I was passing by an office building under construction and suddenly an idea came to mind that relates to making works of art. When a building is under construction, do you think the architect and the construction company gather together to figure out the minimal amount of effort and poorest quality materials that will be needed to assemble a building? Construction firms could build a structure, with the thought that after they finish the project, someone else can be hired to fix the deficiencies in the quality of the materials used and the poor techniques they employed to assemble the components. Just get it to look right and hope it holds together long enough for the checks to clear the bank. Fortunately, a sense of integrity, reputation, compliance to building codes, as well as a healthy fear of legal action, govern the construction of most of the commercial buildings erected in the United States today.

Why is it that many artists ignore the notion of integrity, reputation, and fear of legal action? I skipped the building codes because they don’t apply, but perhaps that would not be a bad idea.  Many art schools today impart no sense of the need for “building codes” for works of art. Some schools don’t even make it an academic challenge by confronting students with the exercise of creating works of art that appear to use materials with inherent vice but are really very sound and stable. 

Suppose you were fixated on making an artistic statement where the focus of your work was the typical American hamburger and its potential ill effects on the health and well being of the population. A painted image of a hamburger just wouldn't be enough. You would want it to appear to be a real and tangible object that exudes the essence of hamburger on a bun with all the extras. The simple, short-term answer would be to obtain a real hamburger and mount it, as appropriate, to your artwork. The long-term outcome is easy to figure out. The fresh, glistening, juicy hamburger will, in short order, be reduced to a blue-green, furry biohazard. This could be your intention, but you are likely to encourage the wrath of anyone who has to deal with your artwork professionally——from the gallery director who will have to cope with the byproducts of the deterioration process to the hazmat team that will be called in at some point to deal with the new life form that has established itself on your artwork. Nobody will be happy. Either way, your artwork will be delivered to a “suitable” exhibition space if you find that a garbage dumpster is an appealing alternate art gallery. Unless you are as rich as Warren Buffett and/or have a valued reputation as an artist, nobody is going to put up with your deteriorating hamburger nonsense.

Now let’s go back to something more realistic and equally applicable. Why should artists be afforded the luxury to make objects without thought as to their longevity, leaving the difficult task of maintaining the artist's intent to a future generation of conservators? Conservators will have enough gainful employment treating the fairly stable, natural deterioration of materials found in works of art, without having the challenge of holding together a totally ill-planned nightmare.

As I often find now, it is all a matter of economics. Will a poorly made work of art be worth the money needed to keep it looking the way an artist intended? No standard answer exists. However, unless you, as an artist, have a devoted following, your “brilliant” idea to paint with dry pigment mixed with vegetable shortening may not make it to a museum wall, when a curator and acquisition committee looks at how much it will cost to preserve a painting that is currently “wet” and will NEVER dry.