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Lessons I learned working at an art gallery

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Re: Lessons I learned working at an art gallery

#141

Post by Aunche »

krisoft wrote: post #38

The problem here is that I don’t trust the author on being able to tell who is the “best artist”. Clearly he has opinions. But for example in point 3, he says he can predict which exhibition will be great based on how easy it is to work with the artist. He predicts that some exhibition will be crap and he is right! Which sounds impressive until you notice that he is not measuring his judgement against something objec…

> There were plenty of people who we now recognise as “great artist” who absolutely could not figure out where the “incentive vectors align”. Thus they lived in abject poverty, or needed to support themselves from something other than their art.

I don't think this is particularly true anymore. Most of the canonical artists of the past century were successful during their lifetimes. The ones who weren't either died tragically young (e.g. Basquiat), or didn't care for exposure much at all (e.g. Hilma af Kint).

Re: Lessons I learned working at an art gallery

#142

Post by burkaman »

ValentinA23 wrote: post #114
blitzar wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess this is why a sucessful genius can tape a banana to a wall while a run of the mill worker can only restore Notre Dame to its original state.

This is a reflexion I made to a friend yesterday: the banana doesn't improve the state of art over Duchamp's Fountain. The real artist, in this case, is the guy who paid 6 millions to eat the banana !

The guy that bought it is not an artist, he was just trying to distract from some good-old-fashioned corruption: https://popular.info/p/a-chinese-national-charged-with-fraud

Based on the coverage of his purchase it seems like he succeeded.

Re: Lessons I learned working at an art gallery

#143

Post by cpach »

plagiarist wrote: post #90
blitzar wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess this is why a sucessful genius can tape a banana to a wall while a run of the mill worker can only restore Notre Dame to its original state.

The world is pretty disappointing in that way. All my life I have been thinking I should develop good skills in my career. But actually I should have been learning how to make connections and talk to people. There's no chance of me selling a single banana for that much. But I could be making a multiple what I do now.

Why not do both?

Re: Lessons I learned working at an art gallery

#144

Post by numpad0 »

llamaimperative wrote: post #89
blitzar wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess this is why a sucessful genius can tape a banana to a wall while a run of the mill worker can only restore Notre Dame to its original state.

No that is more about money laundering

let's buy that argument for discussion's sake, that doesn't contradict with the notion that networking is important.

Re: Lessons I learned working at an art gallery

#145

Post by atoav »

irjustin wrote: post #55
krisoft wrote: post #38

The problem here is that I don’t trust the author on being able to tell who is the “best artist”. Clearly he has opinions. But for example in point 3, he says he can predict which exhibition will be great based on how easy it is to work with the artist. He predicts that some exhibition will be crap and he is right! Which sounds impressive until you notice that he is not measuring his judgement against something objec…

> But if your definition of “great art” is that it is commercially succesfull then of course what you will find that the “great artist” are all like good businesman. While the author doesn't explicitly define what is "great", I 100% believed that what it is defined as. That "great" is being commercially successful. The article is premised around running a non-profit art gallery in a struggling municipality. That he d…

On which timeframe tho? Many great artists did not sell well during their lifetime, Van Gogh being the most famous example.

Was Van Gogh a great artist because at some point in the future his works are among the most expensive ones ever sold sold? Or was he a bad artist, that turned great after his death when the market favored him more?

If it is the former, every artist could potentially sell well in the remaining time of human civilization — how far in the future do you draw the line?

If it is the latter then we get the paradoxical situation, that the same work can be both great and bad depending on the observers time reference. So the same painting is bad, until someone "discovers" it and manages ro produce economic hype around it.

As someone with a MA of art who has probably seen more exhibitions than most people on this site (including the last 5 Biennales and the last 3 Documentas) my guess is: great art is great even before it is commercially successful.

Whether it then turns out to be economically successful as well (and when) hinges on many different factors, like the Zeitgeist, pure chance, where it was exhibited or next to what it was exhibited, how the galerist treats the work, how much the artist puts on the market, how the market feels at the time when it is shown etc.

The "greatness" of the work is only a very small factor in the economic success it has, some would even argue it doesn't matter as much as one would think.

But all of that matters on how we define "great". If you are a rich collector that sees art as an investment it is just about the numbers, then great art is only art that you have and that sells for more than you bought it. You'd define it differently depending on who you are: artist, art historian, galerist, lay person, crafts person, journalist, copyright lawyer, restaurator, ..

Re: Lessons I learned working at an art gallery

#146

Post by pbhjpbhj »

tayo42 wrote: post #131
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not professional artists (in the UK)? Curation is a separate skill, and you're paying through the nose for the gallery's services, usually.

it depends, but i tried to sell my paintings at local galleries and some wanted me to do things like that

Are you a professional [earning most of your money through your art]? Which country do you live in please?

I've only seen the self-curation from community groups. I'm all for collectives but I'm pretty sure the professional artists I know would say it gives off budget/desperate vibes and so it's something you can't afford to do if you aspire to 'make it [big]'.

{I express myself through overuse of parentheses and through runon sentences...}

Re: Lessons I learned working at an art gallery

#147

Post by Aunche »

llamaimperative wrote: post #89
blitzar wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess this is why a sucessful genius can tape a banana to a wall while a run of the mill worker can only restore Notre Dame to its original state.

No that is more about money laundering

Whenever an absurdly priced work of art makes it to the news, laypeople immediately jump to the explanation of money laundering, but any artist, art purchaser, or even money launderer would know that this is ridiculous. You'd be an idiot to launder their money in the most publicized auction in the year. If you wanted to launder money, it would most likely be through low-profile private sales.

Re: Lessons I learned working at an art gallery

#148

Post by djtango »

Arkhaine_kupo wrote: post #88
djtango wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is art really about craft anymore? There's certainly an element of it but it's gotten very meta and abstract these days. What is the craft in a dirty bath tub or a robot endlessly sweeping liquid? Better yet what's the craft in a white canvas: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_invisible_artworks I'm actually not denying there's art here, sometimes I "get it" but the art of today has gotten very conceptual and m…

> Is art really about craft anymore? It never was, but it is still important as it always has been. > There's certainly an element of it but it's gotten very meta and abstract these days. Art is about many things. I agree that a lot of art can be esoteric nowadays, mostly because its in conversation with specific things, so it can feel like an inside joke, or a private conversation you are not privy to. If I make an…

Thanks for the thoughtful reply. I think you've addressed to some degree what I was trying to think around. That art may be difficult to evaluate in its time. Monet may have been a counter culture artist in his time but today he has a somewhat universal appeal. Is that cultural? Are we now primed to like Monet because people have told us to like Monet?

No doubt in his time there were factions, those who pandered to the institution and those who fawned over innovation and originality. I'm sure these cycles occur in every present.

So then what will be remembered from our time? As you say a lot of today's art is esoteric and holding a conversation not all of us are privy to.

I also agree that to some extent we do now have the most art we ever could have. The internet and the creator economy has unlocked creativity in many ways. I recall some discussion the other day about the "hollowing out of the middle" in musical instrument proficiency, and more widely a lot of other skills. Technology and convenience has eradicated a need for many skills at a "mediocre" level but we also have more access to information and learning than ever before.

Re: Lessons I learned working at an art gallery

#149

Post by jchmbrln »

balderdash wrote: post #7

I enjoyed reading this, but I felt that 90% of this person’s experience was simply the result of being a real contributor in an organization with non-existent expectations/completely un-optimized state/no other real contributors. In other words it’s easy to make a difference as a high performer in a low performance organization. Again not detracting from this persons achievements, I just don’t think these most of the…

> In other words it’s easy to make a difference as a high performer in a low performance organization.

And yet, the big takeaway for me is that to be a high performer it isn’t enough to A) know what needs to be done, or B) be able to do it well. The key is C) figuring out the incentive landscape.

His story of carving out his own job only to find he had no support from the board is what I’ve tried before. In my low performing organization, I thought I could be a high performer by knowing what needed to be done and doing it well. Everybody I directly worked with loved me and thought I was highly effective, but I never made any lasting change like this author. I didn’t understand the need to skip way up the levels until I was already burnt out.

Re: Lessons I learned working at an art gallery

#150

Post by robenkleene »

Aunche wrote: post #141
krisoft wrote: post #38

The problem here is that I don’t trust the author on being able to tell who is the “best artist”. Clearly he has opinions. But for example in point 3, he says he can predict which exhibition will be great based on how easy it is to work with the artist. He predicts that some exhibition will be crap and he is right! Which sounds impressive until you notice that he is not measuring his judgement against something objec…

> There were plenty of people who we now recognise as “great artist” who absolutely could not figure out where the “incentive vectors align”. Thus they lived in abject poverty, or needed to support themselves from something other than their art. I don't think this is particularly true anymore. Most of the canonical artists of the past century were successful during their lifetimes. The ones who weren't either died tr…

I agree with this. I'd be curious if you have any hypothesis about why exactly that is? Personally, I can think of three possible reasons but I'm not convinced by any of them:

1. It's became harder to distinguish quality. Artist training has been streamlined, so technical excellence (which is easier to evaluate) isn't novel anymore. So that means determining quality of art now depends on more difficult to evaluate criteria.

2. Art moves faster now, so it's harder to have an influence on the art world (one of the ways an artist becomes famous) posthumously, because by then the art world has probably moved on from the state where the art would have impact.

3. We're just better at discovering artists. E.g., low-barrier to entry for digital distribution means it's easier for artists to find an audience.

Any thoughts?

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