In Terms Of

Tag: Auction houses

  • Residual Rights for the Visual Artist—Are They Desirable?

    This text is the first of three that reviews a series of panels on residual rights for visual artists, held in 1974. Read the second and third reports.

    Residual Rights for the Visual Artist—Are They Desirable?
    Monday, October 28, 1974
    New York University, Loeb Student Center, New York

    An array of worthies in and about the art world met at Loeb Student Center for three panels on the question of “rights” for the visual artist. The principal topic, the controversial 15 percent residual payment to the artist on resale of his or her work, is nothing new. However, last year’s historic Sotheby Parke Bernet auction dramatized the issue.

    That was when a Rauschenberg painting, originally bought by collector Robert Scull for $900, was resold by him for $95,000 [actually $85,000]. Rauschenberg was enraged, publicly scrapped with Scull [legend has it fisticuffs were exchanged], and, with his accountant Rubin Gorewitz (“the artist’s accountant”), formed a foundation and went to Washington to lobby for an artists’ rights bill.

    The public had been invited to hear the pros and cons discussed. According to a show of hands, the audience consisted of perhaps 85 percent artists; they came and went in large numbers during the marathon event.

    Moderator: S. Spencer Grin, publisher of the Saturday Review

    Panelists: Paula Cooper, Paula Cooper Gallery; Lawrence Fleischman, director, Kennedy Gallery; Robert Scull, collector; and Ron Gorchov, Nathaniel Katz, Jacob Landau, Peter Max, and Robert Rauschenberg, artists

    jasperjohns0through9drawing
    Robert Scull offered two works by Jasper Johns in the 1973 auction. Pictured here is Jasper Johns, 0 through 9, 1961, charcoal and pastel on paper,  54¼ x 41⅝ in. (artwork © Jasper Johns)

    The panel got off to a late start because Robert Rauschenberg and Robert Scull were still out to dinner—together.

    Then Lawrence Fleischman opened by objecting to the residual agreement, a not-unexpected position for a dealer. Artists would be more hurt than helped, he said; anyway, “90 percent of artworks go down in value.” Paula Cooper was in favor of the 15 percent, but pessimistic about implementation. She has one artist who uses the voluntary contract, but says she meets buyer opposition.

    Jacob Landau thought the only artists to benefit would be the ones who have already benefited from the art boom, the elite few. Rauschenberg was succinct. He was in favor, “and I don’t want to argue about it.” Scull, charming and soft-spoken, had apparently had a change of heart. He now favors some sort of royalty for the artist and said he doesn’t believe it will slow the art market.

    Landau felt it would. He sees a world depression coming [in] which little art will be sold. Rauschenberg countered, “No artist can afford that kind of pessimism.” As for size of the royalty, panelists either agreed on 15 percent or hedged, except Ron Gorchov, who insisted on 50 percent. “Fifteen percent is like a tip!”

    In Terms Of count: unknown.

    Source

    Written by Donna Marxer, this review appeared in Artworkers News 4, no. 8 (November 1974); and was reprinted in Judy Seigel, ed., Mutiny and the Mainstream: Talk That Changed Art, 1975–1990 (New York: Midmarch Arts Press, 1992), 2–3. In Terms Of thanks Midmarch Arts Press for permission to republish this review.

     

  • Art Market Booming, Dealers Say

    This text is the second of three that reviews the first World Art Market Conference, held in 1976. Read the first and third reports.

    First World Art Market Conference
    Friday and Saturday, October 29–30, 1976
    New School of Social Research, New York

    Not only is art alive, it is thriving, was the assessment given by some of the nation’s foremost museum officials, art dealers, and artists to some four hundred persons at the first World Art Market Conference over the weekend. “Far from being less pertinent, the fine arts and the art museum will become more important,” Director Thomas P. F. Hoving of the Metropolitan Museum of Art declared.

    “If the art museum does harness the contemporary tools, techniques, and aesthetics of the very best aspects of communications, it can go beyond art education, art appreciation, and art history and can become the broadest and most powerful communicator in visual history,” Hoving continued. “This will most assuredly be the next great epoch of the art museum.

    However, Director Thomas Messer of the Guggenheim Museum said it will be possible only if museums get enough money to make acquisitions. They are made now, he added, mostly through borrowing, trading, and begging.

    One panel disagreed about the extent of artistic creativity, while another attributed the slump in the art market following the booming 1960s to a return to realistic prices. “I can say the market is on a solid trend now,” John Marlon, president of the prestigious Sotheby Parke Bernet auction house, reported at the New School for Social Research, which sponsored the conference with the ARTnewsletter periodical.

    Speaking of a surge of art interest in the South, dealer Louis Goldenberg, president of Wildenstein & Co., said he was “very, very surprised” at the growing number in the last half-year of private individuals’ buying art destined just for museums. “The market, the future for those museums, is absolutely enormous,” Clyde Newhouse, president of the Art Dealers Association of America, added.

    In another panel discussion, there was accord on New York City as the world’s art capital. But the prominent dealers who participated—among them New York’s Leo Castelli, Chicago’s Richard Gray, Houston’s Meredith Long, and Boston’s Portia Harcus—debated whether it was an art collecting center as well. “Where are the new collectors, then?” Castelli demanded. “Well, there aren’t any. They are mostly elsewhere.” Countered dealer André Emmerich of Manhattan and Zurich: “I think there still are collectors around, perhaps not as spectacularly as there once were.”

    As for new movements in art, Lawrence Rubin, codirector of M. Knoedler & Co., said, “It may very well be that the creation of art in the ’70s is slower, less dramatic.” It would not be the first time, he continued, that creation was at a pause. “The reason the ’70s look slower, it’s because they are slower,” Rubin said. Said Ruth Braunstein, director of San Francisco’s Quay Gallery, today’s artists “will emerge as strong a group as [those which] came out of the ’50s and ’60s.”

    Other panelists included artists Robert Indiana and Deborah Remington, plus George A. LeMaistre, director of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), who foresaw an expanding, profitable role for banks in financing art.

    In Terms Of count: unknown.

    Source

    Written by Malcolm N. Carter, “Art Market Booming, Dealers Say” was published in the Morning Record, a newspaper based in Meriden-Wallingford, Connecticut, on November 1, 1976. The article was distributed nationwide through the Associated Press and appeared in numerous other dailies with headlines such as “Experts Feel Art Thriving,” “Conference Concludes Art Is Alive and Thriving,” and “World Art Conference Paints Rosy Picture.”

  • What Price Art? A Market of Mirrors

    The paper [by Alexandra Anderson-Spivy] excerpted below, an explanation of how to “make a market in a living artist’s work,” was a highlight of the [“What Price Art?”] conference. Further details appear in Ronald Feldman’s truth-in-jest advice later in the year.

    “What Price Art? A Market of Mirrors”
    Friday, April 26, 1985
    What Price Art? The Economics of Art: An Agenda for the Future
    New York University, Graduate School of Business Administration, New York

    The art world in the 1980s at Mr. Chow (photograph by Michael Halsband)
    The art world in 1985 at Mr. Chow (photograph by Michael Halsband)

    Art is a conveyer of status, a vocabulary of power. Men and women of wealth and influence, after they have acquired their money and power, need signs and symbols of their importance. Collecting art is often a way to gain entry into a desired social stratum….

    How do dealers “make a market” in a living artist’s work? With virtually any new painting commanding an entry gallery price of $1,200 to $2,550 (sculpture begins a bit higher), there are price thresholds that a new or unrecognized artist must break through as he or she goes up the ladder. Assuming the dealer truly believes in the quality of the work, he [sic] must publicize this belief through exhibitions, critical reviews, word-of-mouth….

    Dealers try to get their artists’ work seen by museum curators [and get] well-known, serious collectors to buy. Many galleries will only release works by certain artists to certain collectors, recognizing the Doppler effect of those collections. These collectors are also likely to be on museum boards and to encourage recognition of artists they favor at those institutions. Ten percent or 20 percent discounts [or more] off quoted prices to valued customers are common. (I have heard it rumored that some sales are made at up to 80 percent off quoted gallery prices.) Sales to museums at far-below-market prices will permit the dealer to jack up subsequent prices. The aura of market activity can also enhance an artist’s reputation and build market interest. There is a high risk-high reward factor…. Collectors respond to the idea of buying a hot young artist’s work at prices which will escalate rapidly. The idea of investing in contemporary art is rather new, and one which reputable dealers claim they do not use as a sales tool. But the media attention given such artists makes that kind of hard sell almost unnecessary, since speculation becomes a tacit factor in everyone’s mind.

    About three years ago, I noticed a brand new painting by Jean-Michel Basquiat hung in the loft of a famous artist. He said, “This time I wanted to get in at the beginning. I’m tired of seeing the collectors make all the profits.” In three years, Basquiat’s prices have risen precipitously. Sales to major collectors also build an artist’s image and thus allow his prices to rise. Once an artist’s reputation is established, the auction house may play a part. Sales at auction are not only important exposure … they publicly ratify prices. Dealers have been known to put up a work at auction and buy it back themselves simply to establish a price…. If works are “bought in” (i.e., do not reach their reserve price), a certain superficial credibility of price still remains to the public at large. However, savvy collectors who follow auctions closely may then consider a picture “burned,” thus making it harder to sell subsequently….

    Because the “value” of a new work is in fact so much a matter of opinion, those who wish to participate in the game soon discover that becoming an insider, i.e., having access to the informal as well as the formal network of information about the art, is crucial…. In the oddest way, works of art achieve value because certain individuals in certain sectors of the system decide they are valuable, but much of what goes on goes on behind the scenes…. An artist whose production is very small or who shuns the publicity machine [may not achieve] “brand name” status. [Yet] in the long run … mediocre pieces bring mediocre prices and great works bring ever-greater prices.

    warholbasquiatboxing
    Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat (photograph by Michael Halsband)

    Another market factor is the “auction ring.” A group of dealers interested in the same material agree not to bid against one another, assigning one to bid unopposed. After the sale they reauction the things among themselves. [This] is strictly illegal. But, when done skillfully, it is almost impossible to uncover. Auctions have also been manipulated in another way. Dealers bid up prices of their own artists even if they themselves have to buy the work. Then they call claim the auction price as ratifier of prices in the gallery. Or it may be arranged in advance to have people (assigned to go up to a certain price) bid on a work, thus pushing up the price.

    In recent years, auction houses have attracted a much wider public, often competing with the dealer for the collector’s dollars, so that antagonisms between the two have surfaced. Large advertising budgets, increasing media publicity, glossy catalogues, and an aura of theatrical glamour attract high rollers to the auction rooms (recently refurbished) of Sotheby’s and Christie’s. [R]ecord-breaking prices are touted widely, while heavily bought-in sales are played down whenever possible. Auction houses have learned how to use the tools of modern marketing. Michael Thomas, a former investment banker, in a column about the forthcoming Sotheby’s sale of pictures owned by the late Florence Gould, [wrote that] “advance publicity would have us believe that the equivalent of the Jeu de Paume or the Phillips Collection are being disgorged at auction, but by and large … the pictures are pretty and accessible, just the kind of thing with which rich Arabs like to decorate their Home County mansions.”

    The combination of hype to create demand that takes advantage of ignorant, cash-heavy, status-hungry consumers of art is hardly a new one, though it may operate more widely and efficiently than in the days of Joseph Duveen and Bernard Berenson. Policies of full disclosure for critics, scholars, and curators (to reveal any vested interest in art they write about or curate) and for dealers and auction houses might go a long way towards correcting the abuses of the art market as we know it. Meanwhile, caveat emptor remains sound advice.

    In Terms Of count: 0.

    Source

    Written by Alexandra Anderson-Spivy, “What Price Art? A Market of Mirrors” was originally published within Cynthia Navaretta’s “Conference: What Price Art?” in Women Artists News 10, no. 4 (June 1985): 5; and reprinted in Judy Seigel, ed., Mutiny and the Mainstream: Talk That Changed Art, 1975–1990 (New York: Midmarch Arts Press, 1992), 237–38. In Terms Of thanks Midmarch Arts Press for permission to republish this review.

  • The Art Talk That Ate New York

    What Price Art? The Economics of Art: An Agenda for the Future
    Friday, April 26, 1985
    New York University, Graduate School of Business Administration, New York

    Another ’80s workshop on spinning art into gold—and as motley a collection of speakers as one could imagine, even on such a fey topic. As it happens, my community and I recently had dealings with one of them—the representative from the Port Authority—only instead of “Arts as an Industry,” she detailed why our historic district should be trashed for the benefit of the Port Authority. That report, with figures and measurements and citations, was, as we proved in court, a complete fiction, but it served the purposes of those receiving it and became fact. Such diddling is of course hardly news in city politics—or in business and real estate either, as we see increasingly in the papers these days. But in art? Let’s just say the figures here sound official, for what that’s worth, but don’t bet the farm.

    On the other hand, at least from my limited experience, Alexandra Anderson-Spivy’s rundown on the workings of the art market can be taken as a marvel of acute reporting. That is, you’ll love it—and relish the hindsight.

    Cochairs: Kenneth Friedman, publisher of The Art Economist; and Oscar Ornati, professor of management, New York University

    Speakers: Noel Steinberger, Rosemary Scanlon, William Baumol, Michael Montias, A. D. Coleman, Dick Higgins, Ed McGuire, Martin Ackerman, Marshall Kogan, Alexandra Anderson-Spivy, and John Czepiel

    Cynthia Navaretta, “Conference: What Price Art?” Women Artists News 10, no. 4 (June 1985): 4.

    Titled “What Price Art,” and provocatively subtitled “The Economics of Art: An Agenda for the Future,” the conference promised to explore the economics of the visual arts market, with practical details on costs and price structure provided by “national experts in economics, finance, law, public policy, art and journalism.”

    Noel Steinberger, vice president of marketing at Sotheby’s, the world’s oldest auction firm, identified key players in the art game as the media, banks, auction houses, and galleries (notice omission of the artist).

    Rosemary Scanlon, a discussant and chief economist of the New York–New Jersey Port Authority, described her recent study, The Arts as an Industry, made to determine value and economic impact of cultural industries (including theater, dance, music, film, television, and visitors to New York City, but not the city’s art sales or art inventory) on the metropolitan area. Her “conservative” estimate was $5.6 billion. Although hard data is lacking, worldwide transactions in the visual art market are estimated at over $25 billion annually.

    Scanlon’s presentation was followed by floor discussion of the art customer. The important role of the press was briefly touched on as “shaping tastes and spending habits.” Recent studies estimate the number of US art critics at over 2,500; Art in America has counted more than 2,600 critics among its own subscribers. Assuming an equal number might not read AiA could bring the total number of art critics to more than 5,000.

    Dr. William Baumol, professor of economics at Princeton University, and a collector himself, described the art market as an “imperfect market,” i.e., not behaving in a predictable manner, as financial markets sometimes do not. Therefore, he said, “there is no rational way to assign value or to invest” (except, of course, on an aesthetic level). Price information, he said, is beside the point. An unidentified speaker contradicted him on that claim, asserting that price information is “needed for literacy and curiosity.” Baumol added that “the elasticity of supply” is zero for deceased artists and “the holder of a single piece of art has a monopoly on that item,” so the supply of art is fixed.

    Michael Montias, professor of economics at Yale University, rejected the inelasticity theory, claiming existence of a “large supply of paintings on walls, in attics, and museum basements.” New interests (and rising prices) in specific periods cause hitherto unknown works to surface.

    Cynthia Navaretta, “Conference: What Price Art?” Women Artists News 10, no. 4 (June 1985): 5.

    A. D. Coleman, photography critic, added that values change, using as example that van Gogh’s painting (auctioned the previous evening for $9.9 million) was no longer what van Gogh had painted; it has since been certified as a work of art.

    Dick Higgins, writer and artist, noted that “art is one of the only commodities routinely produced at a loss.”

    Ed McGuire added, “The artist does not profit by art, galleries do, museums do, and the collector who uses it as a tax shelter does.”

    Then the topic of whether or not art business and art galleries are profitable, or doing better than in previous years, was tossed around for a while. The editor of City Business quoted a dealer as saying, “A good dealer is one who breaks even and puts in his basement what he thinks will increase in value.” The director of the Berry-Hill Gallery dismissed this as nonsense, saying “any serious gallery” does very well financially.

    Martin Ackerman, attorney, addressed tax policies and changes in tax law by which the Internal Revenue Code says, in effect, that “in death the work of an artist is valued at appreciated retail value, but in life it is valued at the cost of material. This, obviously, has caused artists and their estates to liquidate or even destroy large portions of their work to avoid these unwarranted and unfair tax burdens.”

    With allowable tax deductions for donations of art restricted to “adjusted costs,” museums report drastic reductions in gifts from artists. The Whitney received 142 works in 1969 and 17 (of which 13 were prints) in 1970; MoMA received 47 in 1969, none in 1970. Although art collectors have not yet lost the privilege of this contribution, they frequently encounter hostile questioning by the IRS as to “fair market value.” (Ackerman believes this stems from a probably well-founded IRS belief that all contributions are overvalued.)

    Marshall Cogan, chief executive officer of GFI/Knoll Industries and noted collector, mentioned the amazing growth in museum attendance since the ’70s. He also pointed out that 875,000 people earned over one million dollars in 1985, suggesting that, as income rises, the value of art rises too. Cogan’s recommendation to collectors was to buy “the most extraordinary piece of work available.” He saw a decline in good works of art, attributing current “extreme increases in price” to this scarcity.

    John Czepiel, associate professor of marketing at New York University, quoted something he had read: “It ain’t art unless you have the urge to possess it.”

    Kenneth Friedman, cochair of the conference, summed up: “The art market is poised on the edge of profound change. This is a market moving from its cottage industry phase into something radically different. All other factors in the economy being equal, I predict that the dollar volume of the art market will increase at a rate far better than inflation during the next decade. If this is so, we’re going to need—and we’re going to see—studies in everything from client service by art dealers to credit financing for consumers, from information services, to investment opportunities in the art industry.”

    Perhaps, however, the clearest indicator of art’s new financial status is simply this conference itself. New York University’s School of Business hosted a conference on “art.” Footing all bills, it invited press, dealers, consultants, lawyers, collectors, and bankers to attend as its guests—but no artists.

    In Terms Of count: unknown.

    Source

    Written by Cynthia Navaretta, “The Art Talk That Ate New York” was originally published as “Conference: What Price Art?” in Women Artists News 10, no. 4 (June 1985): 4–5; and reprinted in Judy Seigel, ed., Mutiny and the Mainstream: Talk That Changed Art, 1975–1990 (New York: Midmarch Arts Press, 1992), 236–37. In Terms Of thanks Midmarch Arts Press for permission to republish this review.

  • Hitting Rock Bottom

    From the Bottom Up: Rethinking Art Galleries in a Commodity- and Event-Dominated Ecosystem
    Friday, March 7, 2014
    Armory Show, Open Forum, New York, NY

    “Welcome to the Armory Show TED Talks,” joked Christian Viveros-Fauné, a New York–based art critic who was the moderator of today’s panel. He said that everyone onstage for “From the Bottom Up: Rethinking Art Galleries in a Commodity and Event Dominated Ecosystem” is or was involved in exhibiting in a gallery situation or with an art fair, except for Georgina Adam, a columnist for the Financial Times and BBC.com and an editor-at-large for the Art Newspaper.[1] If only the panel had been, like a TED Talk, uplifting and inspirational. When the dust settled, the speakers neither established a historical assessment of the art fair’s ascendance over the past twenty years, nor did they interrogate—and I choose this word purposefully because of Viveros-Fauné recent cynical, under researched rants—the perceived state of the art market and art world.[2] While I recognize the panelists witnessed the rise of the art fair firsthand, their recollections of the recent past were grounded in anecdote, hearsay, and received wisdom.

    History of Art Fairs

    In 1970 art fairs took place in Cologne, Basel, and Antwerp, Viveros-Fauné claimed. By Viveros-Fauné’s count, 55 art fairs were held in 2001, 68 in 2005, 189 in 2011, and 300 in 2014. Galleries, which he said now number about 300,000 worldwide, need the art fair to sell work. I wondered where these figures came from and how a “gallery” is defined. The first Art Basel Miami Beach would have been held in December 2001, Viveros-Fauné recalled, but it was canceled because of September 11–related complications. An upstart group called Fast Forward couldn’t afford to back down that year and consequently hosted the “first” art fair in south Florida.[3] Viveros-Fauné and Kavi Gupta, director and owner of Kavi Gupta Gallery in Chicago and Berlin, participated in Fast Forward that year. “It grew exponentially overnight,” Gupta remarked. Collectors back then, he noted, were more enthused about finding new art than in securing investments. Adam said that she attended her first Miami art-fair week in 2003, watching from the sidelines as a reporter. The art-market boom, when collectors ran like greyhounds to the hot booths immediately after the fair gates opened to meet their prearranged five-minute reserve, took place through 2007. The Great Recession curtailed this heated contest, temporarily.

    Golden Years

    Viveros-Fauné asked the panelists to talk about those golden years. Darren Flook, cofounder of the Independent Art Fair and formerly director of HOTEL, a gallery he operated with Christabel Stewart, made his first appearance at Zoo Art Fair in 2004. His London gallery, located in a first-floor apartment, was visited only by other artists and magazine people. He did not meet collectors with cash until he showed at Zoo: “We didn’t know those kinds of people—doctors in Cologne, [various types of professionals] in Los Angeles—that didn’t come to East London.” Carlos Durán, the director and owner of Galeria Senda and a cofounder of LOOP, a fair for video art, entered the art world in Barcelona in 1992. His gallery eventually moved into the German and French art-fair circuit. “I’ve been watching this monster grow,” he said. “I’m part of the monster[’s] … foot.” The joke fell flat footed.

    The growth of art fairs has been rapid and marvelous over the first decade of the twenty-first century. Viveros-Fauné described the bidding wars over works of art, with people shouting higher prices over other people’s shoulders. “It was ridiculous—but it felt good at the time,” he said as he reminisced about his past life as an art dealer for Roebling Hall. He turned to Gupta and asked, “When did the idea for Volta come on?” After doing his first NADA fair, the Chicagoan replied. (They are talking about Volta in Basel, founded in 2005, not the New York event, first held in 2008. Volta in both cities focus on solo and two-person booths.) Gupta felt he was filling a need for galleries that were doing important things but hadn’t flagged the attention of patrons and museums. Viveros-Fauné asked him to describe the environment for galleries. At the time, Gupta responded, there was no Frieze Art Fair, and Art Basel was very small—primarily New York galleries showed there. Apartment galleries were gaining traction and attention, he remembered, as well as young galleries in Chelsea, Los Angeles, and London.

    Despite this first-hand knowledge of recent history, Viveros-Fauné and his speakers did little to establish the basic facts or a straight chronology for art fairs, pulling counts of galleries and fairs from thin air. Perhaps an intrepid scholar will take up the task, connecting our current situation to the Parisian salons and Refusé exhibitions of the late nineteenth century and to the Salon and Gallery Cubists of the early twentieth.

    Helen Allen, the founder and principal of Allen/Cooper Enterprises and Site/109, grounded her observations in the 1990s, an era when [younger] galleries were getting locked out of the bigger fairs. The Armory Show was founded by dealers rejected by the Art Dealers Association of America’s annual Art Show. The process is cyclical, and everyone tells the same story. The received wisdom is that galleries prove their reliability by showing up at art fairs for three consecutive years for face time with collectors. The art-fair model resembles the farm system of professional baseball: dealers play in several tiers of minor leagues before hitting the majors. Flook shared his experience putting together the Independent Art Fair, which he founded with the New York dealer Elizabeth Dee in 2009. Their approach was stripped down: Independent got rid of the sales catalogue (with phone numbers for galleries), the VIP benefits, and the walled booths and worked backward. The focus was on exhibiting art, and people like the approach and format.

    Viveros-Fauné asked his panelists about sales. How do they look now compared to 2002 or 2003? Flook said he sold work at the fairs but not from the gallery’s physical location. But, he added, dealers who sold out their booth were “talking about a mystical city far away,” as if this kind of economic success were a myth. “An El Dorado,” replied Viveros-Fauné. “With bad food,” Flook continued. “Rice and beans,” topped the critic. I understood this exchange to mean that dealers inflate their business activity at art fairs—they fake it till they make it. Half of Durán’s sales in 2008 came from his gallery, he said, and the other half from fairs. Now the percentage is 85/15—the fairs dominate. He mysteriously thinks this tendency will change, or he hopes it will change. Regardless, Durán has become more selective about the fairs he participates in, and further hones his program. Adam believes that art fairs should serve the dealer but that dealers cannot sustain the rigorous schedule of international events. “I’ve been told that galleries are pulling back,” she said. Flook knew that New York didn’t need another art fair but felt he had something to add to the dialogue. Allen pointed out the obvious: artists are pressured to produce work for fairs—gasp!

    Brick and Mortar Spaces

    Are we in the twilight of the brick-and-mortar gallery? Not yet. Allen confirmed that art fairs don’t accept exhibitors that don’t maintain a physical space. Flook argued that galleries are social, conversational, and idea-charged spaces that foreground the “placement of certain objects by individuals,” or something like that. When pressed by Viveros-Fauné, Flook said that the Independent would accept a group without a gallery as long as that group had a social structure, whether online or off, that generated dialogue.

    At fairs, art is seen for four days, or as a JPEG, Viveros-Fauné disclosed, before it enters the collector’s castle. He wondered where if dialogue is happening there. As a journalist, Adam doesn’t write about art fairs, whose crowded booth format and brief encounters with objects “put enormous demands on viewers.” Perhaps she hasn’t been to Chelsea lately, where visitors may spend all of two minutes viewing a show before strolling to the next gallery. The most important aspect of fairs, she concluded, is a dealer choosing to represent an artist shown by another dealer. Unpacking this echo chamber of consensus would take some time. Flook made an asinine claim that “art is an expensive product no one really needs,” taking an incredibly narrow view of art.

    Most people would agree that art fairs are hamster wheels—so much energy is expended for so little yield. Someone brought up an article by Adam Gopnik—actually written by his brother Blake—that quoted the former art dealer Nicole Klagsbrun: “stop it.”[4] What can the lovers and sellers of art do? Allen described friends who are closing their gallery to start a residency (and also placing their artists with other galleries). Artists are getting into museum shows as a result. Flook witnessed the spectacular bust of a gallery (what it his own?). But with “a certain affection for empty buildings,” he cannot help but to fantasize about their potential when looking through the windows of them when walking by them. He pondered aloud about running a business without making money. “I wish,” fawned Viveros-Fauné wistfully, “there were more of you.”

    Financial Speculation

    Allen commented (again) on the love of art versus buying for investment, but there is money to be made and attention to seek. Art magazines have advertisements from not only galleries but also “BMW commercials and fashion commodity,” she said. Publications, however, have accepted publicity dollars from nonart business for decades. Viveros-Fauné affirmed Allen’s notion of art as financial instrument, finding a correlation between the financial and art worlds, which is “the huge, massive elephant” in the room. Adam linked luxury goods such as haute couture to the top end of the art market, where “there you’ve got commodification—there’s no doubt. The question is how you deal with it.” Viveros-Fauné also cited a rise in art crime as an indication of pecuniary worth, without providing police reports. Adam noted an increase in art litigation. Viveros-Fauné said that the public looks at us [who?] as the 1 percent, no matter how wonderful everyone on the panel is. Speculation has been an art-world subject for over sixty years—if not longer—and the panelists talk about it as if it were something new.

    The panel has identified the problematic areas—really!—and then discussed the changes that must be made. A recent Huffington Post article “paints a really bleak picture,” Viveros-Fauné cried. We complain about a model that works, Gupta said. What about a return to art for art’s sake? “I don’t know,” Gupta conceded. Viveros-Fauné demanded that art should not be sold to speculators or to people younger than thirty-five years of age. What a meanie he is, with all those rules!

    Durán said there are significant issues with big galleries, when an artist’s career rises. Viveros-Fauné wondered what happens to the middle tier, as if he was a politician wooing middle-class votes. Allen said that middle-tier galleries close when bigger galleries poach their artists. What happens, she asked, when artists are asked to represent a country [in an international biennial]? Can a small or mid-sized gallery come up with $300,000 to fund the project? I wonder why an invitation to exhibit in a major international showcase doesn’t come with funding for the artist, or if artists at such a high level must still work for exposure.

    In many businesses in America, people change jobs regularly. Say I work for a company for five years and get a better offer for my services somewhere else. Do I take that job, which has more money and better opportunities? Why is it an ethical issue when an artist jumps ship? Does employment by art galleries offer the same kind of job security and opportunities for promotion that a corporation does? When you think about it, have artists ever been company or union men? Flook said job-hopping happens so quickly, so often, and that younger artists just don’t understand why some old guy would have a moral or ethical issue with this. Artists have a “corporation me” attitude that was unthinkable twenty years ago. Yet, Flook conceded, “You can’t really argue against it.” Applications for art fairs cost big bucks, which steer the odds toward the bigger gallery, which will win. Again, a myopic understanding of business world that pretty much anyone with a job is a part of fails because the art-world folks can’t see beyond their little sphere.

    A self-identified businessman and art collector in the audience said whether it was art or a cheeseburger, he wants “relative value” for his money. The art fair, he continued, is a remarkably inefficient way to acquire art—but didn’t explain why. He wants art and access to artists (I think), but he doesn’t want to run in and out of galleries. It seemed like collecting wasn’t exactly a leisure activity for him. Gupta said that fairs are filtering systems run by the people who spend time with art twenty-four/seven. But he also encouraged collectors to visit alternative and artist-run spaces. Keeping up with contemporary art takes a lot of time.

    Possible Solutions (Again)

    Flook wondered what success is and how do we measure it. Value self-corrects itself, he said. Okay. The artist Theaster Gates does marvelous things with money, Viveros-Fauné said, working on projects that don’t always produce objects for sale via Gupta’s gallery. It’s an interesting model for people to wrap their head around, he marveled, seemingly unaware of the rich history of dealers, gallerists, and curators, from Seth Siegelaub to Robert Nickas, who have long operated as art dealers without a gallery. Others, such as Virginia Dwan, John Gibson, and Howard Wise, have found a way to sell art made outside, and can’t be presented in, the white cube. Progressive minds in the early 1970s were predicting the end of brick-and-mortar spaces, yet today’s dealers continue to marvel at the potential of the idea.[5] I am not suggesting that an art dealer needs to know the history of the business, but commercial art galleries are not terribly old—one hundred years or so, right? The historical amnesia exhibited by the panelists was astounding.

    Durán said Brazilian galleries are sharing costs instead competing against each other. Perhaps galleries can run careers like the music industry, he offered, presumably like agents and managers instead of record companies, whose twentieth-century business models have floundered over the past fifteen years. In a conservative move, Durán suggested people become antiglobal and get back to their roots, cultivating audiences for your shows, returning to the good old days of slow culture that had disappeared with the rise of the art-fair monster. Allen mumbled something about travel, the internet, phones, always being connected, and having to respond immediately. People today don’t experience experiences in person: “They’re looking at sunsets through the Instagram app,” she astutely and stunningly observed. Flook countered by saying that, in his personal survey, people won’t pay for songs and films but will shell out $200 for a live show. Or $40 for an art fair, which is this year’s admission for the Armory Show.

    In Terms Of count: 3.

    [1] The panel was presented by an organization called Talking Galleries, the International Platform for Gallerists.

    [2] See, for example, Christian Viveros-Fauné, “How Uptown Money Kills Downtown Art,” Village Voice, February 6, 2013; and “Art’s Big, Dirty Secret,” Village Voice, January 1, 2014.

    [3] Fast Forward, Kavi Gupta and Viveros-Fauné claimed, evolved into the New Art Dealers Association, or NADA.

    [4] Blake Gopnik, “Great Art Needs an Audience,” Art Newspaper, February 13, 2014. For more on Nicole Klagsbrun closing her gallery, see Charlotte Burns, “Nicole Klagsbrun to Close Gallery after 30 Years in the Business,” Art Newspaper, March 28, 2013.

    [5] The April 1971 issue of Arts magazine devoted its entire editorial content to galleries to describe their approach, strategies, and thoughts.

    Read

    Charlie Finch, “Survival Strategies,” Artnet, January 12, 2009.

    Steven Zevitas, “The Things We Think and Do Not Say, or Why the Art World Is in Trouble,” Huffington Post, February 28, 2014.