Dear Art,

Thank you for your fast and heartfelt response. I agree that there are many things that make something “art.” All the same saying that it is something that moves you is not enough! A parent is moved by a child drawing as a memoir of the child’s achievement, but that is not art. Although it must be said that there are those who would view an object that is similar in physical prowess to that of a grade school child as art. And the curse is that there are cases where this is even true. But a digress.

The point I am making is that that definition would make art only defined by the viewer in which case all the work made that is unseen would not be validated until seen. In my eyes that puts far too much power and influence in the hands of the viewer, or even more sinister in the hands of the collectors.

A further issue I have with that positioning is that it predicates mass acceptance for art to be art. That does not fit into history. Do we not look back through history to see art that reminds us or our past? This also touches on the idea that art is primarily defined by the viewer, which I have already questioned.

I think we can agree that intent plays a role in the arts. I also think that physicality plays a major role. Artists make things to communicate ideas to people. Maybe that could be a way to loosely define it? That would put art in the arena of communication. That is a theory I can agree with. What do you think?

Of course this opens the topic of craft and skill up. As engaging as the process of abstraction is I sometimes wonder how it is that we, as the general audience of the arts, have come to see such brilliance in the result of what can clearly be seen as an intellectual exercise? Abstraction feels at times the the reduction of all complex truths into single punchlines.

That is most clear in the work of some of the conceptualists. Like being the person who wrote the punchline on a canvas makes you the owner of that punchline, no matter how obvious it is. It really pusses me off at times. Although, the anger is more focused on the presentation and the allure that then surround these objects. Hang them in a college bar and they would earn a laugh and take their place in the memory of the students who away their underagedness beneath them. In the art world the same works are guilted with awe and are passed around while ratcheting up the price until they become useful as a tax write off for one of the aforementioned collectors. And this is not just true of the conceptualists. In fact, I think this is true of much of the big money are works. What’s the old saying?

“If it’s nit good make it big. If it’s still bit good make is colorful. If it’s still not good make it expensive. Then it’s good.”

Which brings us right back to the “importance” of the collectors as validates of what art is, or is not… urg.

Maybe you can shed some light on this? Until then, be well.

Best, Julian

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Dear Art,

What a pleasure to have met you! Considering how strange the last year was it must be considered serendipity that we made acquaintance.

I was thinking back on our conversation and wanted to pick up on the point where you are and the world around you is headed. As a gallerist I must say that I am a bit more hesitant about the coming time than you are. I see your point that the marketplace is going to get flooded with cash as the stimulus spending bubbles it’s way up from the lower levels of the economy to those selling the goods that people are buying. And yes, the fear of inflation is going to cause investments in inflation safe harbors like art. But that all depends on wether the inflation actually hits, or if we are looking at a cycle of repeat stimulus payments until everyone forgets what it’s like to live without them… hell, maybe that would be best? History be damned and forgotten.

But what is art Art? This is a long lasting point of debate which we skirted when we met. I assume because the answer to this question is both elusive as also not politically correct. The current definition, or lack thereof is not better though. So maybe we should breach the topic? Among friends, and I hope that I can call you one, we have a freedom to discuss in a manner that has long been deemed offensive in the public sphere.

But enough rambling for a first letter. May I offer you the opportunity to voice your opinion of what art is first? I very much look forward to your insight.

With my kindest regards. Your new friend Julian

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Most of us do not know what our great grandparents did. One of the curses of legacy is to know, but to know only in part. As with all stories that have passed through generations and have been told by many different people, the truth is an assumption that lies somewhere in the middle of the collective.

The history of the Sander family is one of these stories. I am in the 4th generation of people from the Sander Family who work/have worked with a body of photographs. An oevre that has helped to form the modern vocabulary of portraits. The power of August Sanders work is well described in a video by Hauser&Wirth here. But that has little to do with the legacy I am dealing with.

There is an old saying that history is written by the winners of the wars. That is a dark future to look forward to as it requires a looser as well. In my families case it seems like there are a great many people who have actively played a role in their own placement on the losing side, and for the most part because they have felt that they are right. But truth will set us free, no? Maybe, maybe not…

There is another saying about war that I think describes this sort of situation much more accurately.

In War there are no winners, just survivors.

But the history books need to be set right, and it seems it is my job to do so. So I start on this journey to uncover the real story that has led to so much infighting. In the knowledge that when the story has been told in full all will understand what happened and why.

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I read a question in an article about fake news and cultural heritage the other day. The question asked if it was necessary to forcefully market the arts, particularly the estates of great artists? I have pondered this question often over the years.

As a child I enjoyed going to the museums in Washington D.C. which are filled with fantastic works of art by the greats of history. I would sit for hours in front of some paintings. I would lie transfixed below the only aluminium Calder mobile in the world. I enjoyed seeing and traveling in the universe these works opened in my mind.

Coming from a family of photographers and art dealers I was exposed to the arts at a very young age, and completely organically. My appreciation for the arts are not in their economic value, but in their message. I have always seen art this way.

Unfortunately we now live in a time of decisive markers. We look for verification of quality through indicators that can be metric-ized. Money, as a representative of work, has become the metric by which we define value. This is a complicated issue of course, and I would be foolish to think I could cover it in a sentence of two, but I do assume that the translational character of money is clear to most people. So, the more expensive an object is the more impressed people are by its worth. Now, when it comes to the arts, there is little to no physical value in what is purchased. A painting cannot be used except to decorate a wall. Its material is difficult or impossible to recycle. It’s life expectancy is limited, particularly in the contemporary art market where the craft of painting is not really held in high esteem. None the less some of these works of art sell for extraordinary sums of money. We deem them important and quantify that by putting a price of it.

If an artist then moves from the contemporary into a position of artistic evergreen, then we can discuss the idea of an artists estate or heritage being of value. This has, of course, to do with much more than the market value of an artists work. The impact that a body of work has on the zeitgeist, on the artists contemporaries and on society as a whole are all important aspects of the value of an artists heritage. Of course there are more aspects, but they are greater than the scope of this post.

Who championed the artist?

The question will come up how the work became known? Who championed the artist? Which collectors bought the work? Which museums placed the work into a context that allowed the less informed to discover and embrace the work? How did the work even get to those institutions?

All of these are important questions. They all require individual investigation. Often this has to do with a person who is driven by the importance of the work in question and the artists legacy. And more often than not, that person is involved in the marketing of the artists work.

Returning to the question asked in the article, is it necessary to forcefully market the work from an estate, or is it enough to maintain it? I would argue that the process of making great art known is valid in and of itself. The gallery does this by exhibiting and selling art. The museum does this by exhibiting art and selling tickets. The publisher does this by publishing and selling books about the art. Newspapers do this much the same as Publishers. All of these “people” reach different segments of the audience. The greater the work, the larger and more diverse the audience. To assume that any one channel can speak the language of the entire audience would require of that channel to speak at the most basic and simple level. (rule of lowest common denominator) That is not really going to go well for material that is capable of speaking to many levels of the world audience.

Maybe speaking truthfully about the artist, their work and its meaning should be the requirement. No one gets to claim being wise for being the first to see the sun rise on a given day. The sun will rise no matter who speaks of it. This is how I see greatness in the arts. The greatness will be there, regardless of who speaks of it. My role, as a gallerist, is to speak of this greatness.

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There are parallels in every segment of the world of business. Things like the law of supply and demand or fashion are just 2 of the issues at hand. The modern media machine, being based on techniques developed by the Nazi’s before WW2 has a very specific aspect to it that seems to run parallel in most all of the markets I see. The technique is based in part on separating the wheat from the straw, and then further manipulating both parts accordingly.

For the separation there is a fairly simple tool that is used to allow people to feel as if they have increased their knowledge, where by they have only increased what they know. For the simple minded this will sound like the same thing, it is not. Knowledge has a very different quality than knowing things. A person can know incredible amounts of things, even things that are related to one another and sequential and still be an idiot, or worse, a blinded mule that follows orders. This particular issue is being multiplied exponentially by the flood of information we receive through media. If the summ of information becomes great enough it will in fact create a current of ideology which, if implemented properly will make the viewers feel as if they are in the know, and are still making their own choices. This will generally not be the case as this would require a clear differentiation of information, source and motivation as well as personal tendency.

This is not too much to ask, and certainly not what a controlling system is going to endorse.

The other group will be those that see this mechanism and see an opportunity in it. This is a useful group of people who will probably calculate out to be about 5-10% of the masses. These are then the people who could and may very well have a strong opinion themselves and also be knowledgable enough to implement their knowledge with precision. Of these there are a large number that can be assuaged by the simplest of things, luxury. That luxury can be formulated in any number of ways, be it fame, money, success, or what have you. Please do not understand this to mean that success is gifted to people in order to keep them compliant. This would be grossly unfair to the many individuals who have dared to follow their heart, or soul and have earned their success through specifically that purity of focus. This, in turn, would be the last group for the sake of this very skeletal framework of social hierarchy  and how it is manipulated through the market and such.

The title of the post is “A Thinking Mans Game”, which I will now actually get to.

As you all know, I am an art dealer, a gallerist, a curator, a collector, a lover of and believer in the power of the arts. One of the issues I have read at length about and discussed is how a gallery is defined. What is the essence, or the brand of a given gallery. It has been said that a gallery should show and sell work that is within a close boundary, both ideologically as well as financially. The rich like to buy from places where everything is expensive, and the hip like to buy things in the places that are all the rage. This does make sense in so far as it is easier to have faith in the quality of something if it is purchased from a place that has a reputation for being a sales point for high quality things. The Porche Design folding glasses of the mid 1980’s are a prime example of a brand being meaningful. But I think this form of confinement is a detrement to the arts I am responsible for showing. You see, if I base the work I show on my market, then I am only serving what the market wants, which by that very definition must be something they have seen. They would not recognise their desire for it otherwise.
Does this mean I am doomed to showing the avant garde? Maybe. A better question is if my intention to show the best I can find will allow me to be free of the bounds of both the main stream and the avant gard. If I am not concerned with those criteria, but rather concern myself with what I think is great then I am true to my duty as a gallerist, win or loose.

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