I took Mel's comment differently than you. I did not think he was saying that people with art on their walls were better than other people - I took him to mean that he gets an understanding of a person by what he sees on their walls. Sort of a kindred spirit thing, like when you see someone you don't know wearing a t-shirt of your favorite unknown band - you get a sense that you know something about that person. Disclaimer - I was the moderator of the panel and responsible for Mel being there.

I'm sure he didn't "mean" to give the impression that people who can't afford to collect art are lesser people, but it does imply that he only moves in circles with people who can. Wealthy people do the same thing with travel; they say they can judge your character by what European country you spend your summers in, assuming, of course, that it is impossible that the person they are speaking to spends summers at work, living at home.

At some level of socioeconomic class, I guess it must be nearly impossible to recognize one's privilege and still get things done in a day.

But is the picture funny? That's the shady government warehouse where they store the Ark of the Covenant at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. I hadn't thought about it before, but what if that isn't a storeroom of government secrets and weapons and documents, but wall to wall crates of cultural artifacts? Art? Or gold objects?

Okay, it's not very funny.

Yes, very funny, K.

I understood Mel's comments differently, too. The panel had previously discussed art as a dialog with the artist. The collector becomes a participant in the dialog by supporting the artist/collecting the work. And when seeing the work that a collector chooses to exhibit, Mel said that he could tell if the collector was someone whom he might want to know. People make those same choices all the time by how people choose to dress or how they maintain their lawn.

Regarding purchasing art sight-unseen or through jpegs - I've done both. In fact most of what I buy, since I don't usually buy locally, is through a jpeg.

I'm currently waiting for a piece purchased sight-unseen. I collect street art - and this is a Banksy piece. The Banksy market is so hot right now the prospective collector doesn't have the luxury of consideration. I had one piece already (purchased before he had his reputation)- and knew I wanted another. And so I leapt when I had the chance. And yes, I had been given advance notice, but so had many others.

Sort of a kindred spirit thing, like when you see someone you don't know wearing a t-shirt of your favorite unknown band - you get a sense that you know something about that person.

You might get that sense, but you're wrong.

Long comment along Ben's lines here, now deleted because I realized we were talking about two different things. I'll do a post on it, I guess. It's not terribly interesting.

RE: The Secular Piety of Art Collecting

People have to believe in "sumthin'" .. The ARTWORLD for many has replaced the Catholic church. And consequently we believe the process of buying art should transcend the ordinary animal needs of everyday shopping, but isn't that a sacred cow. Brothers and Sisters of the Grammar Police Forum I ask you...:)

As someone who nodded vigorously at Melvin Hardy's statement, I suppose how you hear what he said says a little something about yourself. No? I didn't hear Mr. Hardy say anything about the goodness or morality of a person based on the kind of art that person buys. I didn't hear Hardy make any judgments at all. I heard him state a simple fact about humanity: we judge others based on superficial things. The clothes they wear, their hair color, their race, the car they drive, whatever. We do it all the time. Art is just another factor on which we base our superficial opinions about a person before she has spoken even a word. It's neither right nor wrong. We just do it. What we learn about a person beyond what we see on the surface is much much more interesting than the kind of art she buys.

Although it is over two years later, please allow my post and reaction to Kriston's comments regarding my statements on the panel in question. My comments come as I stumbled upon this web page just before this writing. I present these comments in stream of consciousness mode, and in the spirit of continuing a conversation with all who posted in reaction to "Mel's comments" or "Kriston's comments", and express great appreciation for those of you who reacted at all.

As a point of departure for my comments, I will address Kriston's focus on my "classist" predispositions in her post. My post is devoid of scholarship, although the inferences raised by Kriston in her post begs deep reflection, study, and address of issues, which by their implication tear at the very basis of the American experiment in modern society. The Sotomayor matter is implicated in this post, and our media seems to be working against our best intentions in society. The matter of "class" is wont of more scholarship in the academy, more balance in our media, and perhaps, best buttressed by discussions in the home, and "en Salon". (The author is Chairman of Millennium Arts Salon which is dedicated to the premise that humans are more alike than they are different, and offers that all peoples find their higher selves through the exploration of art and culture).

My contribution to the continuing conversation is as follows: The nature of humans is to gather, to nurture, to be in community. Anthropologically, and statistically, our primary mode of learning is through visual cues and processing. Cave paintings, printmaking using the hands and feet, and primitive tools have served to form and identify styles, groups, and catalyze sense-of-self and group-sense. Cultures have evolved from the circumstance of both conscious and un-conscious reaction to environment and intention about the future course of their groups and evolving societies (I will stay out of politics and political economy for this discussion, but invite such discussion "en salon".) Fast-forward through the course of human history to modern life, and the same sense of self-exploration, and group sense continues unabated. The markings on the walls of our modern day caves (our homes), evidenced by markings of pencil, crayon, oil or water-color, in frames or not, produced by the cave dweller or not, most often in frames, which for this discussion we will call collections of art, provides a sense of resonance, of community, and in some ways evidences the interest of the modern-day window-featured cave-dweller to explore the higher self in community with another upon its finding. Many collectors of material culture are in the active and intentional quest for beauty, and the best of human spirit in their lives, and just as actively and intentionally seek to be in community with others in similar quest. In the Bell Curve of the constrained population of humans, that quest will necessarily put the art collector in +1 or +2 standard deviations away from the mean of humanity, in statistics speak. Accordingly, Kriston, and in the spirit of this conversation, my being, and our being, in the outer regions of the Bell Curve is not classist. Rather, in my view, it is the intentional pursuit of community with humans, in which I am in the active and intentional pursuit of my better emotional intelligence (Dan Goleman), and my higher moral intelligence (Lennick and Kiel). Kriston, for me, the issue is leadership: human, moral, and cultural leadership, in the issue of advancing the matter of human betterment. I choose, mostly because of my hard-wired DNA predisposition, to pursue leadership through art. I seek to associate myself with others who understand my quest. And in reciprocal fashion, I seek to know their yearnings also. In the universe of humans, I must discern those with whom I surmise might most readily resonate with my quest for learning. The heuristic discriminator I use is art and culture. I seek to learn the iconographies of art and culture; I seek to learn the vocabularies of those who speak art and culture; and I dedicate my professional and gratuitous employee life to the building of community across all lines that divide the human family. I am not wealthy, nor is my reference group populated by wealthy people (Reference A White Bear in this thread.) My work and predisposition is less classist. Rather, my language, in translation of your moniker of being a classist as you ascribed to me, is more that of a builder of community, with such members both formally and informally committed to the discovery of their higher selves. It is my zealous hope that I discover what it means to know another, and to be known by another. To me, Kriston, this is my act of love, and I have had the great benefit of knowing some very lovely people, whom I have met through this intellectual, moral and emotional enterprise we call art collecting. This act of love, through the arts and art collecting, better put, the collecting of material culture, in my view, better enables me to discover that which I can deliver to the world, to enable other people to find their voice, their work, the "magnum opus" in the cause of peaceful coexistence amongst peoples.

Enough of this, Kriston. It is my fervent wish that your posting and the comments of Phillip, Philippa, Chris Lee, A White Bear, and others in this blog might be the starting point for future conversations, perhaps "en salon" about this matter. We can do it virtually, but my sense is that humans still like to gather, still like to break bread together, and still like to tell stories and draw word pictures. Should we choose to gather together in this way, I would like to join with you, Kriston, in dedication to the safety of each other in the presentation of ideas, premised upon the exploration of our higher selves in dialogue with each other, and resting on the foundation of human caring and empathy. Such, I think, would place all of us amongst the world's people who we might best be described as "classiest".

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