Marc Henry | Spark Art Fair 2024

Dear Marc,

Sitting here in the heart of Vienna, with Munich to the west and London further along the way towards Lower Manhattan where Di Modica left his Charging Bull made of bronze on Broadway, in the image of the great golden calf those folks worshipped while daddy was up talking to God on Mount Sinai, way before there were any wolves on Wall Street.

Maybe things aren’t as belligerent as they were in the 80s, maybe now they’ve got it down to a sterile science. Since coming out of the dust bowls of the 20s, there doesn’t seem to be no room for cowboys, or bulls, or bears around these carefully constructed houses of cards. 

I’m not exactly sure how you must feel about Arturo’s great, glorious symbol of financial optimism. But judging by these paintings, you must have learned a thing or two and made a couple of observations about some of these more contemporary financial institutions while studying money in school back in Germany or up in Sweden.

Did they manage to pass on the same fatherly warnings of Hubris that Icarus ignored? What sort of instructions were given to those meant inherit the world as it stands, or rather teeters, as the credit lines max out and the divine debt collection begins to feel imminent.

What were you doing, messing around, pushing pigments into canvas while you were meant to be learning about price controls and inflation; supply and demands and perfect and imperfect competition? God only knows it must be helpful to understand what a dollar’s worth and why when you’re busy giving objects value with your time, energy, and linseed oil.

Your Father might have been right to push his son towards an education in economics.

And I wonder which is more ruthless - the trading floors at New York stock exchange or Danny Richter’s class full of young folks trying make it as artists. And I wonder if it even matters. And I wonder if it’s all the same at the schools for the economists and the ones for the artists. 

What’s the difference anyway, between the land of boom and bust and the modern market for Bildende Kunste. You know what they say about the rising tides and all the ships and the trickle down and the credit systems invented to explore the America’s and the ones invented there in the new world..

Let me propose a toasts; to the painters and the sculptors and everybody else who’s preoccupations result in the the creation of objects that can be bought and sold on the free and open market like war bonds and cobalt and carbon credits and big fancy flats in the Vienna’s historic first district. God bless it. 

So here's to the bullpens and the stretched linen, to the bear markets and the bold colors, and to finding value in the valueless, making sense of the senseless. It's all some sort of game anyway, and maybe that's the point – not to win, but to play, to participate in the good ol’ act of creation, whether it's with a brush or a banknote.

Looking forward to that bottle, who knows, maybe by the end of the night, we’ll have made heads or tails of the great casinos that have been built up on foundations of those magic little pocket-sized plastic pieces that seem to hold it all together at the moment, or at least have had enough wine to believe we have.

Bussi,

- Kyle