by thegeepee

Economics of a gallery

At the end of every month there is the moment of truth. Can I cover the bills. Who do I have to call and ask for a bit of time. Which clients have not kept their promises. Which wagers did I make which paid out, and which did not.

This ever repeating cycle seems to be the religious mantra of the art world. As galleries open and close it remains a mystery how this works. Better said, the question is why it sometimes works and other times it does not.

The very simple answer is that the gallery that sells enough art to cover its expenses will remain. This is, in fact true. The events that lead up to this are much more curious.

We, the gallerists, are the pirates of the art world. We are admired by some, dreaded by others. We live a swash buckling life of swilling champagne and jetting throughout the known world offering our wares to the highest bidder and gather our wares at the lowest price. We hide our stash so no one will know what we have because we don’t trust much of anyone.

This is a hard world, a place of backstabbing and intrigue. We are jealous. We are… sellers of new and used wares that retain the cultural heritage of our society. We are the ones who bought Picasso when he was uninteresting. We save the pre christ relics of an ancient brand of monk in our home to remind ourselves that they once existed. We present the memorials to those those who’s only shot at immortality is to be saved in the discoloured silver of a photographic print.

All this romanticism, all of these merry stories are of course examples of my ability to make a point. I am selling you an ideal. And by saying this I am giving that away. Curse my wooden leg!

If I sell enough pictures then I keep my ship afloat. Sell enough pictures…

This is the part that becomes challenging. If I believe in what I see, and I endorse it, then I will find myself at paar or ahead of my audience. We, the gallerists, are the bridge between the artists and the clients. We are the free museums of the city where the show is as fresh and new as can be. We can show you whatever we choose however we choose based on our personal opinion of what we deem to be great. And we can err. It is our pleasure to do so. But by embracing that which the audience does not know we are traveling in a storm at high sea. Most will not embrace the new as we are trained to trust what we know, not what we don’t. But if I show the audience what I know, then I am only serving the vanities of my audience and by doing so am not fulfilling one of my most important jobs. So how should I chose between my passion and my requirement. I don’t know.

Maybe I need more daring clients, maybe I need more mainstream material, maybe I need both.

It works if people buy pictures.

It works if people buy pictures. That is the bottom line. So, actually, it does come down to that very simple truth. That’s what’s in the pudding.

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by thegeepee

trust

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by thegeepee

The Passing

Yesterday I heard of the death of one of the luminaries of the photographic world. Rudolf Kicken has passed. I cannot say that I was a close friend of Rudolf, I knew him and had met him often over the years. He was a friend and colleague of my fathers as well as a good friend to people I know like Howard Greenberg. Rudolf was a fierce competitor and was both loved and hated by many people. He did his job exceedingly well though, and that is something that everyone who knew him, or knew of him will recognise.

I have had many conversations of late with people in the formative generation of the photographic art market about the shift that is taking place. The first guard is beginning to step away from the front and is making room for the next generation that is coming. This is the generation I am in, but not I alone. And certainly the lines are not so clearly marked or defined.

The question that continues to come up is where we are headed?

I am not sure what the answer to that is. The guiding hand of Harry Lunn has long left the market. Rudolf has moved on to a better place. Many of the great curators have left their posts in order to follow their well deserved personal interests. The great well established galleries are all gearing up for a change of command. And here we are, the “young” ones who are all busy following our own ideas or hanging on to an idea that has been “proven” to work.

I do not see how we will be able to stick to the old assuming it will continue to be valid. If for no other reason than that the medium of photography is irrevocably bound to the technological development and the mass market hysteria. If I see another shitty photograph printed is some archaic process in order to give us the impression it has meaning then I may well buy it, burn it and then but the ashes up to auction as a form of pure concept art.

Sometimes I feel as if the frequency of our impulses has grown so much that we must subdivide the whole process in order to find a more approachable means of consuming it.

This is common in music of course, where you will never find a player tapping quarter note to a song at 300 beats per minute. Considering the sheer quantity of images being garbaged into the world I think we need to find a way to handle it. Is a form of pattern recognition a way to handle this? Patterns allow us to find formally pleasing images based on our past experience. This sounds like a good method if we exclude the portion of our duties that involves looking for the truest and purest in the arts. If we can live with the idea that we are dealing with copies of copies than this is all fine and good. I can’t do that. I am cursed to review work not for its ability to show me something someone else has done well, but rather to read the work for what it says. This of course becomes a dilemma as some things need to be repeated over and over in order for the message to come through. And beyond that I must base my judgement on my opinion and my experience, which in turn makes my judgement biased. Of course my judgement is biased. So is everyones.

It is the resonant core, the instrument of our soul that responded to the touch of the arts that we should pay attention to.

That instrument has been born into us. Everyone has it. Maybe this is what the hero’s, the demo-gods and myths of our business as well as any business have been so in tune to. They have played the instrument of their souls with virtuosity, and remained true it.

Maybe the lesson to be learned is that it is this focus which leads us to all things great. This is something we can all be part of. If the passing of this message is liken to a torch, then I’ll take it, light my midnight lamp, and pass it on.

Rest in Peace Rudolf.

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by thegeepee

August Sander Part 1

There is a lot of misinformation in the world about August Sander, and what my family has done with his work.  This is a big topic, so I will not be able to touch on all topics in a single post.  I want to start be defining a very skeletal history of what happened to August Sander’s work after his death.

August Sander had 4 Children: Erich, Gunther, Sigrid and Helmut.  Helmut and Sigrid were twins, Helmut died very young.  Erich, August’s eldest son, died in prison in Siegburg where he was imprisoned by the NSDAP (Nazi’s).  Sigrid had moved to the USA via Iceland, which is a story unto itself.  Gunther was a photographer and owner of SANDER FOTO in Cologne.  It was Gunther who took over the negatives and pretty much everything else at August’s death.

Guther continued to work with the material by promoting it in exhibitions as well as selling both prints he made (posthumous prints)  from the negatives as well as selling vintage (prints made by August, or during his lifetime and under his authority)  prints.  He also worked together with Lothar Schirmer on a number of publications until the two of them had a falling out and stopped working together.  This is also a story unto itself.  Gunther sold work through a number of galleries in Europe and through the Halstedt Gallery in the USA. Tom Halstedt continued to sell August’s work until my father moved to Washington DC in 1975.

When Gerd (my father) started the SANDER Gallery in Washington DC in 1976 he took over the representation of August Sander’s work in the USA.  He has spent the years since then promoting, buying and selling the work of August Sander internationally.

In 1987 my grandfather Gunther died.  On thanksgiving day in 1987 my aunt Sigrid received a phone call from Germany saying that Gunther had passed away and was already buried by his second wife Suzanne Sander. (Again a story to be told another day).  Before Gunther passed he had signed the entire remaining body of August Sander’s work as well as all of the books and painting over to my father Gerd.  Unfortunately my father had to litigate to actually take possession of what was rightfully his.  Along the way a number of works as well as a greater part of the books were sold or given away.  Gerd continues to buy these items back from the open art market as they show up for sale.

In 1988 my parents moved back to Germany where my father started to catalogue and organise what he called the August Sander Archive, a name he started using in the mid 1980’s.  With the help of his long time friend and fellow photographer Jean-Luc Differdange who also learned his trade from my grandfather Gunther,  he created a complete set of contact sheets and proceeded to work on organising and researching both the historical and the personal impact of the individual images.  He later moved to St.Apern Straße in Cologne where he then housed the August Sander Archive.

During this time he and Jean-Luc also started to make modern prints using the original glass negatives.  Most notably was the edition of Antlitz der Zeit which was made for the 150th anniversary of the photographic medium.

He also started to hire people top help him with his research including Anne Ganteführer-Trier and Gabriele Conrath-Scholl whom my father helped secure a Getty scholarship. Gabriele Conrath-Scholl later stepped into the position of director of the SK-Stiftung Kultur (more on this in a moment) after the director Dr. Susanne Lange became ill and could not continue in her position.  After structuring the material to a point where the project needed to be better financed he started to look for potential supporters.

This is when Gustaf Adolf Schroeder and the Stadt Sparkasse Koeln (now Sparkasse KoelnBonn) came into the play and offered to purchase the whole archive.  My father agreed to sell all of it based on the mutual understanding that the work on August Sanders history and archive would continue. This plan was clearly defined in 1988 when my parents considered what to do with the material Gunther had passed on to my father. Unfortunately this document did not become part of the contract between my father and the SK-Stiftung Kultur.  As part of the sales agreement my father was allowed to print a limited amount of modern prints as part of his payment.  I will explain how many prints of which image were printed in a separate post. Part of the convolute sold were certain rights to August Sander’s work. Other things included a portion of the letters, books and camera equipment as well as some of the furniture August owned. The assumption that my father sold everything is very simple to rebuke if you have paid attention to the market, but just to make it clear, my father did not sell everything he had.

The SK-Stiftung Kultur has been selling August Sander inkjet prints through FOAM editions in Holland of recent as well as selling these prints in the SK-Stiftungs bookstore.  My father and his assistant Jean-Luc have stopped printing pictures by August Sander as this right was revoked by Prof. Boegner of the SK-Stiftung who are in fact the copyright holders until those rights expire on April 21, 2034.

In a separate post I will address the issue of which prints have which value, but considering the rumours I have heard lately I do feel I should at least differentiate between what it is I do sell, and what I don’t sell.

I sell the following types of prints of works by August Sander:

  1. Vintage August Sander Prints
  2. Posthumous prints by Gunther Sander
  3. Posthumous prints by Gerd Sander

I do not sell reprints. We could of course enter into a discussion about the definition of the word, but as even the terms I used above require a degree of interpretation I will not do that. I will say that, in my opinion, a reprint is a mass produced print of lesser quality which has no particular collectors value. A case in point are the reprints made by the SK-Stiftung. These are signed by Gabriele Conrath-Scholl who is the director, but is neither a photographer nor a darkroom technician nor an artist or a member of the Sander family. This effectively make the authorisation of the inkjet prints as meaningful as if they were signed by anyone who works at the archive. There have been other situations with other archives that have run into the same issue. Notably there was an attempt in France to create a reprint edition of Kertez’s photographs in an attempt to generate some money. This failed horribly because the artistic intent was not understood, and as such could not be implemented. This is the case with the reprints that the SK-Stiftung sells as well. In my opinion the selection is based purely on a monetary focus, which is understandable, but also key in understanding why those prints will probably never be worth more than they cost to purchase now.

I am now representing the work of August Sander that my family owns as well as works by a number of key collectors.  The SK-Stiftung is a research institution and as such does not sell photographs (except for the aforementioned inkjet prints). I have taken steps to secure the validity of the prints made by Jean-Luc and my father and signed by my father. The primary step being registering a trademark on the blindstamp August used to mark his prints. This blindstamp has only been used by 3 people to date, August Sander, Gunther Sander and Gerd Sander. The reason for my registering the trademark is to secure it against fraudulent use beyond the expiration date of the copyrights on August Sander’s photographs which is in 19 years (April 20, 2034). My father and I spend a great deal of time looking at and discussing the various prints we see. We have, and continue to verify prints as being originals. We continue to curate exhibitions, both of our own accord and as we are asked to do so by museums and galleries around the world. Being as there are a very large number of institutions in the world that have sizeable collections of August Sander prints this is only logical.

August Sander had a very deep spiritual understanding of photography. It is this understanding that has guided my family in their work with this material for over a century. It is this understanding that continues to guide me.

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by thegeepee

Prints, Posthumous Prints, Reprints and talking shit

The art world is small as we all know. At the top of the pyramid are a few illustrious dealers who have worked hard and have made the right decisions. Below them is a pool of sharks. I was actually written an email by a friend of my fathers who welcomed me to the shark pool. Back the the size of the art world, it being small also means there is a lot of envy and a lot of back stabbing as well as just general politics and misinformation. The honour of acknowledging people for their achievements is overpowered by the desire to place ones competitors in a bad light in order to raise oneself to a better position. This is, of course, a stupid thing to do as lies have short legs and quality does actually survive long after people realise what the moral fibre is that we are made of.

So I hear that one cannot buy at the FEROZ Galerie because I cannot be taken seriously. Apparently I only sell reprints…. Ok,  I was a bit surprised by this. I went to find out what is actually meant by that. The term is often used in reference to books, specifically when a book is sold out a reprint of it will be made. In photography there are people who sell reprints, but they are generally called poster or museum shops. I know for example that the SK-Stiftung Kultur sells reprints of work by August Sander which they have every right to do. These are digital prints of scans of Sanders photographs. What I sell, by comparison, is gelatine silver prints made from the original negatives by my father Gerd and his long time dark room assistant Jean-Luc Differdange. These are what is referred to as posthumous or modern prints. There are, of course many photographers who’s work was printed after their passing. Actually there are a lot of photographers who did not print much of anything themselves. Lisette Model comes to mind. Henry Cartier-Bresson comes to mind as well. Brett Weston printed pictures of his fathers negatives as well. I could continue, but I think you get the idea.

So lets jump back to my reputation again, that I only sell reprints… well, I don’t. The only posthomous prints I sell are those of August Sander’s work. Many of these prints are the only prints made from the negative that we know of. The rest of my inventory of vintage material spans a time frame of 120 years. I also have primary market photography by the artists I represent. I am not even going to explain how those cannot be reprints.

Ok, so now I have clarified what I sell. To make this easier to understand, I have this material because my father Gerd has been in the gallery business since before most of the new museum curators were born. This will, by timing, make it hard to remember what he did. It is not really important at this point, but he, as a gallerist, also amassed a very large collection of extraordinary photographs by some ~270 artists. Thats my inventory. I hope that is easy enough to understand.

I hope that is easy enough to understand.

So back to the rumours and fact that people prefer to take the simple route of believing everything they hear as opposed to find the truth for themselves. This form of cerebral laziness leads to slavery. If you want to be a slave, be my guest. I assume if you have read to this point you do not, so if you have heard the rumours about me not being serious or my gallery not being a place to go to, I challenge you to formulate your own opinion. I will surprise you.

cheers, Julian Sander (owner of the FEROZ Gallery)

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by thegeepee

the moral ground for complacency

I am considering a very specific responsibility. Lets assume for a moment that there is an artist named June who has produced a body of work that has transformed both the conceptual as well as the interactive impact of art and of the chosen medium in which she worked.  For arguments sake we will say June worked with photography.

June’s body of work is recognised in her lifetime by a number of great minds as being focus and driven. Authors, philosopher and painters as well as collectors and curators all find her work to be of such great merit that they publicly and vocally speak to and about the work. The work is of such impact that even the powers that be during her lifetime decide it could become dangerous and decide to try and stop it from propagating. Of course these attempts do not function as June is both smart and wise.

The work is seen throughout the world and resonates in the work of other photographers. It becomes an ideal, a prototype, even a conceptual prototype which inspires others to follow a similar path pertaining to other topics.

June passes, as we all will and June’s child then continues to work with this fantastic body of work. And in time June’s grandchild takes up the flame and continues to make the work known and understood. By this time it has been over 100 years since the world has seen June’s work for the first time.

Lets make a conservative estimate here and assume that June’s work is now in 100 collections world wide.  Some of these are large, some are small.  Lets also assume that the chain of impact has influenced 1000’s of artists.

So here is my dilemma: who has the right to say what June’s work means? Who owns the right to research what and why she did what she did? And who has the right to say what or how Junes work can be shown?

I could argue that June has that right. June is dead though… can anyone else claim this right?

As I was reviewing this dilemma I did some research into the legal foundation for this kind of situation and found that, at least where I live, the right to create art, the right to reasearch and seek knowledge and the right to propagate that knowledge are protected by the foundational rights given to everyone in my country. For those who don’t know, I live in Germany.  The law I am speaking about is Grund Gesetz Abs.5.3.  here is the quote for the whole Abs.5

Article 5 [Freedom of expression]

(1) Every person shall have the right freely to express and disseminate his opinions in speech, writing, and pictures and to inform himself without hindrance from generally accessible sources. Freedom of the press and freedom of reporting by means of broadcasts and films shall be guaranteed. There shall be no censorship.

(2) These rights shall find their limits in the provisions of general laws, in provisions for the protection of young persons, and in the right to personal honor.

(3) Art and scholarship, research, and teaching shall be free. The freedom of teaching shall not release any person from allegiance to the constitution.

which I found here.  So if I were to be in this situation the problem would solve itself. Because this law is in place there is no way anyone can claim the right to June’s work. More importantly now one can stop others from learning about it.

But in the art world there are a lot of people who do not consider these kinds of laws as they are busy carving out a place for themselves in the history books. I have heard about this often.

So lets consider, for a moment that there were 3 parties that decided they could divide June’s work up in such a way so each had their won realm to work in.  One would be responsible for selling June’s pictures.  One would be responsible for researching June’s work and life. And the last would be the one who publishes the books about June’s work. And just to make things even more exciting lets assume that none of these people actually worked together, but rather decided that each should just work in their area and not cross the demarcation lines. What would happen to June’s work in this situation?  Would the work profit from it? Quite simply, no.

This would be an invitation for complacency. It would hinder all three as none of them could profit from the work of the other. It would also be a disgrace to June’s work.

Now I come back to my moral dilemma, what should I do if I were ever to be presented with such a request? Being as I am in Germany I could just plain ignore it as any agreement to this form of market split would be against the laws in this country and as such, could not be enforced. I could ask those who would ask me such to consider the meaningless position into which they are trying to manoeuvre themselves and me. I could appeal to masses in the hopes that they would support me. I could run in fear… no, I don’t think so.

Anyways, as this is not a situation I have had to deal yet I can save having to think about this until I have some free time during my summer break in August.

 

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by thegeepee

Artsy, Paddle8, Christies, eBay, Amazon and online sales in general

I was reading an article today about the development of the online art market. The gist of this article is that the investors are as yet unsure if the online market will become viable economically. There is talk about turnover sums and traceability as well as all sorts of indicators about how all this is supposed to work.

In my humble opinion this is the wrong way to look at this market.

The art market is a derivative of a very specific interactive process. That process has almost nothing to do with money, at least initially. The arts have always been a tool for education, or maybe explanation. True is that the people who create the work need to live, and as such need to get paid. The money being spoken about in the article, or indeed in most articles about the art world in the last years, is not the money the artists get though. The talk is about the money people are earning by buying and selling the work. I am part of this world of course. The work I buy for little money and sell for a lot of money is the profit I live from. Not all the work I buy and sell falls into this model. And certainly not all work I buy can be sold easily. That is a topic in an of itself. That being said there are percentual returns on sales made through things like auctions or web sites. All of these people have a large apparatus to finance and as such must focus on the numbers, of course. But in the end that is putting the carriage in front of the horse.

What I see missing in the online market is the place where people get a chance to understand the work they buy. Of course artnet and co. will tell you that they can show you how an artist has developed based on the statistical….. and so on.. and the horse is looking at the trunk again. We seem to have lost the places where the artwork and the artist is the instigator. Where it is ok to like or dislike a work regardless of it market position. I would love to say that this is the role of the gallery, but considering how many galleries are nothing more than showrooms for the famous or the fashionable I honestly cannot say that this is true.

Maybe this place defies specific definition. Maybe it is a bit like defining what makes a good character. I do think that we should place the entities that service this, our art market in the right place in the hierarchy of our understanding. That place is certainly not in front. If we can do that, and return to our own understanding, then maybe we can get the horse to pull the wagon again.

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by thegeepee

seeing vs seeing vs seeing

As a child of the digital age (I started programming in 1977 on an Apple IIc) I do not really consider the impact of the digital copy of an image vs the original of an image.  Being as photography, by its nature, is a reproductive medium it is often assumed that every print of a work is equal, or can be.

The new technology has made this all the more possible through standardised profiles, light temperatures, exposure times, chemical qualities, ink qualities, papers… etc.. So in a way we actually have arrived at a point where we can theoretically create prints in photography that are indiscernibly different from each other.

On top of that search engines like google, yahoo etc.. and sites like instagram and tumblr have made the consumption of images into a passive process that we are almost incapable of not partaking in.  Well, those who are physically blind can not, but that is a different topic all together.

Let me take a brief step back to, say, 20 years ago.  The tech that currently inundates the photographic world under the name of “digital pigment prints” or “archival pigment prints” was already in the world by the name of “inkjet printers.”  At that time the tech was not quite available to everyman as the costs of buying a high res printer was prohibitive.  It was there though, and making its mark.

If we go back another 10-15 years we are back in the days of the darkroom and the processing lab.  The further back we go, the fewer people knew how to handle this medium called photography and the greater was the difference between a printers prints he/she created as well as the difference to his/her contemporaries.  Look at a print by Bernice Abbott vs a print by Henri Cartier Bresson (I mean one he made himself).  Part of the value of the work was founded in their ability or, in the case of HCB, lack thereof to produce great prints.

Now we have to fast forward back to today, and the reason why I am writing all of this. I have had many conversations about what the future of the gallery as a physical space is.  Many say that the market of the future is the art fair. Others say that online viewing will replace all of this.  Christies seems to certainly think so considering how much money they are investing in their online sales department. Is the gallery then a dying remnant of the Harry Lunn school of wheeling and dealing?

I would argue it is not. It is the question of seeing vs seeing.  When I see a work online I am looking at a colour distorted, surface distorted and size distorted rendition of a work.  If that is all I need then ok, but I think there is more to it.  For the contemporary works I could see it working, maybe, but for vintage material?

As for the fairs, as valuable as they are, they are pressure cookers.  I guestimate that I have about 5-10 minutes with anyone I see at a fair.  If they are close friends then possibly even less as I can talk to them when I am in the gallery. Of course there is the thrill of the hunt, and the fact that the viewer is surrounded by (hopefully) great work at every corner. But even that presents a problem. Too much of a good thing is still too much.  And then there is the competion issue. A good friend said “why should I introduce my competition to my customers?” Beyond that we exhibitors will rarely take a risk at a fair as the costs of doing them are so prohibitive that anything risky turns into missed sales, which is a luxury most gallery’s can’t partake of.  This translates into safer and more mainstream work being shown.

So I return to the gallery.  I asked my father Gerd many many years ago (think late 1980’s) what the gallery was for.  I asked this because there were always very exciting shows, but I saw my father selling work that was not on the walls.  He answered that the gallery is a place to define your position, to show what it is you stand for.  This is personal thing, or it should be.  And exactly this personal vision of the gallerist is what makes the gallery such a key part of the market.  We are nimble.  We can show new work without risking anything more than a bit of time and maybe a little bit of bad press.  And above all we can allow the buyer to see the work, physically.

In all of this the digital as well as the fairs, the magazines, the auction houses and indeed all other actors on the stage of the art world play their part.  The gallery is not the most important, rather it is a key part that is not replaceable.  The role is changing as the stage becomes more engaging , but the gallery is still one of the best places to see the work in its purest form and to talk with someone who has verified his/her belief in the work by the act of hanging it on the gallery walls.

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by thegeepee

the secrets we keep

It is a fact that the knowledge a dealer has is one of his primary sources of power in this business.  Another part comes from the secrets we keep. So far so good.

Any gallery will, if successful, have a number of people working in it. The big question becomes, who can you trust? We have all seen the movies about the mole in MI6, or business espionage, etc…

Well, recently a gallerist I know was confronted with a situation that just floored me.  Apparently she watched her employee steal a complete copy of her inventory database which included the names of artists, titles, and some other information.  This put my friend in a very difficult situation.  She of course fired that employee immediately. In the country where her gallery is this is the first and most important step.  After that she started to do damage control.

Fortunately the information taken is only usable if prepared properly, so there is no real danger.  There is the issue of what other dealers would do with this information. That is where the real problem comes to play.

I, as a dealer, am always interested in what my competition has, and what they paid for it.  This becomes an invaluable bargaining tool.  I myself had to deal with the impact of just such an information recently.  Fortunately it was with a friend, so we solved it and now own the wonderful piece together.  But the likelihood that my colleagues assailant will share the information with a someone who is out for my colleagues best interest is highly unlikely.

Can we, in the art business, call upon our colleagues to stand to a higher moral order? I mean, where is line between helping ourselves and hurting others?  This is difficult and I am not sure how I would deal with this were I offered such a store of information. I would like to believe that my moral fibre would empower me to stand for the inherently correct form of action, that being turning the information away and informing the person from whom it originated if I could find out who that was.  Let me hope I am never confronted with that situation.

The fact that my friends assailant will probably never be able to work in this business again is obvious, but sort of a shame.  There is a lot of time that goes into working your way into the art world, and throwing that away so haphazardly is both sad and stupid.  But as we say in Germany:

“You can’t look inside a persons skull.”

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