One man’s search for meaning: Tim Blum and the intersection of art and consciousness
Earlier this month, Tim Blum shocked the art world when he announced his decision to shutter his gallery in the middle of an expansion to New York less than a year after his former partner, Jeff Poe, stepped away. No one knows exactly what to make of it, but two general explanations have emerged.
Two competing narratives emerge
On the one hand are the doom-and-gloom thinkpieces about the reigning model of the commercial art business and the poor state of the market. Galleries are downsizing their staff. Auction lots are going to guarantors despite lower estimates. Dealers are offering larger discounts, and advisors, like Allan Schwartzman, are noticing that established collectors are slowing down. Some blame the U.S. political climate; others point to broader economic malaise.
The counter-narrative that emerged is that Blum had just burnt himself out. Time to move on, retire, open space for younger dealers to enter the scene. It’s a personal decision, the thinking goes, not an indication of anything in the wider industry.
Carrie Scott, who runs art consultancy Watch Seen, thinks the fears of a market collapse are overblown, and cautions us against being too quick to cling to panic. Hilde Helphenstein, of Jerry Gogosian fame, sees it as a warning sign that the art world is going the way of classical music.
Something more subtle is at play
Both are interesting and valid reactions — a mix of confusion, curiosity, and cope — but in the middle of all the handwringing, Blum describes his thinking differently. In a candid interview with Judith Benhamou filmed shortly after his announcement, he revealed something more subtle, yet seismic, at play:
It became much more than all the things we’re talking about for me. It became much more about, “I have lost my core focus and path that I was originally on when I began this thing.” ... My body and brain and soul are calling out for a different experience. And I’m not alone in this …
A lot of the joy and the fun of it is gone, and I’m not using flowery hippie language by any measure. I need to operate in a different way …
Stepping into the void
The interview is a fascinating look at an art dealer at a crossroads. He doesn’t share much about his plans but makes it clear that the commercial art ecosystem, which he admits to having a significant role in creating, has killed his joy.
He’s moving into a borderline-esoteric space that is, arguably, a more natural companion to art than sales and collector services: consciousness and healing.
[My wife and I] have always had this idea of merging art and healing together because I’ve always seen art as a form of healing. One of the most vital things in my life, just like you. It’s as important as medicine. So our particular journey is going to be related to consciousness and a different way to work with artists in the world. It’s not really taking it from a market perspective as the front. It’s much more of a pure zone for a little bit.
I [need more meaning]. This is the quiet part of the art world that a lot of people … don’t acknowledge. They all focus exclusively on the market, which is obviously important to make shit happen. But, for some of us, for many of us still, the quiet part of it is that the market helps pay for the things that we’re passionate about. And so now I need to find a new way that the passion can kind of be self-sustaining, and I think there’s a way to do that actually. …
This is more about me evolving than anything … I’m kind of stepping into the void in a way. I want to function as a man in a different way, and I want to model something different. And it’s not something I’ve invented. It’s something that’s just pouring through me.
There aren’t many public indications that anyone widely shares this attitude, but I trust that Blum is not alone. There are seismic changes taking place in the world at large connected to our search for meaning and the general feeling that the world as its structure doesn’t nurture that. The world is shifting. People are either taking their own search for meaning seriously, or they’re giving up entirely.
Buddha of Medicine Bhaishajyaguru (Yaoshi fo), China, ca. 1319. Public domain. Courtesy: The Metropolitan Museum of Art
HBO’s Hacks and the Catholic question
We saw this as a central theme in the most recent season of Hacks. Episode 7 featured an extended sequence around the christening of Deborah Vance’s granddaughter. Vance’s daughter, DJ, had become a Eucharistic minister, and the scene featured traditional Catholic prayer and communion sequences that were relatively free of ridicule. The comedic relief made Deborah and Ava Daniels, her head writer, look like the ones on the outside.
After the baptism, Vance approached DJ in the atrium where she was selling cross necklaces and bragging about the amount of money the parishioners spend on her products. Even as it offers fair commentary on the commercialization of organized religion, the show’s dialogue subtly hints that mainstream consumers of HBO might be leaning in the direction of belief rather than doubt.
The bottom line is this is important to Aidan and his family. And I don’t think you should be criticizing people for believing in something when you have never believed in anything.
Deborah challenges DJ, asking if she really believes in “all this,” and DJ responds by showing her necklaces made of hematite and seashells saying:
Did you know that seashells grow in the same pattern as the Fibonacci sequence? Are you seriously gonna tell me there’s not a higher power when we are surrounded by all of this crazy freaky hidden natural beauty.
It’s subtle, but significant. And as I’ve said before here on my Substack, I think the commercial art has recently become largely downstream from culture. If HBO says anything about where the winds are blowing, I think Blum’s move is part of this broader shift in the zeitgeist.
Why now?
A lot of artists that I talk to, and nearly all those that I have been working with, are interested in consciousness. It’s topical and relevant. Science is shifting our understanding of how the mind works; new research in quantum physics suggests that consciousness might be non-local. Popular podcasts like “The Telepathy Tapes” are challenging strongly held beliefs in scientific materialism.
Congress is investigating UAP disclosure and cover-ups. Social media is filled with videos of people asking artificial intelligence off-the-wall questions about reality and getting really weird answers. The Matrix films resurged in popularity, tracking with the return of Y2K culture.
Maybe this is all part of the digital panic of ‘99 coming back with the rise of AI. We’re living through a profound technological transformation, and it’s leading everyone to question what it means to be human at exactly the moment that human skills are being rapidly replaced by machines.
Visual artists explore what it means to be human through vision, translating how they relate to the world through sight and perception into material form. The hyper-political focus of the last decade now feels increasingly dated, as artists turn toward more existential themes. And all this at the same time that Blum is stepping away from his commercial gallery to focus on building something that explores the intersection of art and consciousness.
AI and the historical precedent of photography
So what is next for visual art?
I was talking to an artist recently about the parallels between AI and the invention of photography. In the 19th century, the invention of photography led to the fissure between the Modern and pre-Modern periods. Photography freed painting from the burden of realism. It changed our relationship to time, memory and death. The result was Monet’s haystacks, Van Gogh’s “Starry Night,” Seurat’s “A Sunday on La Grande Jatte.” An acknowledgment in paint of the indeterminacy of perception. The inability of humans to see and trust their sight. The fleeting nature of a perceptual moment.
A Sunday on La Grande Jatte, 1884, border added 1888–89. Georges Seurat. Public domain. Courtesy: The Art Institute of Chicago
What will be the impact of AI on older mediums of art? We’re starting to see it with the return of landscape. It won’t be as direct or as literal as it might seem at first blush, and the search for meaning seems to play a role. While gallerists are starting to question their life choices and step into the void to give shape to new ideas about how to do the business of art, artists are exploring what it means to be human the only way they know how: their work.
