One Chip, Two Chip, Red Chip, Blue Chip
Annie Armstrong's Flawed Taxonomy of Red-Chip Art
Imagine my delight when I stumbled across an artnet reference to the Eden Fine Art Gallery at the Wynn!
Dennis and I bopped around there recently while I was writing about the Las Vegas fine art boom of the aughts. I reference it here.
So much gold leaf. So many cartoon characters clutching cash in their furry or feathered fists. I don’t hate it. Money connotes power, and fine art has always been about power as much as beauty.
I don’t hate it, but Annie Armstrong does! In her artnet article “Forget Blue-Chip Art. It’s a ‘Red-Chip’ Art World Now” she zeroes in on the Eden Gallery as one of the incubators of what she calls red-chip art.
Armstrong offers her own definition for red-chip art (until now loosely defined as crypto-associated), contrasts it with blue-chip, and does a taxonomy of the artists, galleries, and consumers. It’s all very Jane Goodall, except she hates the (Bored) apes.
I think her hatred of the style hobbles her attempt to categorize it. But what do I know? It could be I’m going through some sort of aesthetic Stockholm Syndrome after living here for five years. I can’t afford to live in LA at the minimum viable lifestyle that I will accept. Which I assure you is quite minimum. I know that my appreciation of the work of Koons and Hirst has increased since I settled here. Is the desert sun baking my brain? Have the lights of Las Vegas hypnotized me into launching a defense of the fruit-flavored, lab-grown, food-grade harvest of hypercapitalism?
Maybe not. Maybe there’s something to this stuff. At least I’m willing to consider it. I knew this stoopid, garish, unapologetic, pop-culture eye candy, often brandishing the same price tag as a house in the suburbs, was something. I also knew that, like me, it lived somewhere far from what Dave Hickey called the “vast, transcontinental sprawl of publicly funded, postmodern iceboxes … administering a monolithic system of interlocking patronage … which resembles nothing so much as that of France in the early nineteenth century”1.
Definitely not that.
The very name “red chip” is provocative, considering that it’s designed to be contrasted with blue chip, two colors already associated with political parties. I get that the term is useful. But it’s pejorative by nature. It’s almost impossible to eliminate the political association, even if there had been a sincere attempt. Also, red chips are cheaper in poker. There’s no way to escape the new-money scorn inherent in the name.
So what does it look like? According to Armstrong, the visual component of red-chip art tends to “super-flat cartoons, a street art/graffiti aesthetic, and multi-colored chrome. A crypto component is always welcome” (para. 4).
That checks out.
And how does Armstrong frame red-chip art’s defining ethos? By “its refusal to revere art history, perhaps as a part of a broader rejection of elite, specialized knowledge.”
Who believes this besides Armstrong? Is there a red-chip art manifesto? Is there a personal representative of red-chip artists who claims that this is their raison d’etre? Of course not. Because red-chip art is based on commerce—horrible hypercapitalized commerce, but commerce nonetheless. It’s based on what people (clearly Armstrong’s wrong type of people) are willing to buy, often at eye-watering prices.
I don’t think red-chip art rejects art history or elite, specialized knowledge. They don’t care enough to reject it. The art makes money because people with money like to look at it. They reject nothing. They’re too busy making something. Red-chip art takes the “subversive potential of visual pleasure”2 and splits it like the atom. Boom.
To do a taxonomy, you have to be observant and objective, but it’s clear that Armstrong has a political axe to grind. Throughout the article, accurate observation is derailed not only by her dislike of the art but by ingrained sociopolitical beliefs.
Examine her sardonic description of a prototypical red chip art consumer. He drives a cyber truck, trades shitcoins, and listens to Joe Rogan.
What?
I’m not a fan of Joe Rogan, but I know who he is. He’s an everyman figure, not the totemic idol of the ultra-rich. A typical red-chip art collector listens to some podcast whose name I don’t even know.
Joe Rogan’s role in much of legacy media reminds me of the old joke about the devil, where he complains that he gets blamed for stuff he never got a chance to do.
The laziness of it bothers me the most. It took me five minutes of googling keywords to see what podcast our typical red-chip art consumer would listen to.3
Armstrong avoids stating that red-chip art is right-wing, but the uncomfortable insinuation never stops. While admitting that red chip is not an explicitly political category, she states that it’s “not unrelated to Trumpism.” So many negatives, doing the heavy lifting. Amazing how she managed to reference both Trump and Joe Rogan in a red-chip art overview with no established connection to the art or the artists whatsoever.
Guilt by association is bad enough, but it’s even worse when the associations are as manufactured as the guilt. Armstrong references a joke from 30 Rock, in which Alec Baldwin’s character says that art is pictures of horses. I love this joke! I know the type of art she’s referring to. I categorize it as “Portrait of Duke Fuckface.”
Armstrong writes, “Today, a powerful Republican (or Trump-curious independent) delivering that joke would have to say, “We know what art is. It’s the bearbrick x KAWS collab.”
Wait a minute. I thought red-chip art wasn’t expressly political. Oh, it’s not, but the people who consider it real art are powerful Republicans. What?
That’s a crazy thing to say even according to her own follow-up, in which she sketches a portrait of red chip art collectors: “Red-chip collectors include mysteriously affluent millennials who like artworks that look like toys, newly wealthy techies that the traditional art world has never been able to capture, and hip-hop visionaries (as well as the people who have gotten rich off of them).”
Her description of the customer base seems pretty accurate, which is why it’s weird that she tries to associate them with Republicans. Newly wealthy techies are often as turned off by traditional politics as they are by traditional art. And hip hop visionaries are politically variable in a similar fashion. In contrast, have you seen the people at a Republican national convention? Even the powerful ones are not hip. They really like Lee Greenwood. They think graffiti is vandalism. They use Facebook.
I get that the Republican party has been taken over by the Elon Musketeers, who do indeed prefer this type of art. But to call them Republicans seems inaccurate. It’s more like they’re using the party as a host organism.
Besides, the idea of associating graffiti art with Republican politics, even obliquely, is insulting. Graffiti art is born out of a subversive subculture that has little to do with either party.
After the customer base is established, she discusses the artists that she thinks are red chip. And this is where the article really goes off the rails. This list is clearly made up of artists that she doesn’t like—especially George Condo.
Her hierarchy goes like this. First, there’s the ur-red-chippers (which she calls purple chip, which makes no sense, because they can’t be a blend if they’re the antecedents): Jeff Koons and Takashi Murakami.
Next, there’s the top level red-chippers: KAWS, Condo, Virgil Abloh, Tom Sachs, Alex Israel, Damien Hirst, Harmony Korine, Yoshitomo Nara, and Banksy. Here again we see subversive street artists being obliquely associated with right wing politics.
Especially annoying is when she mentions that red chippers tend to be male, and then adds that blue chippers are too, of course.
So why mention it? It’s more “just saying.” Red chip art is not political, but powerful Republicans collect it. Red-chip art is mostly male, but of course blue-chip art is male too. She’s the Tucker Carlson of institutional art critics. Just asking questions.
The next tier is what she calls native red chippers, like Alec Monopoly (there’s the Eden gallery) and Mr. Brainwash. Okay. Fair.
Then she inexplicably goes off on George Condo.
When red-chip art does take a more traditional look, it tends to shout its status as “fine art,” as in Condo’s interchangeable Picassoid paintings. (Peter Schjeldahl’s classic zinger about Condo’s “infatuation with paint, distinct from any special use for it” comes to mind.)
Resurrecting decades-old snark does nothing to support the inclusion of Condo on this list. Peter Schjedahl (who used the term Picassoid first, way to dance around crediting that) thought that Condo was a “dumb painter,” too in love with the brushstroke. It’s a complicated critique that has nothing to do with big-eyed toys and digital art. I keep thinking, why are you shoehorning Condo onto this list? Did he hurt you? Was he mean to you at a party? Because I get that.
Her taxonomy leans more on consumer preference than style, which is a legitimate way to categorize art, though it often exposes the snobbery of the categorizer. But if we are going to use this method, then Condo can’t be red chip because he is represented by Hauser & Wirth—a blue-chip gallery if ever there was one. They don’t even have a footprint in Vegas.
Personally, I would love it if Hauser & Wirth had a gallery in town. I know just where it should go, the same way I can see the LeRoy Neiman paintings at Circa. Hauser & Wirth should be at the Vdara.
And speaking of LeRoy Neiman, where is he on this list? Condo and not LeRoy Neiman? Come on. You just hate Condo. It’s okay.
I don’t love all red chip art. But I respect it because it is an outgrowth of the market. People love to look at it, so it sells. Do I feel, as Armstrong does, that I am standing in front of a microwave when I look at it? You bet I do.
It’s still better than looking at something ugly while I read a six-paragraph artist’s statement that dictates the meaning of my experience in exhaustive detail.
If my choice is microwave or dead ash, I’m going to pick the one that cooks my lunch.
Dave Hickey. The Invisible Dragon. (University of Chicago Press, 2009), 3.
Hickey, 3.
For some reason, a taxonomy of music came to mind, where "real" music is opera, jazz (not "smooth" or "elevator"), and the like and schmaltzy music is country & western or anything overly sentimental involving harmonicas and/or organ grinders.
I'm not going to try to define art or music, but surely part of the charm or allure is that it's interesting, that it has "life" and vibrancy. And we know from history how what is judged "art" and worthy of being honored changes over time. There are plenty of "masterpieces" that were hated when they first appeared to the public and to the "experts."