Sunday, September 28, 2014
They tell you that a tree is only a combination of chemical elements. I prefer to believe that God created it, and that it is inhabited by a nymph. ~Pierre Auguste Renoir 1841-1919.
At one time the earth was supposed to be flat . . . yet the probability is that life, too, is spherical and much more extensive and capacious than the hemisphere we know. ~ Vincent Van Gogh 1853-1890
The mystical will always be with us. . . . A whole mass of things that cannot be rationalized - new born thoughts that are still not properly formed. ~ Edvard Munch 1863-1944
A work of art is finished, from the point of view of the artists, when feeling and perception have resulted in a spiritual synthesis. ~ Hans Hofmann 1880-1966
I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say in any other way - thing that I had no words for. ~ Georgia O'Keeffe 1887-1986
Everything has two aspects: the current aspect, which we see nearly always and which ordinary men see, and the ghostly and metaphysical aspect, which only rare individuals may see in moments of clairvoyance and meta physical abstraction. ~ Giorgio de Chirico 1888-1978
Painting is, in my opinion, a richer language than that of words . . . . Painting is a language much more immediate, and, at the time, much more charged with meaning. ~Jean Dubuffet 1901-1985
The painting is not on a surface, but on a plane which is imagined. It moves in a mind. It is not there physically at all. It is an illusion, a piece of magic, so what you see is not what you see. ~ Philip Guston 1913-1980
I would like to express man's relation to the world and to himself - and to some spiritual force outside himself. ~George Tooker 1920-2011
Great art is art that strips you of words, and then allows you to find the new words to describe that experience. ~Eric Fischl 1948-So that's all for this Sunday's inspiration! Hope you have been having a great weekend and I'll see what I can come up with for us to talk about tomorrow.
'Til then.
~Alex
Saturday, September 27, 2014
Selling Art
Do you know how the BIG gallery market works? Since I will continue to be considered an "emerging artist" for quite some time, perhaps for the rest of my life...this is something Mark and I are still learning.
Today I would like to share with you something I read the other day. It is from a post written by blogger and gallery owner Edward Winkleman. His blog is well worth reading whether you are an artist or a collector. And his gallery? Well. Here is (in part) the write up on their gallery website:
We have participated in art fairs such as The Armory Show, SEVEN, Pulse, ARCO, Art Chicago, NADA, INDEPENDENT, and Moving Image. Gallery artists have exhibited in some of the world’s most important venues and biennials, including the Venice Biennale, the Vienna Kunsthalle, The Art Institute in Chicago, the Getty Center in Los Angeles, the Singapore Biennale, the Sharjah Biennial, and the Whitney Biennial.Impressive, is all I have to say about that.
One of the artists Winkleman Gallery represents is Shane Hope. Here is one of his 3-D printed artworks:
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| Shane Hope "Computronium-Cloud Copyllution" 2013 |
That Primary Gallery DiscussionIf you are experiencing a growth spurt with gallery representation, I hope you find this useful information. I know I did. Hope you are having a great weekend.Of all the negotiations that an artist has with their dealer, few are as treacherous to navigate as the one concerning the "primary gallery" question. The reason it can be trickier than other issues is because each new potential opportunity to work with another gallery can change the entire landscape. If, for example, you have a primary gallery in City X and then a gallery in City Y wants to work with you, whether the City Y gallery is going to be happy to become your "secondary gallery" will depend on how they feel about both the other gallery and that other city.
In general, it's not to any gallery's advantage to be secondary gallery for any of their artists and it's often to their great advantage to be the primary gallery for all their artists. It's to most artists' benefit to have a primary gallery for some situations and not at all for others. Further, a gallery powerful enough to work out primary gallery status for most of their artists is usually one well worth working with.
So what do we mean by "primary gallery" or "secondary gallery" in this context? We've discussed this before, but an email from an artist struggling with these issues suggests we could flesh out the issues a bit more. I've changed some details to protect the artist's anonymity:I recently graduated and I was picked up by a gallery soon after in City Q. I wanted to get some clarification about other galleries working with other galleries. Is this a common thing? I am not familiar with this and I have been asking anyone with answers about this. I am allowed to get representation in another gallery in another state, however, I was told that I needed to tell that other gallery they need to split their half of the commission with my gallery. Ex: from the 50%, one gallery gets 30% and the other gets 20%. This was not told to me at the beginning. One, I do not feel comfortable in this position and I don't think it is my duty to do this as the artist. Two, if my gallery is the one to start the relationship, then they can discuss their terms. I have been told it is a rare situation and rarely works out.Also, are galleries allowed to take a % from every exhibition I participate in? on works that aren't consigned to them? I am a new, young emerging artist and I feel I am being taken advantage of. I feel I am in a situation I don't know how to go about it. If you have any advice/input it would really be helpful.OK, so let's begin with a frank discussion about why a gallery might insist on this. (And, from what is provided here, I would conclude that this artist is NOT being taken advantage of, but is not being communicated with effectively.)
In the gallery system the term "primary gallery" means an artist's main gallery, or #1 in the pecking order. This is the gallery that maintains his/her master archive, does much of the communications promoting their career (i.e., with institutions planning exhibitions), will work to raise the money to produce most of the work in situations where that's part of the artist's practice, and generally resides in a high-profile market, meaning they get the kind of traffic/critical attention for the artist that other galleries in other locations just can't. In return they may stipulate terms for representation by which their investment in building the markets for their artists is returned to them through commission on sales in other galleries. The thinking here includes the notion that the other galleries (usually in smaller cities) can only command the prices for the work by this artist because of the primary gallery's reputation and hard work in building their market.
Such terms of representation vary widely (including percentages, duration, geographical extent, etc.). Even within most galleries, they are highly negotiable (i.e., Artist G, who is internationally renown and sells work in the 6-digit range, may be able to insist on terms that Artist T, who is fresh out of school and still building a market cannot [nor should, IMHO]).
A "secondary gallery" is any other gallery (within certain geographical restrictions usually, but not necessarily) that an artist who has a primary gallery works with too. You can have many, many secondary galleries, but within any geographical area, you have only one primary gallery. Of course, no gallery would volunteer to be a secondary gallery for their artists, but it's often a small price to pay for the prestige and/or income to be had by working with an artist who already has a strong market built up by another dealer.
Personally, I feel the real "victim" (OK, so it's not truly that dramatic usually) in such situations is the secondary gallery dealer, not the artist, who will still make their 50% of any sale. But I do realize that until all the terms are established, it can be highly uncomfortable for any artist wishing to have other galleries in addition to their primary gallery, so I empathize with this artist.
Having said that, however, discussing---in depth---how any gallery you're considering signing up with works with other galleries is Representation 101. All the anxiety expressed by the artist above can be eliminated through a simple conversation before the fact. Questions I suggest you ask if your potential new (potentially primary) gallery doesn't offer such information upfront include:Question 4 is your real tool here to alleviate any frustration/anxiety. Make the galleries duke it out (they will compromise to your benefit usually). Just be aware up front what your first gallery expects before agreeing to representation. The devil truly lurks in the details of this issue. Personalities, grudges, greed...they can all come into play when dealers talk to each other. If you, as the artist, understand the terms up front though, you don't have to suffer through any of that. Nor should you have to. You may need to make some tough decisions at times, but no one can spare you from those, so....
- Will you see yourself as my "primary gallery"? And if so, what does that mean with regards to services you provide and expectations of working with other galleries?
- Do any commissions you expect of secondary galleries expire after a certain period of my working with them?
- Where do these terms apply? Are you my primary gallery only in this city/state/country/continent ?
- How should I discuss this with a gallery in another city that wants to work with me, but doesn't want to pay commission? Should I ask them to talk with you about it?
- Can this be put in writing?
'Til tomorrow -
~Alex
Friday, September 26, 2014
Artist Film Friday
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| Louise Bourgeois photographed by James Hamilton, in 1992, with her piece Arch of Hysteria |
Here is the synopsis of the film from Wikipedia:
Louise Bourgeois: The Spider, the Mistress and the Tangerine, a 2008 documentary film about artist and sculptor Louise Bourgeois directed by Marion Cajori and Amei Wallach and distributed by Zeitgeist Films, chronicles the life and imagination of Paris-born artist Louise Bourgeois. Her process is on full display in this documentary, which features the artist in her studio and with her installations, shedding light on her intentions and inspirations. Throughout the documentary, Bourgeois reveals her life and work to be imbued with her ongoing obsession with the mysteries of childhood. Bourgeois has for six decades been an important and influential figure in the world of modern art. In 1982, at the age of 71, she became the first woman to be honored with a major retrospective at New York's Museum of Modern Art. She is perhaps best known for her series of massive spider structures that have been installed around the world. Filmed with unprecedented access to the artist between 1993 and 2007, Louise Bourgeois: The Spider, the Mistress and the Tangerine is a comprehensive examination of the creative process.
The reason I wish to share this film with you is because there is one point in the film that illustrates very beautifully why artists contribute so much to the world and the people in it.
Artists manifest and share what unhinges our own grief and our own pain and what releases the light of our souls. Even though manifesting these emotions through art is therapy for us, and can be disturbing sometimes, the unhinging of these emotional doors help other people too. Even if certain emotional doors remain locked in you...at least on one side of the door, maybe some light can come in.
Here is a part of the movie I have transcribed for you. Louise is speaking with, I think Amei Wallach. She is sitting at a table in her kitchen and she has a tangerine in her hands. As she is speaking she is drawing on the outside of the tangerine with a sharpie marker and then cutting along those marks through the peel. Here's a visual:
Tangerine - the word is a stimuli for me. If I start drawing a figure on the tangerine little by little the past is going to re-emerge and I will be able to verbalize it. That's it (holding up the tangerine). Now this is not my work of art - it was my father's work of art. Around the end of the dinner on Sunday, he would stand up and take his tangerine and announce he was making a little portrait of his daughter. After drawing it he had a way of cutting it - like so - ...so then you lift up all these shapes that you have drawn and then cut (she demonstrates, peeling back the different peel shapes) the drawing the cutting and the lifting - right. And then when you reach the navel the core would come out. This is the moment you would look inside and the core was fantastic - you would marvel at it right? And you were supposed to marvel at it too; "Look, just look! How impressive." Then he would turn and say "I am sorry that my daughter does not exhibit such beauty because my figure is very rich and obviously my daughter doesn't have very much there - the little creature was just a girl." Maybe the audience never peeped, since they were being fed, they never peeped and maybe - maybe some of them felt sorry for us. But I didn't realize that, I thought at the time that they were laughing at us, that they were not laughing with us, that they were laughing at us. And the pain was very great. (she is trying to keep her composure and must pause from time to time). After fifty years the thing is so vivid it is as if it had happened yesterday. (long pause again) All these children gather up in the night and what can they do except cry and cry in the night? An it is completely useless...what I want to say is that people want to cry in the night...shy do they do so? They don't do it to be clever. They don't do it to disturb the peace. They do it because...it helps them and, since you become very ugly when you yell, you know? . . . .so they cry all night an no body knows why...(she cannot keep her composure any longer in front of the camera and leaves the table and the screen goes dark. The next frames of are one of her exhibits and you hear her voice again), ...I overcame this trauma through a dream. . . .his eyes fell out on the table and the cat jumped up on the table and gobbled up his two eyes. I had achieved my revenge.It is a constant amazement to me that so many people ever survived childhood. Louise had three boys of her own and I don't think she was always easy on them either. At one point in the film she says about parents and children that you come here and you were never promised a rose garden and parents do the best they can.
Hope you are doing the best you can today. I know I am...and I'll be back tomorrow. I think it may be Selling Art Tips Saturday :).
'Til tomorrow!
~Alex
Thursday, September 25, 2014
Evolution Revolution
But first, I just want to say. There are some artists out there who are constantly fretting about finding "their style" of painting or sculpture or ...whatever it is they create and I say...stop it!
Instead. Relax! Through your lifetime create and create and create - do it the way that it is in your heart to do it. To put constraints upon what you do because you have been convinced by someone(s) - or you just think so yourself - that what your work looks like today is what your collectors expect and want and so on...could very well be limiting your contribution to art and the evolution of your work and to the whole world of art while you are here.
If you are thinking those thoughts I say: Don't Do It! - look at those thoughts squarely in the eye and then...stage a Revolution! Imagine if the Beatles just kept writing songs like "It's Been a Hard Day's Night" and never wrote "Across the Universe" or "Let it Be"?
What if the artist who painted this picture continued to paint like this all his life?
Can you believe that 22 years later the same painter painted this same scene and it looked like this?
I want to share with you an excerpt from a wonderfully written article which was published in The Guardian written by Kevin Rushby in May 2013:
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| Cézanne immortalised the Mont Sainte-Victoire 87 times – and even purpose-built his studio to ensure a good view of it. Photograph: Kevin Rushby |
. . . . For our brief overnight stop in Aix, I'm determined to visit Cézanne's studio (atelier-cezanne.com), purpose-built so the artist could easily view his mountain. His tiny house has miraculously survived much as he left it: his hat is on the peg, his backpack waits by the chair, and on the wooden desk stands his last wine beaker, dry and purple-stained. It is as though the man has simply flown from the window and is out there with the nightingales. All around are objects recognizable from his paintings: the olive jar, the wooden rosary, the empty bottles and the armless cherub figurine, mundane objects that he transformed into thrilling and potent images.
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| Cézanne's Mont Sainte-Victoire seen from la Route du Tholonet. Photograph: The Gallery Collection/Corbis |
During Cézanne's life, few people, a handful only, came to this place. He had abandoned the art world of Paris and been depicted as a failure by his former friend Emile Zola in the 1886 novel L'Oeuvre.
Our guide to the artist's studio, Gabriel, makes a face: "After that, the two men never spoke again."
Gabriel shows us the extra-tall door in a corner of the room, which allowed Cézanne to take big canvases outside to paint in natural light: "He lived on an allowance from his father then, when the father died, Cézanne inherited everything."
Cézanne's stubborn refusal to give up on painting must have been particularly annoying to his parent, a self-made man and bastion of the local bourgeoisie. No one liked the young Cézanne's works, except the occasional maverick American. At one point some citizens of Aix actually asked their unwanted artist to leave. Sales of his paintings were so rare that the lower room of this one-up-one-down house became choked with canvases.
In the upstairs studio, I find a chest of drawers under the north window that contains souvenirs, photographs and mementoes, among them a letter written to Claude Monet and the clay pipe that features in The Card Players.
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| Cézanne's studio in Aix. Photograph: Kevin Rushby |
Last year, over a century after Cézanne died, it was reported that one of the five versions of this painting sold at auction for over $250m. It's a shame, I reflect, looking down at that cheap clay pipe, that his father didn't live to see the moment when his son's painting became the most expensive the world has ever seen. Mind you, if he had, he would also have witnessed his grandson selling off those treasures for a few francs in the days after Paul died.
Leaving the studio we set off up the hill to find the viewpoint where Cézanne painted many of those Mont Sainte-Victoire pictures. Like the studio, it is still much as he found it: a fabulous panorama of pantiled rooftops and cypress trees stretching out across rolling hills to the spectacular peak topped by an enormous cross. One local who spied on the old white-bearded painter reported that his technique could be highly unorthodox. He once got so angry with his failure to render the sublime colours and forms that he grabbed a nearby rock and smashed it through the canvas. . . . .Now I'm going to have to check my passport, make sure it hasn't expired and make arrangements to go to the south of France this summer with my dear sweet hardworking husband. I don't think he'll mind.
Here are some other nice things to read about this area of France and more about Cézanne painting Mont Sainte-Victoire:
http://www.fantasticprovence.com/section/culture-fashion_r5/the-mont-sainte-victoire-by-paul-cezanne_a928/1
http://usa.loccitane.com/fp/Provence-For-Lovers,82,1,a879.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aix-en-Provence
So that is our Art History Thursday today. Next Thursday it will be October! Hard to believe.
Hope your day is full of creative goodness and maybe a classic butter croissant (or two) ...something I am suddenly craving... :)
'Til tomorrow!
~Alex
Wednesday, September 24, 2014
Contemporary Art Wednesday AND NEW GALLERY sneak peak
Here is a painting, done in oil, by Karla Mann who is also represented by the Jackson, Wyoming gallery also representing my work; Turpin Gallery. This painting is titled "Life's a Picnic"
Leaving the Colorado mountains and heading south and further south still to the artsy little town of Tubac, Arizona you will find many galleries. Head on over to Rogoway Turquoise Tortoise Gallery and you will see my horses there, right as you walk in. You will also see some amazing work by artist Michaelin Otis. This collage is called "Alert Harris".
Next, for your travels you decide to head east to Texas and find yourself in the picturesque little town of Fredericksburg. You are drawn to a stone house that has been beautifully converted into an art gallery called the RS Hanna Gallery and you are lucky enough to find the charming Shannon Hanna herself at the gallery (will you tell her I said "Hello" ?).
Along with a few of my horses you will see some fabulous art such as paintings and sculpture by fellow Colorado artists Lindsey Bittner Graham and Dan Glanz. I love Lindsey's loose painterly style and the way she communicates emotion in her work and Dan's sculptures of animals are so expressive.
and the sculpture below is one of Dan's sculptures titled "Bacon on the Breeze".
Brookwood is a non-profit community providing spiritual, educational and vocational opportunities for adults with special needs. A portion of the sales of my sculpture help support the citizens of this community and they have some awesome artists in their gallery. The pastels of artist, Rita Kirkman are among my favorites...I just love her cows!
'Til tomorrow!
~Alex
Tuesday, September 23, 2014
Artist - Entrepreneaur? Marketer? or Both?
It may be more appropriate to say that an artist must be a creative marketer of their work...or perhaps it would be best to say that artists must also be entrepreneurial marketers to be successful in the marketplace.
Creating a startup as an entrepreneur means - well, a lot of things but for now let's just agree the definition is: to develop a new product or service or to fundamentally improve on an existing product or service in such a way as to disrupt a certain marketplace that has become complacent or an industry that has lacked innovation for too long a time.
For artists, I think the elephant in the room is marketing. Artists do what they've always done. They create, depending upon the artist, what they create. The "marketplace for art" is what it is.
What each artists needs is a "marketplace for the specific art they create." Although the artist him or herself may not be the most suitable nominee for this task, anything we do would be more than that elephant in the room could ever do.
Here is a reprint of portions from an very long article courtesy of Alan Bamberger's Artbusiness.com blog. I have divided it up for the next few posts so we can think about the individual sections together.
This is the revised and updated text of a talk originally given to artists at the Indianapolis Art Center and to art students at the Herron School of Art at Purdue University and the first piece of sage advise that we have for today from this talk is simply this:
The most important first step towards becoming a full-time artist is to keep making art. Being an artist is never easy and the temptation put your art career on hold and apply yourself instead to other interests can sometimes be overwhelming. You might be thinking about giving art up until the kids are grown, about focusing only on your non-art job for a few years, or about closing down the studio for a while because sales are slow. My advice is simple: Don't do it.
For example, I recall a reasonably well-known artist who decided to quit painting at a relative high point of his early career and proceeded to make hardly any art for a number of years following. When he decided to take up painting again, his new work looked like little more than derivative rehashes of what he was doing when he stopped. He was totally out of practice and had lost his creative edge. To this point, he's managed to reestablish himself as a respectable artist, but he'll never again be the creative, cutting-edge force that he once was.
From a financial standpoint, he can't charge as much per painting as he would have been able to had he kept working. Collectors tend to approach his art with caution and buy conservatively because they're not sure whether he'll stop again. They know that if he does stop, he'll again negatively impact the market for his art. Even though he's now supporting himself as an artist, he has and will continue to have a credibility problem with both dealers and collectors.
So continue creating art no matter how difficult the process becomes. Continue even though you're not selling anything. Continue even if you're dissatisfied with what you're producing. Persevere, work through the tough times and you'll be glad you did.And don't just keep producing art because it will keep or increase the value of your work but you'll be glad you did simply because it's good for your soul and spirit and general over-all well being.
It's time for me to go into the studio and do just that...create.
Wishing you a day of creativity too!
'Til tomorrow -
~Alex
Monday, September 22, 2014
Are you a Professional?
Let me explain.
Maybe you're a rock star and you wear all the clothes and you have the entourage and the fans and the houses and cars and "friends"...and you're feeling fulfilled about all of it.
Good for you. You're a professional. But you know you're not all that ...stuff. In fact you care very little about all that.
You think of yourself as a musician - but not with ego, not with pride, just with this internal...this is who I am. You know you can count your friends on one hand, your favorite house is the little house you grew up in in Indiana and no one knows how to find you there, and your favorite shirt is one you've had for years, it's very soft and says Haynes on the label.
What you need is to make music. And very little else. You don't make music for anyone...only for yourself. Sure, it is interesting and it pleases you that there are other people who like it too, if there are. But - it isn't a requirement to whether you make the music or not. It is inside you and you find happiness in expressing it.
But maybe you're a Rock Star and you don't feel fulfilled by it. The money is nice and all. You have great stuff and are surrounded by people who would do anything for you (as long as you are "successful") You don't know how you'd get along without it all.
But the truth is, if you didn't have to do it, you wouldn't. You listen to classical music when you get any time to yourself and wish you had finished your biology degree because you're secretly fascinated by the taxonomy, morphology, cytology, phytogeography of tulips.
For the sake of this conversation you are an amateur Rock Star - no matter how successful you may be by our society's definition of success. And not just that, the world may have benefitted more if you had finished your biology degree rather than played rock music with less than all your heart put into it.
So - have you ever asked yourself this question? If you were the only person left on earth, how would you spend your time? Would you still write music or play your instrument of choice?
Would you still do what you are doing right now?
If you would not, what would you do?
What do you get lost in? What could you spend hours upon hours doing without noticing the passage of time, like you did when you were a kid and you played pretend games?
And I'm not talking about spending time distracting yourself. I'm not talking about escape. I'm not talking about video games or the latest hot HBO series or spending hours on Fac... uh...social media.
Would you explore? Would you build? Would you pilot a plane? Grow vegetables? Make bread? Shop for the most amazing shoes? Work out? Run? Hike? Groom Poodles? Solve two mile long algebra equations? Re-invent the wheel? Climb steep mountain faces?
I know. You are NOT the only person left on earth.
But whatever that is for you. I hope you will consider spending time with it, whether you think you have the time to or not. There is the real world you have to tend to the details of, of course. But how much of that could be minimized so you can nurture and develop what you really want and like to do?
I hope you get to go into your world today and spend some time there. I know I will.
'Til tomorrow!
~Alex
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