Trumped

You have to admire The Donald. (How about that comeback in the nineties? and where would his narrative arc be without it?) Trump’s latest venture, the reality TV show “The Apprentice”, invites up-and-coming businesspeople to perform various tasks. The reward for the last person standing is a six-figure salary in one of Trump’s companies.

The show inadvertently generates spectacular performance art: MBAs selling lemonade on the street in Manhattan, for example. The show hits even closer to home for the art world than that, however. A friend alerted me to the concept of Episode 9:

“In front of the world famous Metropolitan Museum of Art, Trump explains the task—each team will interview several budding artists and select one whose work they will showcase and attempt to sell as many pieces as possible during a gallery reception that they throw for the artist. The winning teamâs project manager gets the best reward yet—10 minutes face time alone with Donald Trump.”

While it doesn’t surprise me that the ultimate value of art in Trump’s world is financial rather than conceptual or even aesthetic, as anyone who has ever purchased or sold a work knows, your currency may fluctuate wildly. (and God save you in a few years if you’re a one-trick pony.) A more interesting experiment might be not to sell as many pieces as you can in one night, but select artists with true potential, whose works might be worth much more than you paid (or more highly respected) ten years later. That, of course, would make lousy TV, but more compelling than a simple stock market-style “pump and dump”, no?

Selling to drunk collectors at an opening is one thing, but would the winning artist be able to negotiate a deal to be collected by the aforementioned Met? How would they fare on a peer-assessed jury at the Canada Council, I wonder?

It all makes me want to read “The Art of the Deal”, and continue making my impossible-to-sell work anyway.