So Damien Hirst has left the Gagosian gallery
empire, and Jeff Koons and Yayoi Kusama are also on their way out the door as
well. Major press are all aflutter over it – speculating as to whether this is
some new trend for the mega-famous artist, or the demise of a powerful
gallerist, or the byproduct of some art market bubble.
It’s no surprise that people should be
interested. When the guy who can sell a $100 million work of art and owns nearly
a dozen galleries around the globe loses three of his most famous artists in
less than a month, that is the kind of thing that people consider to be news.
The comeuppance of someone wealthy and powerful is the kind of thing that
appeals to the media and to the madding crowds who love a good spectacle laced
with shadenfreude. Why do you think
people still watch “Gossip Girl?”
Carol Vogel in the New York Times, in writing
about the Gagosian defections, seemed to suggest that Hirst’s departure
represented a new development in the relationship between artists and
gallerists – that artists like Hirst have moved beyond the gallery. She quoted
Tobias Myers of Sotheby’s, who called artists like Hirst “self-propelled.”
(Really? What were they before? Were they being shot out of a cannon?) He
likened it to the demise of the Hollywood studio system, when actors became
“stars” and no longer needed the shepherding of movie moguls to reach fame and
fortune.
Felix Simon, a financial blogger for Reuters,
suggests that this is a market correction, and that the real question is
whether the other artists and other galleries in the marketplace can “fill the
void” left by Gagosian’s unexpected losses.
Me, I’m not all that interested in Larry
Gagosian, Damien Hirst, or Jeff Koons. I
honestly couldn’t care less what all the gallery defections mean for the
Gagosian Gallery empire, or whether Damien Hirst left because he felt he was
being held back by Gagosian personally, or because he was simply so famous he
didn’t need gallery representation anymore.
When giants choose to stomp around, I am less concerned with them than
with the ants that might be trammeled underfoot.
Because despite the press’s obsession with
$100 million art sales, gallerists with nearly a dozen galleries around the
globe, and artists who are so rich and famous they can “write their own ticket”
in the art world without representation, that is not the world in which the
majority of artists (or even gallerists) live. The majority of artists, even
those with a modicum of success, are never going to reach the “self-propelled”
status of a Damien Hirst. The majority
of gallerists will never reach the point where the sale of a $1 million work
will be a disappointment because she is more accustomed to selling works for
ten times that price.
In the world in which most artists live, a
profitable relationship with a gallery, once acquired, is not something you
throw away lightly. Not if you ever want to get
to the point where you are not holding down a day job and living off of ramen
noodles. Most gallerists do not scoff at even the $100 sale, because the rent
will always come due and someone’s got to pay for the toner for the printer
otherwise there won’t be a price list for next week’s opening.
On the one hand, the fact that Hirst may be
inaugurating an era where artists have more power and opportunity outside the
gallery system isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The problem is that Hirst’s level
of success as an artist isn’t anywhere near the norm, and the idea that his
relationship to gallerists is instructive at all in the relationships between
artists and gallerists on a more general level is specious.
In fact, the focus the media places on guys
like Hirst as fabulously wealthy powerful players who no longer need the
gallery system is misleading. The top
level artists are perhaps enjoying a level of success that is
unprecedented. But a little further down
the ladder, things have never been harder.
Artists now more than ever seem to have some form of alternate income,
whether it’s a day job or a highly supportive partner – because the number of
working artists who are supporting themselves entirely on their own is on the
decline. The rise of the MFA as necessary credential delays career advancement
and in many cases puts artists in debt. The focus on Hirst belies the truth,
that artists need better career support and more financial models to sustain
their livelihood than ever before.
And what of the gallerists? The line between
artist and gallerist has never been more blurry. The artist-run gallery space
as a category has never been more vibrant, especially here in the DC art scene,
and this is a good thing for artists, and perhaps even for gallerists. Artists come to their relationship with
gallerists more cognizant of the issues that come with running an art space,
and therefore more savvy about what they are bargaining for when they allow
themselves to be represented.
True, the relationship between artist and
gallerist has always been a little fraught with difficulty. But most of the
gallerists I know, the ones who will never have the profile of a Gagosian, who
sweat it out in the trenches every day because they believe in the artists they
represent, their hard work allows the artists they represent to spend more time
creating and less time worrying about marketing themselves, which is the
classic bargain upon which the relationship was first based. While the classic
gallery representation model may not be for everyone, and certainly Gagosian’s
recent losses call into question the viability of the model at the upper
echelons of the art world, that doesn’t mean that gallerists are irrelevant
just yet.
Indeed, the sands are shifting under the feet
of both artists and gallerists. But it’s
not because of the giants like Hirst and Gagosian stomping around. All the
media hype and discussion of what it all means for the art world is actually a
lot of blather. The changing dynamic
between aritsts and gallerists is actually playing out in the corners of the
art world that are rarely featured in the pages of the New York Times, and
which do not inspire financial bloggers concerned with the art marketplace. Guys
like Gagosian and Hirst, by providing cheap drama in rare air with no more
worth than a bad episode of “Gossip Girl,” allow people to be distracted from
the real story about artists and gallerists today. And that’s sad, because in this case, the
ants are much more interesting and important than the giants.
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