As in nearly every field of commerce, it seems that the tension between old and new models of the business of art is coming to a head. Traditional galleries see that their established methods of selling selectively and covertly to buyers of high social standing are under threat. Museums, which once were beneficiaries of philanthropic largesse from those same well-heeled collectors, now often find that their leading patrons are competitors; rather than donate their holdings, they establish private institutions instead—like LA’s new Broad Museum—that rival the scale and scope of the Moderns and Contemporaries, which are left empty-handed. Even major gifts to museums, such as the unrivaled Fisher Collection now entrusted to SFMOMA, come with strict and costly requirements, such as new buildings and capital campaigns. Meanwhile, the most visible and valuable contemporary artists are no longer those who have been vetted by scholars and curators, but those whose works can be most readily flipped on the secondary and auction markets. Under these circumstances, the art object is purely a marker of exchange value upon which certain complicit thinkers heap vague claims of cultural use value that seem to apply only to the acquisitive culture of the 1%.

The Broad under construction, view from Grand Avenue in downtown Los Angeles. Courtesy of the Broad. Photo © Iwan Baan.

The anxiety of the old guard toward the new manifests most clearly in the recent New York Times and New York Observer profiles of art impresario Stefan Simchowitz. Simchowitz has a venture-capital background, a Los Angeles aesthetic, and a start-up approach to artists, dumping money into new and unproven talent so as to play the odds that some of the artists he supports will reach the upper echelons of the market and bear out his investments as a group. Both profiles describe a man who sees himself as an underdog and, as belies his tech-funding background, a “disrupter” of established systems. His critics, who include several prominent dealers, call him a “flipper” who takes advantage of emerging artists while devaluing their output for personal profit. His champions see him as a person willing to take a risk on an unproven artist in an era when few collectors seem to value that kind of patronage.

Occupy London Stock Exchange. Capitalism Is Crisis, 2013.

Simchowitz’s methods can be troubling. His relationship to emerging artists is more paternalistic than paternal, and his tendency to hoard artists’ works and then liquidate them in large numbers when an artist’s market peaks (known as “flooding the market”) is potentially damaging to a young artist’s longevity. Still, his claim in the Observer that the art world “weaponized me” rings true. After all, Simchowitz did not create an art-school system that neglects to teach young artists how to manage their financial and personal affairs, or a gallery system that treats artists as freelance content creators without health care or a steady source of income. He is simply exploiting structures that were engineered to engender exploitation. Jerry Saltz, with typically dated bluster, called Simchowitz a “Sith Lord.” The implication that Saltz (whom the public may remember from that paragon of integrity “Work of Art”) is a Jedi knight by comparison conveniently obscures the critic’s track record of championing artists of what Hito Steyerl calls “shiny instability,” “baffled and mesmerized” by “the not-so-discreet consumer-friendly veneer of new and old oligarchies, and plutotechnocracies.” In other words, the debate is less black hat/white hat, and more shades of gray.

2014 Otis Report on the Creative Economy: The Fast Facts.

Meanwhile, the onslaught of the “creative economy” continues unabated. Lumping artists in with designers, entertainers, and producers, this line of thinking focuses exclusively on the economic power of creative work while eliding questions of culture, ethics, and precarious or contingent labor. Artists are valued because they create economic value, not because the work they do is valuable. Government and foundation grants are increasingly bound up in this rhetoric and the related discourse of “creative placemaking,” which essentially codifies artists’ heretofore inadvertent role in the march of urban gentrification. Meanwhile, artists are rarely the beneficiaries of the economic growth they are credited with generating. According to the 2014 Otis Report on the Creative Economy, “In the visual and performing arts, there were nearly 2.7 self-employed persons in Los Angeles County for every salaried worker.” In 2012, the report shows that 64,108 self-employed visual artists and writers earned a cumulative total of $2,645,500,000, or an average of $41,266 per capita in annual earnings in a county where the median household income was $55,909 according to the US Census. This means that more than two-thirds of the self-employed artists and writers in Los Angeles county, representing almost 1.75 workers to every 1 salaried worker in the visual and performing arts, are earning lower-than-average wages. “Creativity” is being celebrated as a profit center, but artists are still being starved.

Ray Beldner. Moneybags, 2008; sewn US currency. Courtesy of Charlie James Gallery.

What, then, is the alternative for artists who wants to control their own careers and finances? One option is to embrace the label of “entrepreneur,” which some have done, such as stARTup Fair organizers Steve Zavattero and Ray Beldner, though not without criticism. Writing for SFMOMA’s Open Space blog, Bean Gilsdorf and Joseph del Pesco critiqued that San Francisco “independent” hotel fair not only for a pay-to-play model that charges artists exhibitor fees based on the cost of gallery fairs, but for lacking “a sense of dignity,” calling self-identification by artists as “‘entrepreneurs’ or ‘creative visionaries’” “hollow self-nominations” and “clichés of corporate culture.” Certainly, the promise of entrepreneurship puts a positive gloss on numbers like the ones cited above, framing precarious employment as a choice rather than a condition of, as the Otis report puts it, “competitive pressures stemming from globalization” that “continue to exert enormous pressure on firms to cut costs,” leading to “companies seeking efficiencies by using more part-time labor, more temporary labor, and outsourcing non-core tasks to independent contractors.” Convincing artists that they are entrepreneurs can be a way of flattering them while exploiting them, as Gilsdorf and del Pesco suggest.

Oscar Murillo. A Mercantile Novel, 2014; promotional photo of workers from Columbina Chocolate Factory. Courtesy of David Zwirner Gallery.

At the same time, critics like Ben Davis have pointed out that artists have long operated in the economic space of entrepreneurs: self-employed, running sole proprietorships or small workshops, retaining intellectual-property rights, seeking angel investors, and ultimately rejecting a corporate mentality that values true entrepreneurship only when it can acquire and consume independent actors, subjugating them to hierarchies of rank and social privilege that are hardly alien to the institutional art world. What, then, of the artist who aspires to loftier goals than mere economic success? This is a particularly thorny challenge given that art objects and, increasingly, performative and intervention-based events are readily commoditized in our culture. In his 2012 Avenali Lecture for the Townsend Center at UC Berkeley, Frederic Jameson spoke of how the art object is no longer the focal point of creative production, but rather functions in the marketplace as a derivative of an event-based spectacle much like pork futures operate as derivatives of factory pig-farming. This perspective goes a long way toward explaining both why a corporate raider like Simchowitz would turn from tech funding to contemporary art speculation, and why an artist like Oscar Murillo, whom Simchowitz claims to have discovered, would downplay the popularity of his market-friendly abstract paintings of late and turn to creating spectacles of labor such as a facsimile of a Colombian chocolate factory which he staged, complete with imported workers, at David Zwirner in 2014. Installations of this kind allow an artist like Murillo, raised in the working class, to engage with issues of class and race that resurface in the context of artistic labor, while creating a pretense of social responsibility that a savvy gallerist can use as large-scale promotion for the artist’s lucrative paintings. At the same time, one can see the 28-year-old Murillo struggling to bolster himself against the capricious market, which he knows will toss him aside as quickly as it lauded him, by branching out into more academically respectable spaces of artistic production than the trendy abstractions that have branded him “a new Basquiat.”

Steve Lambert. Capitalism Works For Me! True/False, 2011; aluminum and electrical; 9 x 20 x 7 ft.

A safe haven for artists would relieve them of such anxieties by providing adequate economic support for creative labor to liberate it from market whims, but that is not currently a possibility in these United States. Without a guarantee of health care, basic sustenance, and social investment in artists and art institutions—as one finds in Germany or Canada—artists are left to negotiate a winner-take-all system of profit and speculation to the best of their ability. In this country, the art economy mirrors the whole of the economy, while the academic art establishment remains heavily invested in denying the presence of business concerns as relevant to artists’ education while prioritizing those concerns in every other aspect of their operations. Questions of the business of being an artist, from managing personal finances to finding a gallery that will actually work for their 50 percent cut, to juggling part-time employment and a daily studio practice, are neglected in favor of idealism in most art departments despite the unsustainable number of newly minted MFA graduates and the exorbitant cost of an art education. Instead, debt becomes another way that young artists are disciplined into toeing the neoliberal line and abandoning the radical politics of many of their predecessors. I can’t see how artists could be further harmed by seizing control of the business apparatus that is clearly going to affect them whether or not they take an active role in their own financial affairs. If the future of art patronage resembles Stefan Simchowitz, the most successful artist will be the one who knows how to make capital work for her, rather than working for capital.

Aurora Crispin. A Selection of Everything, 2012; installation view, Important Projects, Oakland. Courtesy of Important Projects. Photo: Important Projects.

In 2005, Aurora Crispin set out to photograph every single one of her possessions, from boots to books to dust bunnies. There is a sweetness to the impossibility of her mission, even as the photos of the things themselves suggest some vague finality, like memento mori of an ever-receding present. Some things are photographed separately, some in random groups. The lighting is subdued and slightly beatific. The objects sit unperturbed in the middle of a white, seamless background like unlikely recipients of some newfound fame, rubbing their eyes in the glare of a flashbulb. There is a flaccid hair elastic, the kind with a ball at each end that guys never seem to understand how to work. Elsewhere is a used, and surprisingly beautiful, lavender-colored Kleenex, its corners splayed out azalea-like around a tight center knot concealing the dark heart of booger. The project’s title, A Selection of Everything, invites us to follow the logical thread surrounding the banality of such an arbitrary collection; anything is a selection of everything.

Read the full article here.

Jill Miller. Pam Kramlich and Vehicle in Side Mirror, 2007; photograph. Courtesy of the Artist.

“Conversely, the act of collecting is itself an investigation of the ‘other,’ of the culture and ideas of artists, and involves a degree of voyeurism, curiosity, fascination, and consumption that crosses lines of class, culture, and status.”—Heather Snider, Focus Magazine, 2009.

After training for two months with a licensed private investigator, garnering multiple skills of the profession, San Francisco-based artist Jill Miller began her Collectors project. Using the surveillance and stakeout techniques she learned, Miller turned an eye toward the art world and spent six months undercover trailing some of the most low-key members of San Francisco’s art community, its collectors. She captured images of everything from their cars and houses to mingling at openings, shopping, and eating sushi. The bulk of her documentation, including video, photography, and text, culminated in an exhibition at [2nd floor projects] from November 2007–January 2008. Art Practical is delighted to be able to reproduce a selection of Miller’s photographs.

Read the full article here.

Your counselor, hard at work.

What is the most effective way to build a relationship with galleries and eventually have your work shown? Do you simply walk in with a portfolio of works/images and try to convince them of how great you are? Do you go to show openings and schmooze with gallery owners?

Sneak attack! Imagine that you are a kindly gallerist, minding your own business (literally) and making a few phone calls to chat up some nice collectors, when suddenly there is an eager artist at your desk with a portfolio. He wants your attention RIGHT NOW, though he does not have an appointment, though it is obvious that you are busy working. Put yourself in the dealer’s shoes: even if this kid is the next Jean-Michel Basquiat, are you likely to give him a solo show, let alone a second glance? No, what you are going to give this guy is a swift boot to the rear end.

You won’t get a gallery by pouncing on an unsuspecting dealer.

The most effective way to build a relationship is to build a relationship. Go to openings, yes, but do not schmooze because schmoozing is yucky and gallerists can see right through you. Instead, look at the art, and then think about it until you find something intelligent to say, and then go say it to the gallerist (and also to the artist, please, who is standing awkwardly to one side hoping that someone will say something–anything–intelligent to her this evening). Is there a question you have about the work? Did it make you think of something you saw, or read, or experienced? Go have a conversation, because conversations are the best way to build relationships.

To convince someone you’re great, be great. Give a damn about art that’s not your own. Do your research and know a little something about the gallery and its artists. Show up to the openings and be a friendly face. Be kind to others, and work with integrity.

Do you see how utterly deranged this cat looks while on the hunt? An artist on the desperate schmooze looks about the same.

Notice that I haven’t said anything yet about how to get your work shown. Well, that’s because Edward Winkleman (of Winkleman Gallery, godblessum) has already answered your question. He very generously takes everything that goes into finding a gallery and sums it up into five steps, which I quote below:

1.) Do some honest and serious thinking about where your artwork belongs in the art market.

2.) Do some serious research to find the program that best fits your artwork within that market.

3.) Don’t make mistakes that will discourage you.

4.) Work toward a short list.

5.) Once you have an “in,” so to speak, then let the gallery know you’re interested in having them consider your work.

This is the short version. The longer version, the one you’re going to go read right now, all the way down through the bottom of the comments thread, is here: http://www.edwardwinkleman.com/2007/04/one-more-time-with-feeling-seriously.html

And don’t forget that good manners never hurt anyone. When you get your gallery, be sure to send Edward a thank-you note.

Gustave Courbet, The Artist’s Studio (L’Atelier du peintre): A Real Allegory of a Seven Year Phase in my Artistic and Moral Life, 1855. Oil on canvas,141.33 × 235.43 inches

I am a painter. I have had what I consider two successful solo shows in the region where I live. Some of this success is due to the highly saleable quality of my work. I’d like to do something different. My dealer is open, however I’m nervous about interrupting my momentum. How can I try out something new without alienating my supporters?

I don’t blame you for being nervous. You’ve taken the time to produce a body of work that has received attention and support, yet you want to create work that is different from your oeuvre. The question looms: if you take this left turn, will you undermine the hard work that you’ve already done?

Let’s turn this question around. What do you stand to lose if you don’t follow your lights? What opportunity might you miss? What artwork might the world never see? Do you think you will be satisfied in five, ten, or twenty years to look back on work that played it safe? All good art has been produced by taking some risks, whether they be emotional, physical, or financial. I think you owe it to yourself as an artist to explore the notions that are kicking around in your mind. There’s also the potential payoff elicited by the chain reaction that change puts into motion: risks require bravery, bravery builds character, and character makes good artwork. My friend Stephen always says, “If it doesn’t feel risky, you’re not doing it right.”

Mark Tansey, The Innocent Eye Test, 1981. Oil on canvas, 78 x 120 inches

And while I’m quoting, I’d also like to share the words of a former boss, who once said to me “All change is difficult.” This is absolutely true whether the change is for the bad or the good. The difference here is that you already know what has worked for you in the past, so you have the ability to mitigate some of the risk and awkwardness that comes with change. You can be brave and still be pragmatic. Consider your options: could you continue your current body of work while making some of the new pieces on the side? Or perhaps you could go to a residency and immerse yourself in the new experiments for a month. If you don’t have access to such a program, can you create a week or two of uninterrupted studio time for yourself? It’s possible to try out the new work from where you are in your career and not suffer any adverse effects.

The fact that your dealer is open to the idea is a very good sign. If she has been in the biz for a while you should trust her instincts. While these new ideas may seem very different to you, I’m willing to bet that they are connected to your prior work in some way, either materially, formally, or conceptually. If the new body of work is good, your dealer can help you to frame your narrative and market the work in a way that emphasizes the natural progression from old to new. Let your dealer handle the public’s expectations and make the work that is calling out to you.

Your counselor, hard at work.

Some galleries provide artists with information on who is purchasing their artwork…others do not. What’s up with that? I feel like smaller galleries are super paranoid of artists selling out from under them while bigger more stable galleries offer full contact information to artists.

I’m not a gallerist, so I asked around to see if anyone could help me shed a little light on this subject. Catharine Clark, of Catharine Clark Gallery in San Francisco, generously provided this information for me to share:

“We disclose the name of a collector to an artist when a sale is made. Often collectors and artists enjoy meeting one another, and we help to facilitate that when it’s possible. We disclose additional contact information when artists are in the process of determining what work can be available for a museum exhibit, for example, or if they ask for it because they want to write a thank you note or correspond in some way with the collector. Some collectors are very private, and the information about them is proprietary, so we evaluate each request as it is made and determine whether the use of the information will be respectful. We have had the unfortunate experience of the information being inappropriately shared and the collectors have then felt betrayed. Since we work on loan agreements with the museum registrars, collectors, and artists, usually it is at that point that all contact information becomes most transparent. We also maintain relationships with the collectors so that we are able to follow the whereabouts of work as people move or re-sell their collections.”

Nathan Lynch, Alternative Therapies, 2010. Found object, reclaimed fir

Of course, Catharine Clark Gallery is an established and highly professional operation. You might find a different set of standards at work with another, smaller or newer gallery. While I can’t speak to the “paranoia” of a gallery, I can offer some advice to artists just starting out: ask for a contract that specifically states that you need to be given collector information when a sale is made. I do believe that you have a right to know where your work is going.

I also want to stress that you don’t want to use collector information in an improper way. It would be indecorous and short-sighted to pester your collector, or to try to make a direct-from-studio sale next time and skip the gallery’s commission. If you’re represented, don’t ever ever do this; and if you’re not represented and the buyer connected with you through a gallery, then you owe the gallery a percentage of the sale anyway—unless you like bad blood and never want to show there again. But it’s not a bad idea to have at least basic collector information so that you can keep a spreadsheet on the whereabouts of your work. That way when PS1 offers you a retrospective and then makes you track down and then pick up all your own work—like they did to a certain unnamed young female artist recently—you can find it all. I also refer readers to Chapter 13, “Gallery Representation” of the excellent Art/Work by Heather Darcy Bhandari and Jonathan Melber, which goes into more detail about the ins and outs of working with galleries.

Kenneth Noland, Untitled (Target), 1963. Collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles

I have large breasts. I recognize that this affords me some extra opportunities, considering most of the dealers I have worked with are straight men. I should add that I think my work is strong. Should I feel guilty about the advantages my sex appeal might grant me?

At first glance, your question seems rather straightforward: Can I use my boobs to get ahead? And the answer, of course, is yes, you can. But I worry about you, buxom lass, because I wonder what “extra opportunities” you’re talking about. Is this a euphemism for being shtupped on the casting couch or just an invitation to show at an art fair? If it’s the former, please do be careful, I’d hate to read a follow-up letter about a chesty misunderstanding. If it’s the latter, I’m not entirely convinced. Your assumption that large tatas give you an edge is a smidge dubious; how do you know it’s not just the power of your “strong” work? Because believe it or not, there are a lot of men out there for whom a pair of big knockers is a non-issue. It’s been forty years since Dow Corning first introduced breast implants to the market, so it’s not as if large breasts are hard to find these days, even in the art world.

Marina Abramovic, Balkan Erotic Epic, 2005. Still from video

Remember that a condition that is emphasized in the mind may not be such a big deal in reality. Consider this: you probably use your smile often. Your happy grin might possibly contribute to your sex appeal. When you smile at your dealers, do you consider the advantages of your teeth, which I’m guessing are clean(ish) and all still in your mouth? Do you feel guilty about using your lips and teeth? Probably not, but you have to admit that they are a physical advantage that others may not have. As ridiculous as that sounds, I want you to consider your breasts as just one more attribute, like shiny white teeth or your height or red hair, that may or may not have a bearing on your relative position in the world. Otherwise, I fear you run the risk of overestimating the advantage of your chest and underestimating the energy of your work.

Sophia Loren and Jayne Mansfield

My final answer is this: you’re not going to feel guilty, Miss Balcony, because you’re going to continue to make good art and get it in front of the people who need to see it. If your breasts provide a pleasing place for a dealer’s eye to occasionally rest when taking a breather from goggling at your incredible work, so be it, as long as you’re comfortable with that. You may use this if you like, but I beg you not to believe, not for one minute, that this is the source of your power. You are an artist, not a stripper, and may you never mistake one profession for the other.

HELP DESK is sponsored in part by the generosity of KQED arts in San Francisco.