Besides the difficulties involved in making art, there are a number of great difficulties in selling it, no less so in a down market with economies constantly on the verge of collapse. One gallerist with whom I am familiar has spent a large part of her spring redesigning the landscape around her gallery, not only to beautify the surrounding area, but also because it provides a good reason to invite her clientele later in the summer to see a new space, drink a glass of wine and discuss the works and new works of her favorite artists. She learned to make the most of a fiscal pinch in order to be invigorated for later.
Who should buy art when pennies are being pinched? Anyone! The fact is if everyone is being careful now is a great time to spend some time that might have been spent in bars with friends or airports for vacations learning about an artist, style or period of art that interests you. You will have the advantage then of going to galleries with better questions that will allow you to better understand what you do like, and how to explain your preferences to a gallerist who is after all only trying to show you pieces that you would like to spend your life knowing. There are some pieces that I would gladly hang in my home forever and by worshipping those pieces in museums I have tried to learn what I am looking for in galleries.
Galleries are similarly trying to re-focus their intentions to help collectors and appreciators admire and understand the value in the works hung. In my experience, large one-time expenses like buying a painting do not break the bank. Rather it is the general daily over-consumption and expenditures that spill from the hand like so much lost time that cause one later to see a dwindling account (okay, that and bad stock market decisions). Don't buy a picture you don't love but do buy one because it does that something which you can't ignore or forget–that will stick with you for life.
And let a gallerist help you understand what you appreciate at the next wine reception for a new re-design, website enhancement or show. Spend the time in the meantime learning what questions you want to ask because it is actually wonderful for them to talk about the works and help you learn the language to describe your own loves.
Showing posts with label gallerist. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gallerist. Show all posts
Hang the Show-Selecting
For several years, or several months, the artist has been producing work. Some is hidden before anyone sees it. It does not even get considered for the final selection. The rest are placed throughout the studio to be studied.
What naturally goes together?
Which ones will someone want to buy because of x, y, z?
Which ones have already been sold and so need others to offer like work?
Which ones are reminiscent of previous work?
Which ones are suggestive of work to come?
How do they go together again?
And if it is done once by the artist, it will be done again by the gallerist, possibly by the gallery, and likely when the show is hung for good measure. The process edits cruelly because each painting was produced at some point with care, and then it gets dismissed, rejected possibly simply for its suitability.
Unless you are one of the required selectors-avoid this time assiduously.
What naturally goes together?
Which ones will someone want to buy because of x, y, z?
Which ones have already been sold and so need others to offer like work?
Which ones are reminiscent of previous work?
Which ones are suggestive of work to come?
How do they go together again?
And if it is done once by the artist, it will be done again by the gallerist, possibly by the gallery, and likely when the show is hung for good measure. The process edits cruelly because each painting was produced at some point with care, and then it gets dismissed, rejected possibly simply for its suitability.
Unless you are one of the required selectors-avoid this time assiduously.
Over Thinking It
Over the course of the latter part of the 20th Century, an attitude of belittlement, destruction, and dismissal produced by extensive philosophizing became the focus of art marketing and art itself. When Marcel Duchamp said that every work of art is finished by the audience, among the things his statement implied, he actually permitted the viewer to have their own experience of the work of art, favorable or not, as opposed to the current belief that art must always be explained by an idealogue, the curator or critic. The dominant voice in art today is no longer the formal bourgeoisie but the pedantic art academics who dictate the terms of the discussion in language that often makes Dada poetry appear the height of clarity.
That a contrast has been made between figurative and conceptual art is dismissive of the amount of conceit involved in producing a figurative work of any quality. Figurative art is not inherently better than conceptual as can be seen by the endless pages of academic painters and their boring still lives. But figurative art has been dismissed entirely to the perplexity of all but the curators and gallerists, who appeal to some secret knowledge and vocabulary in expounding the virtues of the mess they are selling for thousands, if not millions...and always with a large percentage rate for themselves.
That a contrast has been made between figurative and conceptual art is dismissive of the amount of conceit involved in producing a figurative work of any quality. Figurative art is not inherently better than conceptual as can be seen by the endless pages of academic painters and their boring still lives. But figurative art has been dismissed entirely to the perplexity of all but the curators and gallerists, who appeal to some secret knowledge and vocabulary in expounding the virtues of the mess they are selling for thousands, if not millions...and always with a large percentage rate for themselves.
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