can be no denying the success of this type of art. “…with the superartists, who function more and more like “imagineers,” who cut their work to the specifications of giant institutions, whose work is indivisibly associated with production by their own boutique design studios, “visual art” becomes less and less distinct from mass culture, and the idea gains more traction…” (We have discussed this idea before and labeled these Superart types as auteurs rather than artists.) Ben’s idea also implies that Superartists and their aesthetic are threaded through multiple industries and disciplines and they are part of the interdependent economic fabric of the art world itself. Additionally, their continued market viability must be maintained if the system is to be maintained. All of these Superartists have developed name recognition and brand consciousness as they partnered with established corporate entities and academic institutions, such as Louis Vuitton, Nissan, Broad Art Foundation, the Guggenheim, etc. But we must understand more - as time has passed and the monetary, institutional and political investment in Superart work has widened and deepened has this type of art become TBTF in the classic sense?
I have to take issue with Ben in his comparison of Superartists to the early Modernists. Unlike the Superartists the early Modernists were not institutional artists funded and collected by powerful corporate interests. They were not accepted and promoted by their artistic communities as the Superartists have been. If you must reach for an historical connection the artists that Superartists most resemble are those of the French Academic School of the 19th Century or the Mannerists in 16th Century Italy. Those were the artists that obtained government/institutional funding along with the acceptance of moneyed collectors. They were publicly lionized and respected. They continued an accepted academic tradition through small incremental changes in taste rather than outright changes in style. They appeared in the gossip pages and magazines of the day. I feel that Ben does a disservice to the challenges that Modernism demanded of its participants. Rather than an institutional professional climb, the Modernists stood in opposition to the prescribed aesthetics of their times. They challenged accepted aesthetics. The Superartists do not challenge ideas. They provide entertainment experiences. They repackage, reconfigure and re-contextualize proven aesthetics on a grand scale, blowing up art “brands” until they are larger than life.
A few days ago I happened on a chart that showed the value of financial funds in the stock market from 1996 to the present. It showed a sharp steady rise in the value of financial institutions and a recent very steep fall which effectively wiped out the 12 years of gained value (and then some) of those institutions to pre-1996 levels. Their perceived worth was nothing more than a market illusion, and suddenly, the reality of true value had come into focus. This time period roughly approximates the “Superartists” and Postmodernism’s boom. If these artists and products go the way of the markets we will have to deal with the problem of what a new artist will embody and what that art will look like. We can not go back, but we might be able to make sense of the best ideas defining both Modernist artists and Postmodern Superartists. In the meantime we must decide if Superartists are really just too big to fail. I’ll leave you with this assessment of TBTF in regards to the United States itself…
“In other words, in the estimation of people in control of money, the United States cannot be allowed to collapse, just as Fannie and Freddie cannot be allowed to fail. Too much is riding on their survival…The central truth of that logic still seems to be apparent as the Treasury keeps finding takers for American debt. So the government offers its rescue of the mortgage companies, and foreigners keep stocking the government’s coffers…
But all the while, the debt mounts along with the costs of an ultimate day of reckoning. Debate grows about the wisdom of leaning on foreign credit, and about how much longer Americans will retain the privilege of spending and investing money that isn’t really theirs. Bailouts amount to mortgaging the future to stave off the wolf howling at the door. The likelihood of a painful reckoning is diminished, while the costs of a reckoning — should one come — are increased.
The costs are getting big.”
Is it any different for the art world where we’ve been recklessly stealing and repackaging past intellectual capital, aesthetic daring and visionary integrity from our vast visual history? Once the wizard has been exposed will we continue to accept his illusion?
The hard visual innovation in these portraits reconciled the ideas of painterly history with the avant garde present and brought a new vision into being. 
I find it interesting that both of these artists worked from models, from actually looking at the rising subject. In Picasso’s work we see all of his brand new studio tricks at work - the mask, the “Iberian” style, the broken grounds of beginning cubism. He completed the picture without Gertrude in front of him not soon after a summer trip to Spain. I think this is significant. Picasso had to search inwardly for the memory of his vision. Both artists heightened the experience of what they had seen - they moved inward. 90 sittings and then time away brought Picasso to some form of visionary clarity. Gertrude solidifies before us - a boulder, a rock. Her face is mask-like, sardonic and squinty – that left eye is looking to pierce you through (we used to call this the stink eye.) Picasso wanted something more than her features, he wanted her physical effect and how it made him feel. What is of further interest is to compare his treatment of the ground with that of the Velazquez painting. There is a similarity of visual involvement, of involved flatness. The ground pushes against the figure, there is no space, a kind of flatness and painterliness. Why? What are these painters trying to get at? To understand more we must begin with Manet who was shameless about his use of Velazquez’s grounds in his paintings, and because of it, he broke with the academic ideas of space. The assertiveness of the ground became the foundation beneath the Modernist temple. Look further - both figures are three quarters, both squint out at us. Look at the right hand of each figure - there is a connection - an off-handedness to the gesture and its deliberate portrayal. Picasso is playing with the idea of painterly history and its relationship to power. Velazquez is playing with the idea of real-world power. Who knows if there’s a deliberate connection - what is important is the continuity and the memory that is being transformed for a new century. That easy hand in both paintings belies the truth about painting. There is no rest. As a good friend of mine once said “[A]…painter’s hands must never be at ease.”
Great portraits always have some element of the artist’s psychology, but even more, they should also have visual connection. Velazquez and his lenses found something visceral to portray through his techniques, but mostly, he found expression through his emotional relationship to the rising subject. In this portrait of Innocent the suspicious Pope winces and grimaces at us, the red ground cages him, flattens the room he sits in. The shine of his silk bib spreads across his chest like a tawdry flame. In his left hand a document of some kind waiting to be handed on to someone - the power of the church, the institution waiting to be put into force. The Pope at first wasn’t too happy with the finished painting - “troppo vero.” This portrayal of the Pope later inspired 
Let’s have a look at John Currin’s portrait entitled “Heartless.” Now whether this is a real or made up portrait matters little. Currin isn’t worried about a direct encounter with the rising subject. Rather he is using a pastiche of style that submerges the rising subject in the ground of mediated history. It is an illustration designed to convey ironic art historical references rather than a visual involvement with the subject of the portrait. The mannerism inherent in this type of painting is a distancing device allowing the artist to remain unrevealed and unknown. We don’t know anything about how the artist feels about the subject - she is rendered as a realistic caricature. In this painting the refined subject reveals her absent “heart” in the cut of her fashionable dress. The artist stays at a respectable distance unaffected by her reveal. She is like a religious signifer, a Christ pointing to his bleeding heart. In other words what is being painted is a known iconography, symbology, cosmology - a ground for historical reference. The portrait never opens itself to a depth of visual reading or feeling - it remains tied to signs and signifiers rather than personality and encounter. It never breaks with the past nor opens up to the future. It is a cypher and a sign of our time - 
The avatar is something we see all the time in our media saturated age. It is a sign and a product at the same time - something for consumption. For instance the portrait of the actor on the left serves a few functions. First and most obvious is the reference to popular culture from the 40s and 50s - the Vargas girl. A touch of irony is thrown in to give an updated wink and nod to America’s obsession with the louche and risque. Here the Vargas girl is innocently gardening…pot, mary jane, cheeba, chronic, weed….The program upgrades and appropriates with nostalgia and the glamour of bygone eras (the glitzy pin-up and 60s counter culture) in order to entice the viewer to tune in (and pay subscription fees.) All of which signify the tone of the program - what I call the Blue Velvet effect - a mixture of Surreal decadence, illusionary Americana and dysfunctional violence (she holds the garden hose sprayer like James Bond holds his Walther PPK.) Finally and most importantly, it is a portrait of the actress Mary Louise Parker portraying a fictional character. And this is the point where the avatar begins. There is no such person as the character, and the actor is not being herself. Both the portrait of the fictional character and the portrayal by the actor create an optical disjunctive experience that has no meaning outside the boundaries of the coded program itself. For instance can we say this is a faithful rendering of Mary Louise Parker? Or can we infer from the portrait that this is how the character actually appears to be in the program? If that is true would it be possible for another actor to assume that role and if so, does that change the nature of the program as the actor changes the character’s appearance? Can anyone assume the role of this character, and if that is so, will the character’s features, demeanor, movements, etc change or must the actor assuming the role change to look like Mary Louise Parker playing the role? Is this portrait supposed to be a picture of the actor or of the character? What separates the two (the program and the actor)? Part of the point of recent figuration has been the idea that identity and character are no longer separate, and therefore, no longer capable of being read as “real.” It is the unreality of our encounters that leaves us looking for signifiers in order for us to play along - to know what something means. We don’t encounter the rising subject so much as look for clues as to what the ground contains, what programs the ground is running. Picasso’s famous line that “painting is a lie that tells the truth” no longer applies. This presupposes a truth - a comparable reality. In Postmodernism there is no truth - there are only contexts and references - programs. Painting is simply a lie that tells us about itself. 