Wealth & Money Quote by Richard Kern

Kern’s blunt conditional - “If I was on the cover of Artforum...” - is less a complaint than a diagnosis of how cultural legitimacy gets minted. He doesn’t romanticize the grind or pretend the work exists in some pure realm of “expression.” He points to a two-tier economy: the art world’s halo of prestige and price on one side, the porn-mag market on the other, with a thin membrane of taste policing what counts as collectible.

The line works because it refuses the tidy myth that transgression automatically converts into acclaim. Kern’s photography has long flirted with the aesthetics of porn - confrontational bodies, raw intimacy, a downtown sleaze that became a style. Here, he’s saying the same eye can be framed as “art” or “smut” depending on who’s buying, who’s publishing, and which gatekeepers are stamping the passport. Artforum becomes shorthand for institutional permission, not just exposure.

“I got to make a living” is the anchor: a working artist’s realism puncturing the glamorous narrative we like to tell about edgy scenes. The last sentence adds a quiet historical note. Porn, once a viable print industry that subsidized certain kinds of photography, is now a diminished market. That shift tightens the vise: fewer outlets for marginal work, more pressure to either court the art economy or vanish into the algorithmic churn of online adult content. Kern isn’t asking for pity. He’s sketching the price tag attached to respectability.