ARCO, the art market

Back in the eighties of the last century, when I started studying Fine Arts, from the "distinguished" faculty, they offered us to go for a walk through Madrid, at the recently launched ARCO Art Fair. In those times the Fair was held in the Glass Pavilion of the Casa de Campo, and began its journey with a large part of galleries and Spanish painters, it was far from the macro event that it has become, for the solace of the wealthy people of Madrid, the transporters of objects for Museums and the Art students and cultural subsidized.

I had a second visit, I worked in advertising and tried to escape to Madrid from time to time, from my corner and boring Basque monotony. Already then there was a quantitative and some qualitative leap. I still remember the figuration of the first editions, and then moving on to new lines of business, new positioning of gallery directors, and dynamization of the space.

The next stage in my appreciation occurs when I reengage professionally in painting, and I begin to meet my colleagues in style, here already and in the middle of a decade or so, the enthusiasm for the event tries to maintain itself, but little by little it declines. , the hordes of trash art are definitively installed. The "artists" play with fashions, what if I use the photocopier, what if I use photoshop, what if digital cameras, what if digital collages,... and a long etcetera. I wonder, where are the works that are done with effort and in which there is mastery of language and the way of communicating? Sad answer...

The ARCO fair is not a place to find work in which quality prevails, be it execution, communication, or content, the ARCO fair is a beach bar for certain galleries and certain institutions, to move work, not of quality, but of the desire to move the money of the administrations, state and autonomous communities, of "contemporary" Art Centers, creating the illusion of need for these beach bars and saying that things are done in art. An example is the Reina Sofía Art Center, where thousands of works accumulate in its basements, sometimes bought by weight, and which rot due to their infamous materials. We can also take another tour of the "wonderful" MACBA, and enjoy the meditative silence of its empty rooms.

Sad is this state of the Art, no matter how much the expensive business card that represents the Royal family is passed around, at the inaugurations, only, very occasionally, will you find among the thousands of objects on display, something of real painting, es- culture, design, crafts, creativity,... my recommendation, which is not worth much, do not pay 40 euros to walk through yet another shopping center, hoping to get excited by hitting the food line.

Ariel Cabrera, ARCO 2023