Filming the contemporary art bubble

My latest documentary, The Great Contemporary Art Bubble, will be showing this Monday 18th May at 9pm on BBC4. A record of one of the most staggering speculative bubbles in living memory, filmed while it was actually in the process of bursting—something I've written at length about previously in Prospect—it tells, I believe, a story that many people will and ought to find shocking. But The Great Contemporary Art Bubble was also a very difficult film to make. I had so many doors slammed in my face that my nose changed shape. In advance of its screening, I'd like to list some of them for you here.

I was constantly impeded by what I can only describe as Art World Omerta. The code of Art World Omerta has three rules. First, many people in the art world simply refused to talk to me. Second, the ones that did tried to deny that the buying and selling of art had anything to do with business. Third, these people maintained the unspoken rule of never criticizing an artist or the market.

What was in evidence at all times was the belief that art was an area of human activity so sacred that the normal rules that apply to people active in the public domain and the public eye—of responding from time to time to their critics—was deemed not to apply. The fact that I was an award-winning film-maker, making a documentary for the world’s most highly regarded broadcasters, the BBC and Arté, as well as an art critic for Britain’s leading newspapers, did not impress the art world.



The art market benefits in part from publicity—articles praising and drawing attention to art and exhibitions—and from publicly-funded museums, who confer status and value on the art (much of it privately owned) which they exhibit, because they are "independent" of the market. Thus the art market is part and parcel of our democracy, civil society and its institutions. Nevertheless, most of the influential players in the art world will only talk to the media if it is clearly going to promote their artists, i.e. their products.

Britain’s best known gallery, White Cube—which represents Damien Hirt, Tracey Emin and others—refused to talk to me. Neither Jay Jopling nor Tim Marlow (who often has appeared on the BBC and Channel 5 as an arts commentator) would give me an interview. Nor would their press officer. They “politely declined to comment” on my programme. I was turned down by galleries to whose artists I had given enthusiastic reviews in the Evening Standard. I gave the painter Nigel Cooke from Stuart Shave’s Modern Art a 5 star review in 2007, but neither Cooke nor Shave would let me record an interview with them, saying that they “felt uncomfortable” on TV.

I wanted the art world to know my critical views about the booming contemporary art market before I began making my film, because I wanted to see if the art world would answer its critics. The answer was that large parts of it would not. Many billionaire collectors also gave me the brush off. French luxury goods magnates Francois Pinault and Bernard Arnault are happy to open museums to the public to show their collections, but they didn’t want to talk to me about their art collecting. Frank Cohen wanted me to come to Manchester to review his private art museum, but he refused to talk to me about what he bought and sold at auction. Many US hedgefunders like Daniel Loeb ignored or turned down my interview requests, as did the Ukrainian oligarch Boris Ivanishvili, who’d paid $95m for Picasso’s “Dora Maar au Chat,” and Roman Abramovic, who’d paid $86m for a Francis Bacon triptych in 2008. I am grateful to a couple of NY collectors Aby Rosen and Jose and Alberto Mugrabi, the world’s biggest Warhol dealers, for talking to me, and to art advisors Abigail Asher and Todd Levin

I was amazed that Frieze, an art fair that is also an art magazine, and therefore should respect journalism and the freedom of speech, also banned me from filming and refused to give me an interview. The owner of Frieze magazine and Art Fair, Matthew Slotover sent me an email insisting that he would only give me an interview if he could see my finished film before broadcast and then decide if he wanted to be in it.

Finally, public museums across the world blanked me. I asked for an interview with Sir Nicholas Serota, director of the Tate. The Tate’s press office asked to see a list of questions and then told me that Serota would not talk to be because “The Tate never comments on the market.” This, of course, is not a reason: it is a statement. As a public institution, I believe the Tate’s director has a moral obligation to answer questions about commercial issues linked to his gallery, when they come from reputed journalists and film-makers.

I wanted to film an installation of skulls by Damien Hirst at the British Museum, which I thought indicated the way public museums sought to increase footfall by showing artists who’d got media attention derived from the high prices paid for their work in the boom. The British Museum wrote to me that the wouldn’t let me film the work, because Hirst had forbidden it and he owned the copyright.

Finally, I wanted to film on top of the roof of the Metropolitan Museum in New York, which was showing a number of Jeff Koons sculptures all from the collection of hedge-funder Steve Cohen. I wanted to record a piece-to-camera on the roof about Jeff Koons and the contemporary art boom, but when I asked for permission I was told that I could only film there if I was talking about the Met’s exhibitions. In other words, access is contingent on advertorial.

That is not acceptable. Ultimately, the way the art world has isolated itself from public debate has weakened it, and will only serve to undermine the reputations of the artists whom an alliance of billionaire collectors, museum curators, galleries, auction houses and art fair organizers are trying to promote.

I hope you enjoy the documentary, if you are able to view it live or online on Monday. And I will be very interested indeed to see how the art world responds.