Andrew Graham-Dixon: evaluation

Transcript context

…You see plenty in London. You get around the world. I do, but to be perfectly honest, I’ve spent seven years only looking at archives and thinking about Dutch art, really. I’m currently thinking about a Renaissance artist, but I have hardly seen any modern art at all. What I have difficulty with in contemporary art is the very elevated reputations certain artists have. Because the modern art world seems to be so institutionally rigid. If Museum X has lots of paintings by Richter, Museum Y also does, Museum A, B, C, D, E, they’ve all got lots of paintings by Richter. In my opinion, Richter’s work of the last 20 years is almost worthless. I think it’s just not interesting. I think it’s coasting. I might even go so far as to say it’s almost like printing money. You make these pictures. They’re very mechanically made. They sell for $20 million each. How, within the existing institutions of the art world, is that downgrade going to happen? I can say that, but it’s not going to make any difference. The museums aren’t going to change. Like my book on Vermeer. If people take my book on Vermeer seriously, it means that every caption by every painting on every website of every museum will have to be completely different. Now, I personally think that in 20 years’ time they will be, but I know it’s not going to happen this week or next. How’s it going to happen with these other artists? Take someone like de Kooning, who’s a truly great artist, but as you’ve pointed out yourself, the variance of the works is very high. There’s a lot of bad or only so-so de Koonings. Are those still due for a spill in terms of esteem, price, display, or do you just think the way it’s at, well, he’s de Kooning, we’ll grant him that, and the good ones are good enough?…

Stored transcript either side of the excerpt. The highlighted words are the published quote; the surrounding text is unedited source, never generated.