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.
