plein air landscape painting
Painting From Life vs. From Photos

On Saturday I posted about Ultra Minimal Non-Conceptualism, which I claim is to be the Big New Thing. Yesterday a venture-capitalist art collector (let’s call him S.) contacted me. S. wanted to buy the first exemplar of an Ultra Minimal Non-Conceptual artwork.

We started our discussion of the commission with the most important question: what would the first Ultra Minimal Non-Conceptual piece cost?

I reassured S. that the price would determine the value of the artwork (in this respect Ultra Minimal Non-Conceptualism is conventional). S., a big-time art speculator, wanted an Important Work, so he proposed $–. That seemed okay to me and I sent him an internet invoice.

After this transaction was complete, S. wanted to get a better sense of what he had purchased. He asked me about the concept behind the work.

“There is no concept,” I said, “That’s the whole point.”

“Not even an ’emergent’ concept?” S. asked.

“Not even,” I replied.

S. was silent for a moment. Then he said,

“Okay okay. What exactly is it that I get, I mean, the thing, the work itself?”

I sighed. Collectors, at some level, are all the same — aren’t they? They always want to get their hands on something tangible. I said to S.,

“Listen S–, the material, the real-world component was always the weak link for Conceptual art, don’t you think? Perhaps this is even more the case with Ultra Minimal Non-Conceptualism.”

“You mean, I don’t get anything?” S. raised his voice just a tad. “Not anything at all?”

“No, no, I didn’t say that. Of course there will have to be an artifactual manifestation of your Ultra Minimal Non-conceptual purchase. You just have to understand that it will be quite minimal — otherwise you wouldn’t be getting your money’s worth. That’s not to say the artifact need be small, mind you.”

“Well the, when will this, um, work, when will it be ready?” he asked.

“Shouldn’t take too long,” I said. “I need to complete it before I get an idea of what I am doing.”

“Sounds great to me, Zipser. I’ve got a good feeling we’re gonna make art-history together.”