Thoughts on 2017 for the Art Business, pt. 2

[please find Part 1 here, and Part 3 here]

“Looking at art in a tent is like eating chicken from a bucket.” — Ben Genocchio, Executive Director, The Armory Show

“And believe me, a good piece of chicken can make anybody believe in the existence of God.” — Sherman Alexie, Award-winning author

From emailed jpegs replacing trannies and faxes, to Instagram and attendant ‘likes’ usurping full-page ads and thoughtful reviews in Artforum, to the possibility of the ever-elusive ‘buzz’ becoming instantly globalized and the generally accelerating force of the internet, the impact of the internet on galleries and art fairs has been well-established and thoroughly investigated. But it is important to understand the difference between noise and significance, in order to get a better understanding of how we got here, where here really is, and where we should try to get to next.

Galleries: Fighting the Good Fight

The internet was heralded to be the saving grace of the gallery trade, ushering in a brave new world of global exposure and sales, so why are so many galleries in such dire straits? The short version of the answer is that the hugely disproportionate share of the upsides of the internet evolution have accrued to the mega-galleries best able to take advantage of the most large-scale advantages of the internet — namely, the production and dissemination of cultural product (art) on a global scale. Midsize and small galleries simply don’t have — and can’t hope to build — the physical infrastructure necessary to take advantage of the globalizing effect of the internet. To date, art fairs have been nearly the only opportunity for non-mega galleries to truly take advantage of the global marketplace the internet has brought.

Please bear with me, dear reader, but Stefan Simchowitz is absolutely right about a lot of the problems in our current gallery system. Andrew Goldstein’s great recent interview lays this out in one of the most even-handed takes on ‘Simco’ I’ve yet seen. The problem is that Simco is not really providing a solution, just an alternate; and to further complicate things, he doesn’t seem to understand the difference. He says himself that his system is “a total anomaly” and irreplicable. How does flinging Trumpian insults at imaginary enemies in the current system help anyone other than himself and his circle? While I applaud Simchowitz for his willingness to confront countless sacred cows of the art business, he seems to be missing the forest for battling with the trees. Ultimately, it’s my belief that in picking fights with galleries, he’s fighting the wrong battle.

It’s a similar — if less antagonistic — situation with Magnus Resch, another recent bête-noire of the gallery world with his 2015 book Management of Art Galleries. As pointed out in this delightful rebuttal on Hyperallergic, Resch, like Simchowitz, offers entirely impractical solutions, given the reality of the gallery system. Resch’s technical analysis of the problems is sound enough, although it elucidates little we don’t already know thanks to the brilliant Clare McAndrew’s annual reports via TEFAF. (I’m sure I’m not alone in my excitement to see what the move to Art Basel will bring.) Like Simchowitz, fire without heat is pretty useless. Contrast these approaches to — for instance — the always thoughtful Edward Winkleman. While he may not be a flag-waving revolutionary, he offers clear-eyed, practical insight for the world of galleries. One is also well-advised to re-peruse Marc Spiegler’s take on the gallery sector from a year ago in the Art Newspaper.

Art Fairs: The Art Fair is Dead, Long Live the Art Fair

Literally and metaphorically, art fairs are where the art world comes together. Once cozy insider, to-the-trade affairs, art fairs were disrupted by the internet. The art-fair-going crowds and the galleries that rely on them can certainly seem shell-shocked. The global interconnectedness that the internet facilitated suddenly allowed — for instance — a collector in Hong Kong to discover the work of an artist in Berlin showing at a gallery in São Paulo. Art fairs were a convenient, pre-existing infrastructure that allowed all three parties to come together to transact a sale. Throw in a seemingly endless supply of champagne and you’ve got the current state of the upper-echelon art fairs. If the internet was going to disrupt the art market in its current art fair and event driven atmosphere, progress would have to go backwards. In fact, art fairs solved a problem created by the internet.

Thus it is ironic that art fairs also serve as a reminder for why the art market has been perceived as resistant to disruption. As imperfect vessels for art as art fairs are, the internet (even with advances in virtual- and augmented-reality) will never replicate, much less replace, the social aspect of art — the fundamental magic of standing in front of a work of art. As a former art fair director, I heard plenty of the vitriol directed at the art-fair-as-slaughterhouse view of things. That being said, time and again I also saw thousands of true art lovers, collectors, curators, critics, and writers descend on fair after fair. We can’t all just be totally crazy and masochistic, can we? Ok, maybe don’t answer that. But clearly something fundamental about art fairs is right, rather than the oft-argued assertion that they are the worst thing to ever happen to art. Simply put, art fairs effectively and relatively efficiently address the core challenge presented by the intersection of the Brave New Globalized World of the internet, and the spiritual and social impetus to physically stand in the presence of a work of art.

For 20 years, tilting at windmills in the art market both real and imagined has gotten us nowhere — in practical terms and particularly in relation to the real revolutions that have come to other markets (think media). While we have seen tremendous changes both positive and negative, the revolution so many were expecting or trying to create in the art market has not come, so why are we still looking for it? It’s time to bring practical solutions to fundamental, but addressable, challenges. In my final post of this series, we’ll start looking at what we can actually do in 2017 to make a difference.

Part 3 is here