New York’s art world collapsed under simultaneous market consolidation and radical politicization

Evidence

On one hand, the art market consolidated. Mid-career stars, whether Pop (Andy Warhol, Claes Oldenburg, hailed by the New York Times as “the Picasso of Pop,” Roy Lichtenstein, one of whose canvases sold for a then record $75,000) or hardcore Minimal (Frank Stella, Don Judd, Dan Flavin), were accorded full-scale museum retrospectives. On the other, the attack on the market and all-out politicization of the art scene “visited something like terror upon dealers and curators, and heartsick or disgusted bewilderment upon apolitical artists.” For the demonstrations of late 1969 had continued. — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 1590

Categorization

• XREF: Crucial for the reader’s test case: avant-garde conditions involved simultaneous market absorption and political radicalism pressing from opposite directions.