Is Low the New High?

By Wendy Cromwell

Do you wear canvas high-tops, or are you all about the upmarket leather sneaker? No matter what type you prefer, everyone wears them! The first high-top was a canvas basketball sneaker designed for Chuck Taylor in 1922. Today luxury brands retail sneakers for thousands of dollars, are traded online and compete at auction. Case in point: in April 2021, a pair of sneakers that Kanye West wore to the Grammys sold for $1.8 million, a world record for sneakers.

This is a clear-cut case of “low,” or mass-market consumer goods, entering the “high” market of unique works of art, vintage cars, and fine wine. Clearly, the boundaries between consumer culture and fine art have collapsed. How did we get here?

Photo credit © SACAI

From the Skateboard to the Sneaker The “high-low” dichotomy was officially applied to art in 1990 when MoMA mounted an exhibition called High & Low: Modern Art and Popular Culture. For the first time in a museum setting, newspaper cartoons, comic books, graffiti, and mass-produced objects from consumer culture were shown side by side with iconic paintings that incorporated “street” sources - think Picasso’s newspaper collages or Lichtenstein’s cartoons.

Thirty years later, the show seems to have predicted the evolution of the art market. From Warhol to Koons, Contemporary art that incorporates mass-market imagery tops the charts.

Photo credit Sotheby’s

Show You the Money

• Andy Warhol, Silver Car Crash (Double Disaster), 1963 - sold for $105 million at Sotheby’s, 2013

• Jeff Koons, Rabbit, 1986 - sold for $91 million at Christie’s, 2019

• Roy Lichtenstein, Nurse, 1964 - sold for $95 million at Christie’s, 2015

• Beeple, EVERYDAYS: THE FIRST 5000 DAYS, 2021 - sold for $69 million at Christie’s, 2021 (Spoiler: this one’s an NFT)

Warhol’s Silver Car Crash set the record for any Warhol at auction, ever. The image was taken from a tabloid photo that shows dead people hanging from crumpled metal (pretty dark compared to soup cans).

Takeaway: Warhol not only understood our fascination with sensational violence, but he also recognized that media images have the potential to transform the way we see; as such, he used familiar imagery to make art that would reach people. For Warhol, there probably never was a “low” or “high” to begin with.

Warhol’s Populist Legacy Warhol was a Populist, similar to Jeff Koons. Pop art lends itself to merchandising, and Koons capitalized on that to reach a wider audience. From the get-go, Koons made “mini” versions of his monumental sculptures that cross over from the “high” world of auctions to the “low” world of the gift shop!

His collaborations run the gamut from beach towels to handbags, to a balloon in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. So if you can’t afford the sculpture, you can still buy the handbag (art collectors ALSO buy the handbags!).

Other artists whose work stems from Pop culture, like Richard Prince, took note of the handbag phenomenon. Missed the drop? You can find your bag on The RealReal or Rebag, fashion’s answer to auctions.

Show You More Merch: The Pop Shop was the first-ever art merch store, brought to us by Keith Haring. When it opened in SoHo in 1986, critics called him a sell-out. But, in fact, Haring started as a street artist and was returning to his Populist roots. Haring opened a second store in Tokyo in 1987, where it was a hit among followers of Otaku, a subculture that embraced futuristic cartoons (Manga).

Fun Fact: It was Warhol, the King of Consumer Culture himself, who encouraged Haring to merchandise his brand. Haring went on to make affordable items like t-shirts, stickers, and buttons with his signature imagery.

Photo credit THE SKATEROOM © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.

Japan and the Rise of Consumer Culture We can’t talk about the “merch” without giving Japan its due. In the 1990s, Japan’s consumer culture, which was youth-driven and open to new ideas and brands, took the luxury goods market to new heights.

Takashi Murakami and Yoshitomo Nara, Pop artists who emerged in Japan in the 1990s, rode the merch gravy train. Alongside their fine art practices, the artists produced toys, keychains, fabric, and t-shirts. These items became widely available at a low price point, instead of needing privileged access to acquire a painting or sculpture through a gallery.

With that, a new model of coexisting “high” and “low” was born! This bridging of street culture and high art in Japan was hugely influential to KAWS, also who was active in Japan at the time.

KAWS and the Contemporary Collectible KAWS, aka Brian Donnelly, started off as a street artist (like Haring, who KAWS cites as an influence). In 1999, a Japanese toy company approached him to collaborate. He produced a vinyl toy, Companion, in an edition of 500, and the rest is history.

Fast Forward: Today, KAWS’ entire artistic production, including brand partnerships and his first museum show, is proof positive that the high-low dichotomy is old news. The artist himself has become a global brand.

Takeaway: In this age of consumer culture, artists have the power to move the merch like never before!

From Low to High and Back Again From Warhol to KAWS, products by Populist artists have never been in higher demand. Sure, a segment of the art world (i.e. abstract painting) will forever remain disassociated with mass-produced, consumer goods. But, Populist artists have broken through the barriers that used to segregate fine art from its street sources.

Today, it would appear that the street - and the sneaker that hits the pavement - are the ones to watch!

Prior to founding Cromwell Art 18 years ago, Wendy Cromwell was Vice President of Sotheby’s Contemporary Art for nearly a decade. She ran a Fortune 500 corporate art collection before that, and consulted for several bluechip art galleries while in graduate school. Wendy received her Master of Arts in Modern Art from the Institute of Fine Arts of New York University and graduated from Smith College with a Bachelor of Arts in Art History. Wendy is past president and current board member of the Association of Professional Art Advisors and a member of the Appraisers Association of America. For tasty bites of art world knowledge delivered to your inbox monthly, subscribe to the Cromwell Art Snack.