I Swear I Never Meant to Do It

One of the most beautiful things that comes of an education in the law is that you spend three years of your life devoting yourself to learning analytic thinking processes. If you're doing it right, you hone your mind to a sharp edge that can slice apart convoluted arguments like knives in those old Ginsu commercials going through the tin can.  And like any good knife freak, you get an ever-so-subtle thrill whenever you unsheath that blade and use it, and before you know it, you have forgotten yourself and done something a little embarassing.

Like writing a comment to someone else's blog post that really, by all rights, needed to be your own friggin' blog post.....

So Hyperallergic (one of my favorite blogs) had an interesting post about the "middle" of the art market and how it is vanishing in the face of the giants like Gagosian, and given that I'd been recently contemplating something a little similar, I was intrigued.

Intrigued enough that I had my own ideas about the matter, which I intended to be a brief, pithy comment.  And then I had my knife freak moment, here with additional commentary [interspersed within the text to make it a real blog post]:

Kyle Chayka does a really good job of aggregating the content with respect to the most current discussions about the effect the high-end buyers and the top tier galleries might be having on those further down the food chain.  It's good to know what the art elites are thinking about with respect to this, because as I've said before, I really don't give a flying fig about big name galleries and uber-wealthy collectors. I am much more concerned with the emerging contemporary artist, the local art scene, and majority of people who try to eek out a living in the art world.

There are two things in play I think with the "middle" of the market at least with respect to the contemporary market -- lack of supply and lack of demand. The lack of supply is really a function of two things. the first is correctly noted above, that galleries, the traditional purveyors of art to the buying public, are finding it difficult to operate in the middle of the market because the business model that sustains that position posits that more successful artists will function as "cash cows" to allow the less notable artists in the gallery's talent pool to build an audience until they can sustain themselves.

The second problem in the "lack of supply" category is simply a dearth of artists who are capable of sustaining a livelihood at the mid-range level. To build the kind of reputation it takes to command the kinds of prices that sustain the "mid range," an artist has to have devoted a lot of time investment in things like an MFA, high-profile residencies, a resume filled with high-profile shows. That takes time. And time is money. In order for an artist to be able to afford that kind of time, he or she needs to be able to forego the dayjob. And unfortunately, in this economic climate, the artist who can sustain herself or himself with just the income of his or her work is dwindling.

Now, for the "lack of demand" issue -- I do think the article correctly notes that some of this is a part of larger economic forces. The affluent art collector who doesn't spend millions but is capable of spending thousands is simply dying in an economy where being a "millionaire" is considered a quaint form of middle class, and to be truly rich, you'd better be able to measure your balance sheet using something more like "b" for "billion." If you have the bucks to buy from Gagosian, you're not going to waste your time as a collector on "cheap" work. Unless....

And here's the other half of the "lack of demand" equation: [lack of] educated collectors. Fewer and fewer people are educated enough about art to undertake the role of collector, [or believe themselves to be]. Indeed, even the role of collector these days is so maligned that even people who can legitimately claim the title in terms of education and finance are loath to accept it. (Interview a collector of mid-range work sometime and see how fast they run from the sobriquet "collector"...) There are collectors out there who take the time and effort to get to know the artists' work, and understand artistic practice, and put thought into how they acquire work and why. But they too are dwindling in number. Chalk it up to any number of culprits -- the lack of art education in schools, which means [those who in previous times would aspire to become] collectors have to take a lot more initiative to even develop a nascent taste for art, or the fact that the contemporary art world often unfairly maligns anyone who doesn't wear their dedication to critical theory and general "art-i-ness" on their sleeve as being a "dilettante." Either way, it's harder than ever to cultivate the truly educated collector that is going to take an interest in work as something other than a pure investment, and honestly, those are the kinds of investors that support the middle portion of the market. The ones with more money want the bigger names, and the ones with less education will not venture far from the lower end of the market for fear of wasting their money.

I take issue with the notion, however, that one can "blame" any one constituency for all this, in whole or in part. It is tempting to blame the rich for wanting to flaunt their status and "good taste" with an elaborate and high-priced art collection. It is tempting to blame high-end gallerists like Gagosian for being greedy and wanting to sell art to people who are all too willing to pay exorbitant prices, or even to blame the artists themselves, for seeking fame and wealth at the expense of artistic integrity.  It's easy to decry the idea that the masses "just don't get it" and the arts don't get nearly the support they deserve from a world that seems increasingly more inclined to celebrate the Philistine over the philosopher.

But it has ever been thus.  Human greed and the resulting economic inequality have been a feature of human civilizations since the advent of humankind, and for centuries the artist and his or her art has always stood as both a commentator and a bellweather of the ebbs and flows of human nature.  And artists and their supporters have been both celebrated and vilified for their ability to move between the worlds of the very poor and the very rich with ease, by virtue of their status as artists.

The fact is, to quote that most underrated of all rock bands, The Jam, "The public gets what the public wants." And that goes for the art-engaged public as much as those ignorant of our rarified little art world. Sure, the world has ever been thus.  And maybe this most recent incarnation of the divide between the haves and the have-nots in the art world is really just "save as it ever was" (Thank you David Byrne) and analyzing it seems like so much hand-wringing.  But the ugly truth no one seems to want to address is that we all contribute to this merry-go-round in big and small ways - by where we place our effort and where we place our attention. By what we will accept as well as what we will decry. 

Maybe it's time to stop worrying so much about Gagosian and Hirst and Koons and the billionaires they feed off of.  Maybe our public discussions of mid-range and emerging artists will have more impact if we stop trying to make them relevant to the overpriced top of the market and start dealing with the issues and problems of these artists and markets on their own terms. 

My 2 farthings, your mileage may vary.

Oh, and Hyperalleric, I'm sorry for hijacking your comment section. I can't help that I'm a knife freak, and I just got carried away.

When Giants Roam the Earth

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.