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Lessons I learned working at an art gallery

henrikkarlsson.xyz

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Re: Lessons I learned working at an art gallery

#151

Post by llamaimperative »

Aunche wrote: post #147
llamaimperative wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I agree that any individual piece is not guaranteed to be laundering, but the market as a whole is definitely pushed upwards by more factors than people's desire for historical artifacts or decoration.

In any case, in the true upper end of the market, most of these auctions are publicized but the buyers are behind many layers of indirection.

Re: Lessons I learned working at an art gallery

#152

Post by neaden »

Aunche wrote: post #147
llamaimperative wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In this specific case we know who bought it Justin Sun. He's a Hong Kong based cyrptocurrency investor who ate it. So it seems like in this case it was more about getting some press, and probably a bit of distraction against some of the allegations against him.

Re: Lessons I learned working at an art gallery

#153

Post by neaden »

lancesells wrote: post #106
llamaimperative wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No that is more about money laundering

It's more about people with a lot of money hoping to sell it for a greater return, while maybe also having shit taste in art. In five years it'll be at an auction and sell to some other person with too much money in hopes of making a profit on it later on.

The guy who bought it, Justin Sun, ate it. So unless it's going to get really meta (and stinky) he's not going to resell it.

Re: Lessons I learned working at an art gallery

#154

Post by munificent »

llamaimperative wrote: post #93
magicalhippo wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He writes “What you see in the biographies of great artists, great writers, great anything is that they are good at figuring out where the vectors align.” Which is just plainly and absolutely not true I take it the author means "great" as in "successful".

It is not true in that case either, or at least “successful” is still poorly defined. It’s defined implicitly in this blog as commercially successful within the timeframe I had to sell their art. Which is a perfectly defensible definition, but should be explicit so people know what argument they’re hearing.

It was clear to me from the article. The very next section is about how being economically sustainable is important if your goal is to maximize the amount of art you can present to a community.

Re: Lessons I learned working at an art gallery

#155

Post by blitzar »

neaden wrote: post #153
lancesells wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more about people with a lot of money hoping to sell it for a greater return, while maybe also having shit taste in art. In five years it'll be at an auction and sell to some other person with too much money in hopes of making a profit on it later on.

The guy who bought it, Justin Sun, ate it. So unless it's going to get really meta (and stinky) he's not going to resell it.

That would be a piece of art.

Re: Lessons I learned working at an art gallery

#156

Post by riazrizvi »

thih9 wrote: post #140
riazrizvi wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the point is more that there are indicators that a person is in conflict with their own mission. Struggles to respond, complains, focuses on the immaterial. I think OP is completely right. When a person is aligned, they get out of their own way, this people are easy to differentiate. One produces mediocre work, the other produces great stuff. I also agree it’s within the power of the individual to be either.

I like this view. Still, this seems a way of reasoning about that artist’s success at that particular gallery - perhaps the artist is busy with art projects that are better aligned with them.

Quite likely, though I think we are talking about different things. OP and I are talking to shared alignment, where they came together to sell art for mutual benefit and how to spot good partners to work with. Sure if a partner isn’t good for you, they might have other places where they work well, but I think that’s out of scope to the article IMO.

Re: Lessons I learned working at an art gallery

#158

Post by llamaimperative »

numpad0 wrote: post #144
llamaimperative wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I wasn't trying to contradict that

Re: Lessons I learned working at an art gallery

#159

Post by lancesells »

neaden wrote: post #153
lancesells wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more about people with a lot of money hoping to sell it for a greater return, while maybe also having shit taste in art. In five years it'll be at an auction and sell to some other person with too much money in hopes of making a profit on it later on.

The guy who bought it, Justin Sun, ate it. So unless it's going to get really meta (and stinky) he's not going to resell it.

Net worth $1.6B. So eating a $6M banana is a PR stunt.

Edit: Also doesn't mean it can't be resold as that banana gets replaced x number of days.

Re: Lessons I learned working at an art gallery

#160

Post by archagon »

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…

Perhaps they are “canonical” because they were successful. Perhaps the canon will look a lot different a century from now when the less commercially successful, obscure greats are finally dusted off.
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