Marketing Mondays: The November Issue

.
Say you've decided to take out a small classified or display ad in an art magazine to promote an event. Or perhaps you or your gallery are thinking about purchasing a full-page for your solo show. If you've priced them, you know that ads are not cheap. A classified in an art magazine can run a couple hundred dollars; full page, front-of-book placement can run $7000 or $8000 (or more, sometimes much more, for the inside front or back cover, the outside back cover or other prime placement in the front of the book).

Ever wonder how many people you’re reaching for the price you're paying? As a potential advertiser, you have the right to request and receive that information from the publisher.
.

Image from Matthew Keegan, who writes about the state of publishing here


.
.
.
.
The rest of us need only to look at the back of the book.

Every fall, usually in the November issue, all magazines that are sent through the mail are required by the postal service to publish the names of the editor and managing editor, the name of the corporation that owns the publication—and the number of issues printed at the last monthly print run, as well as the number of subscribers. It’s a federal code called the 39 USC 3685. (Bimonthly or quarterly publications publish these figures in the issue closest to November.)

Publishers don’t like to publish this information because it takes up valuable ad space in their magazine. Small publishers really don’t like it because it reveals just how few copies of their magazine are actually printed and distributed. The information is usually on one of the last few pages, printed in the smallest legible point size. I know this because I supported myself for 20 years with jobs in publishing.

So how many people read art magazines? The number is well under 100,000 for a national publication—closer to 60,000 or 40,000 a month, or even 25,000. The figure is even smaller for regional or really specfic niche titles. Ad rates are tied to readership figures so higher readership brings in higher ad rates, but it's publishing's little secret that everyone fudges the figures.

Granted, the art world is different from the world at large. We don’t need to reach a People, Vogue, or Reader's Digest audience; those print figures are in the millions. (And ads are in the high six figures; though it's been a while since I was privy to those figures so I could be way off now.) We need only reach our much smaller cohort of dealers, critics, curators, collectors and artists. .

Given the economic climate, some might argue that ads are more important than ever. Others might take a different route--a catalog, for instance, which remains a viable document long after the print run is over; or a good website with regular postcard mailings. All of these are good options, and in this post I'm not arguing for one over the other.

My point is simply this: It's November. Now that you know what to look for, check out the numbers in the back of the book.
.

Branching Out at the Met

.

Roxy Paine's Maelstrom, on the roof of the Met through the end of the month. This calligraphic view over the hedges looks northwest

.

It’s one thing to look at a maquette of Roxy Paine’s Maelstrom. It’s another thing entirely to enter into the stainless steel thicket. In the small scale, it looks like a tangle of branches that one might have plucked from a stripped-bare bush. Walking within and around the actual sculpture on the roof of the Met, I felt as if I were negotiating the space between root and branch, as if the trunk had been eliminated and I was both under the earth and in the sky at the same time. The rooftop aerie, which has become a sort of treehouse, heightens the sensation.

Yes, there are conceptual and formal issues: The systemic quality of the sculpture relates as much to a neural network, or a circulatory sustem, as roots and branches. The branching elements create a fluid script against the sky. Then there’s the lovely incongruity of this “system” of stainless steel pipes set on the edge of arboreal Central Park, which is dense with its own natural ecology. But, really, the best way to experience this work is kinesthetically. Don't think it. Feel it. You can’t climb on it, but you can walk within it and touch it. You can hear it, too.

To orient you as I take you around the roof

. Looking south, the Citicorp building on Lexington Avenue is visible in some of the images. It has what looks like a TV screen set into the topmost part of the facade. The geodesic-paneled column is the new(ish) Hearst tower on 57th Street at 8th Avenue--East Side (left) and West Side (right) respectively

. Looking west across the park, the twin-spired building is the San Remo, one of the great prewar apartment buildings on the West Side. Farther north you'll see another such landmark, the turreted Beresford

. Looking north, there's the visual interruption of the concession stand, though there's also a lovely reflection in the museum’s mirrored windows

. To the east, there's the museum's pergola over which the buildings on Fifth Avenue press too close

We start at the north end of the sculpture looking south.

Looking south. Here the work resembles something like coral, though it hybridizes quickly into ginseng and tree branches--underground and above ground, land and water

.

Below: We're walking into the sculpture


.


Above: Moving farther into the work. As you look through the sculpture and over the south end of Central Park, you can see the Citicorp and Hearst buildings, respectively left and right in the frame


Below: Within the ticket there's room to move around. While some of the elements are as delicate as tendrils, others are quite a bit larger. I suspect they're helping to hold the massive structure in place.

.


We step back and swing around to the southwest. The sculpture seems to send out runners that insert themselves into the pavement. Yes, it's metal, but it's thrillingly botanical nonetheless. To orient you: The San Remo towers are at the left of the frame, the Beresford turrets, right
.

Below: We move back from the corner of the roof and slightly back toward the south to take in the tuberous node in the bottom right of the frame




.

There are a couple of big nodes, one hiding the other, but you're seeing both, above and below

Below: Possibly my favorite shot, the drama of the ginger-like tuber in the foreground sending out delicate rootlets that seem to slide along the pavement. To orient you, the triangle-facade Hearst building is toward the left, and the San Remo at right, which means we're swinging from southwest to west (again)


.


Continuing our 360-degree tour
Above: we're looking northwest--the San Remo is toward the left of the frame. The calligraphy of the branches against the sky that's so beautiful in the western views of the sculpture changes abruptly as structures to the north and east close in on the work
.
Below: Looking north toward the concession stand
.



.
Northeast view: With the architecture closing in, our view comes closer to the pavement, though there's a lovely touch, below, where a "runner" insinuates itself through the slatted roof of the pergola and into the trees
.

.


.
Above: Bramble-eye view, looking east. See that pair of legs at the far right? We're walking over there next
.
Below: Having walked to the far south end of the roof, we've turned to face north. Before you is an unexpectedly Bourgeoisian element isolated from the main work, though tethered. Formally it may be there just to spatially involve this far end of the roof, but I like the implication that it's new growth, that this sculpture continues to expand before our eyes
.




Above: Facing north from that far south end
.
Below: Reflecting the south-facing view from the mirrored windows on the roof's north walls. This is the reverse image of where we started our 360 tour
.


.

There’s still time to see Maelstrom. Because of the unusually rainy spring and summer, in which the roof was closed to visitors for an inordinate number of days, the exhibition has been extended through November 29. (Check the Met website to confirm.) It’s still going to be closed on rainy days, and with Daylight Savings Time over, it’s going to close earlier in the afternoon. But if you’re anywhere in the region, go see it.

.

You should know that the roof is athrob with people, and you’ll probably find yourself annoyed by the tourists who insist on blocking your good views as they pose for endless pictures of themselves. Even if you go early, find out when closing time is that day and make a point of returning just before then. You'll get to see the sculpture with far fewer distractions. (If you’re wondering why there are so few people in my pictures, it’s because I shot in the few minutes before closing. "I'm an artist," I said, and the guards allowed me to photograph until the very last moment. Bless them. By then, I’d taken all of these shots—and many more. You’re seeing the best ones. )

.

Curious about how that big sculpture got onto the roof? See the the artist installing it here.

..

Big Tree, Little Branches

.

At Carroll and Sons Gallery, Boston: Sandra Allen, Ballast, 2009, graphite on paper (15 separate sheets), total of 133.5 x 222.5 inches. That's about 12 x 19 feet

In Boston recently, I stopped into Carroll and Sons Gallery in the South End to see Sandra Allen's marvelous arboreal drawings. The one I loved most was the imposingly large-scale Ballast, installed on the wall facing the gallery entrance. Photographic from a distance, it is a mass of pencil marks from up close--a graphic rewriting of the old saw about not seeing the forest for the, well, you know.

That shift in scale reminded me that in May I'd photographed the maquette of Roxy Paine's Maelstrom at the James Cohan Gallery, just before the actual gargantuan sculpture was installed on the roof of the Met. I'll show you the big work via multiple pictures in the next post, but here you can take in the whole thing in two views.

At James Cohan Gallery in May: Roxy Paine's maquette of Maelstrom

Above: view from the south end (as it is installed on the Met roof)

Below: view from the north

..

Marketing Mondays: "Unsolicited" Submissions

There's no mystery to this message

..

Kim from Minneapolis writes: "Lately on gallery websites I've been seeing the specific phrase: 'We are currently not accepting unsolicited submissions.' Why the change from 'We are currently not accepting submissions?' What does unsolicited mean in this context?

Are they trying to say, 'We're not taking on any new artists but we might be willing to look at your material if you ask before you send it.' Or 'Stop! We really mean it!' Or something else? I've seen this enough times of late that it seems to have some sort of meaning that is eluding me."

Kim, you're overthinking this. There's no hidden meaning here. Submissions have always been unsolicited, unless a dealer specifically requests that you send a package of materials. By adding the adjective unsolicited, dealers are simply reminding artists that the packages we prepare with so much care and expectation are, in fact, not requested by them.

The recent two-part series on How Galleries Are Considering Artists Now makes clear that while some dealers do look, the cold-call submission is the least effective means of introducing your work to a dealer. A Midwest dealer gave the odds of success as “one in a million.”

In his book, How to Start and Run a Commercial Gallery, the dealer Edward Winkleman lists these methods by which a gallery finds artists. Note the position of the unsolicited (aka cold-call) submission package:
. Recommendations from gallery artists, curators, other dealers, collectors
. Institutional exhibitions such as non-profit galleries and contemporary art museums
. Studio visits and Open Studio tours
. Cold-call submissions

And here’s what he has to say about them: “Because cold-call submissions are often the least productive method of finding suitable artists, they tend to be most dealers’ least preferred means of searching. . . . If you reach a point where you are sure cold-call submissions are no longer a good means of finding new artists for you, I recommend posting that fact on your Web site. It probably won’t stop all future submissions, but at least it will prevent the artists who check first from wasting time and money.”

.

Hence the emphatic unsolicited you see on so many gallery sites.

.

So how do you get in? Referrals, recommendation, buzz. How do you get those? Network, network, network.

Over to you: Have you had any success with the unsolicited submission? If so, are there things you have done to pave the way for it (i.e. sending postcards of your work, visiting the gallery regularly)? I suspect this is more likely to happen in cities that are not New York, but do tell.

If you work in a gallery: Would you share your advice and insights about this hit-or-miss method for artists to get their work seen? What has impressed you? Have you ever shown anyone as a result of the unsolicited package? And without blowing your anonymity, if you wish to remain anonymous, please let us know if you are from a large metropolitan city or elsewhwere, as accessibility does seem to favor artists who are looking for galleries in cities other than New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco.

Hyperallergic? Antihistamines Not Required

Break out the champagne, not the Benadryl

.

.

My buddy Hrag Vartanian has introduced his new blogazine, Hyperallergic (tag line: Sensitive to Art and Its Discontents). Congratulations, Hrag!

.

What's a blogazine? Well, it's a blog, but it's conceived like a magazine. The first post appeared on October 7, and Hrag and his staff (friends, interns and a group known as "the editors") have been pumping out features every day. There are contributors, too, like Heart as Arena 's Brent Burket. While it's heavy on the street art, there are also art reviews and a news feature that pulls in clips and links from all over the art world.

.

My favorite post so far: The 20 Most Powerless People in the Art World. Too-too-che!

.

Where Vanity Fair, W, Art Forum and Forbes fear to tread

Tripping on the LES: Evans, Williams, Almeida, Martinez, P-Orridge

.
In a recent foray to the galleries on the Lower East Side, I experienced spatial shifts, woozy geometry, surrealistic portraits and hallucinogenic patterns. Call it LSD on the LES. (I wasn't really tripping; it just felt that way.)

Franklin Evans

At Sue Scott Gallery on Rivington Street, Franklin Evans transformed the space with tape, paint and lots of colored stuff. According to the gallery press release, Evans recreated his own studio. It felt like walking into an notebook--no, into an artist's head, an experience, if you are an artist, that will not feel unfamiliar, even if the specific contents are different from what's in your own cabeza. The show ended October 24, but here's a peek at what I saw:

Evans at Sue Scott: Looking toward the gallery entrance, with a wall-and-floor detail below

.

It's not always easy to determine what's three dimensional and what appears to be that way. Hint: The round tunnel, above, is on a flat wall that juts into the gallery to divide the space in two. Elements from the wall continue onto the floor

.

Below, a painting leans up against a wall; the "wall" at left is open, defined by tape from ceiling to floor. I don't know about anyone else, but I proceeded slowly through the space, as much to take it all in as to navigate the spatial distortions

. . . . . .

.

Michael Williams

The vertiginous painting by Michael Williams, below, crams all of Evans's spatiality into a two dimentional surface. Williams's show, Uncle Big, is at Canada on Chrystie Street through November 15. While there's more to Williams than vertigo, most of his visual narratives seem to be spaced-out meditations on everyday life.

Williams at Canada: Mikes Zone, oil on canvas, 40 x 60 inches

.

Detail below, with a frosting-like palette and surface

.. . . . . .

Caetano de Almieda

Up through November 15, the Brazilian Caetano de Almieda pulls you into his dialog with geometric abstraction at Eleven Rivington . I particularly liked his hallucinogenic grid, below, which seems to breathe with you, inhaling and exhaling before your eyes.
.

Almeida At Eleven Rivington: 3825 Cores (3285 Colors), 2008, acrylic on canvas, app. 59 x 47 inches

.

Detail below .

. . . . . .
.

Max-Carlos Martinez

Martinez's first-time solo is at Christopher Henry Gallery through November 1. As suggested by the title of the show, The Pursuit of Happiness (Is a Warm Gun), the work mixes referents and ideas. Cowboys and Indians take you through a narrative that suggests historical struggle and cultural identity painted with what seems to be a mescaline-dipped brush. The smaller works are framed and glazed, so as you peer into the work, you catch a glimpse of yourself--another layer of history and identity. But are you adding something of your culture and history to the artist's? Or is he adding his to yours?

For his part, the self-taught Martinez says simply: "Inspired by my tripping through america/as an insider, as an outsider/revolving doors and cultural mores/dog bless america!"

Martinez at Christopher Henry: Under My Thumb, 2009, 42 x 108 inches; and Pillow Talk, 2009, 74 x 60 inches, both acrylic on paper

Below: Pillow Talk detail with an electric palette and retinally challenging pattern

.

Above: She Came in Through the Bathroom Window

.

Below: Tennessee Waltz, both 2009, acrylic on paper, 30 x 22 inches

.

. . . . . .
.

Genesis Breyer P-Orridge

Identity is a thread that also runs through 30 Years of Being Cut Up at Invisible-Exports on Orchard Street, which closed October 18. The unique individual known as Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, a cross-dressing, pandrogynous man who had himself surgically and cosmetically altered to look like his paramour, Lady Jane Breyer, showed three decades of collages. The mix-it-up medium would seem to suit the artist, and while there are more exposed body parts than I care to show you here, this collage of a certain British monarch--more Surrealist than psychedelic--made me laugh out loud:

Genesis Breyer P-Orridge at Invisible-Exports: English Breakfast, collage
.

Coincidentally: Ramsay and Mann

.

By now you know my visual guidestick: Two's a coincidence, three's a trend. Here we have a coincidence, all the more striking because the galleries are around the corner from one another in the same building and on the same floor.

.

In several key pieces in their shows, Debra Ramsay at Blank Space and David Mann at McKenzie Fine Art (both at 511 W. 25th) are working with similar elements: a symmetrical composition with an "exploded" vertical core, built up through repeated elements, and executed with modulated color and a strong sense of materiality and process. Transparent or translucent color allows you to view each work through a chromatic scrim.

..

Each exhibition satisfies on its own, but the visual reciprocity enhances the experience. There are differences, of course. Scale is the most obvious; Mann works larger. Color is another; Ramsay has the more neutral palette. And the materials--acrylic, encaustic--refract the light differently. See for yourself.

.

Both shows are up now: Ramsay's through October 31, Mann's through November 14..

.

Debra Ramsay: Measuring Parallels 33, 2008, encaustic and eggshell on birch panel, 12 x 24 inches

Detail below

.

David Mann: Phantasm, 2009, acrylic and oil on canvas over board, 58 1/8 x 68 1/8 inches

Detail below

Installation views: Ramsay at Blank Space, left, and Mann at McKenzie Fine Art

.

Marketing Mondays: The "Adjective" Artist. How Do You Define Yourself?

.
A short while back, a reader with the nom de blog of Quilt Works asked, “Have you ever done features on fiber artists?” Man, did she push a button!

Love the Work, Hate the Adjective
Let me start out by saying this: Quilt Works, I mean you no disrespect. I love quilts and textiles. Amish quilts, Gee’s Bend quilts, Faith Ringgold’s quilts, Alighero e Boeti’s embroidered canvases, and the work in fiber of many other artists, well known or lesser so. So it’s not the medium that pushes my button but the use of the adjective as a means of identification.

Allie Pettway quilt. Pettway is one of the Gee's Bend Quilters represented by the New York gallery Ameringer/McEnery/Yohe. (Image from the Internet)

In one of my first posts for this blog, I wrote my personal manifesto, I Am Not an Encaustic Artist. As I said in the post, I work in the medium because it allows me to express myself in the best possible way, but I don't want to be defined by it. Encaustic is something I use (and love using), but it's not who I am.

Polly Apfelbaum's "fallen paintings" made with fabric dye on cut fabric: fiber art or painting? (Image from the Internet)

Avoid the Typecasting

Those of us who work in particular mediums—whether encaustic or fiber, metalpoint or clay, or any one of a number of other at-the-edges-of-mainstream materials—run the risk of being pigeonholed by the particularity of the material. We didn’t go to “fiber art school” or “metalpoint school.” We went to art school where we tried a variety of materials. As artists we express ourselves in the medium that resonates for us.

.

It’s easy to get typecast, and from there to hear a comment like, “We already showed one fiber artist this year.” Could you imagine a dealer saying that about oil? (Those Sopranos actors are dealing with a similar issue right now, I’ll bet. Lots of opportunities to play thugs, but romantic leads? Not so much.)

I’ll bet that Oliver Herring, when he was crocheting his sculptures a decade ago, called himself a sculptor, not a fiber artist (he was just on the cover of the September Art News, by the way). I'll bet Shinique Smith, who works with baled forms, and Peter Weber, who works with folded felt, do not call themselves fiber artists.

Shinique Smith: work from a recent solo exhibition at Yvon Labert Gallery

Peter Weber: from a show at Thatcher Projects in 2008

Maybe you think I’m being petty

Who has the more visible careers—“fiber artists” or non-adjectival artists like Apfelbaum, Smith, and Weber? "Fiber artists" or Tracy Emin, whose recent work consisted of stitched blankets? “Encaustic artists” or a painter like Jasper Johns, who employs encaustic in his work?

.

To answer Quilt Works’s question, I have written about artists who work with fiber or fiber constructions. My report from the 2009 Armory week in New York, for instance, included a post called Sew Me the Money, which included Emin’s blankets, El Anatsui’s wall-size bottle-cap constructions (you could easily call them tapestries), Mary Heilmann’s woven chairs, and other work.

Interestingly, any of the aforementioned artists who work with fiber could easily be the subject of a feature in a textile magazine, but the reverse does not hold true. How many self-identified weavers, for instance, have you see in in Art in America? There is plenty of work in fiber in those publications, but it's under the conventional art categories of painting, sculpture, work on paper, maybe installation. Indeed, when I was looking at some of the textile-influenced work at shows during Armory week in New York, I couldn't help thinking that I've seen so much better by artists who might define themselves as "fiber artists"--but much of the rest of the art world hasn't seen this work because it's sequestered in "fiber" and "textile" shows.

(The quilts are an interesting issue on their own. Those that spring out of a particular culture--Amish or Gee's Bend, or Navajo weaving for that matter, may be included in museum and gallery shows, but typically under the cultural rubric; individual artists often remain anonymous.)

.

Jasper Johns: "encaustic artist" or painter? Installation from Focus: Jasper Johns at MoMA in early 2009

.

"Fiber art" or art? Tracey Emin stitched blanket at White Cube Gallery's booth at the Armory Fair, March 2009
.

.
Acknowledging our Commonalities, Limiting our Limitations
I love materiality, and I understand the powerful need for artists to align themselves with others. I have done it myself--and still do when the occasion seems appropriate to me. But as a general means of identification, no. I currently run an annual conference for painters who work in encaustic, and some years ago I edited a magazine called Fiberarts, which is still published. I think the specific focus of a publication or event provides a place for artists who work in a particular medium to show their work to that particular audience, to share information and network. This is true of other "adjectives" as well: women artists, black artists, gay artists, and artists of any ethnicity or culture. It can be emotionally fulfilling, to say nothing of professionally helpful, to align ourselves with others who are who we are, who do what we do. But not all the time; that's a ghetto.

Besides, we have many adjectives to describe us; where would it end? Without denying any part of how I identify myself in the world, for instance, it would nevertheless be ridiculous to ghettoize myself artistically as a mid-career Italian-American lesbian feminist encaustic artist.

I've come to this point of view over time: The more narrowly we define ourselves, the narrower our opportunities will be.

So you can count on me to write about art made with all of all kinds of materials--and to discuss the materials--but without defining the artist by the medium, as much as it is possible do so.

Over to You
Do/did you define your art (or your artist self) with an adjective? Do you you struggle with the "adjective" issue? How do you deal with it? Do you feel you've ever been eliminated, overlooked, or dismissed because of the adjective rather than the work? Do you think you may have limited your own opportunities for grants or exhibitions because of the way you define your art? Or, has it helped you?
.

"Stripes/Solids" at Paula Cooper Gallery

.

What you see when you walk in:

Sherrie Levine's Untitled (Broad Stripe:6), 1985, casein and wax on mahogany, 24 x 20 inches, with Ellsworth Kelly's Green Panel in the distance

.
With an economy of words, the description of Stripes/Solids on the Paula Cooper Gallery website says simply: "The works in this show, dating from 1962 to 2008, embody a clarity and resolution of line, color and form through simple gestures."
.
I would add that there's a strong sense of materiality here, from the wax in Sherrie Levine's Untitled (Broad Stripe: 6), which you see when you walk in, to Brice Marden's wax and oil monochromes, to Jan J. Schoonhoven's stacked cardboard with the corrugated edges forming the surface structure, to Rudolf Stingel's enormous styrofoam relief. There's also an unexpected river of blue and green that runs through the gallery. .

We're going to tour the large main gallery and then peek into the smaller front room that faces the street. To orient you, the Dan Walsh painting, below, is on the other side of the wall from Levine's. Stripes/Solids is up through October 31..
.

.

Dan Walsh, Gray Field, 2008, acrylic on canvas, 55 x 90 inches; Brice Marden, Trade Painting 2, 1974-64, beeswax and pigment on canvas, two panels overall 50 x 30 inches
.

.
Marden's painting; Robert Mangold, Brown Ellipse/Gray Green Frame, 1988-89, acrylic and pencil on canvas, two panels overall 74.5 x 137.75 inches
.

.
Mangold's painting; Rudolf Stingel, Untitled, 1999, carved styrofoam, 120 x 192 x 4 inches; Jan J. Schoonhoven, R 77-3, 1977, corrugated cardboard on wood
.

.

Stingel's sculpture; Ellsworth Kelly, Green Panel, 1980, oil on canvas, 72 x 88 inches
.

Kelly's painting; work by Anne Truitt and Josef Albers, described below

Below: Truitt's Breeze, 1978, acrylic on wood, 60.24 x 5.5 x 4 inches; Albers's Study to Homage to the Square: Vernal, 1978, oil on masonite, 17 7/87 x 17 7/8

(Barely visible in the front gallery: a painting by Agnes Martin )
.

.

In the street-facing front gallery: Agnes Martin, Untitled #10, 1994, acrylic and graphite on canvas, 60 1/8 x 60 1/8. (Even here the work is barely visible.)

Below, on the wall opposite Martin: John McLaughlin, #8, 1966, oil on canvas, 40 x 60 inches

.

In this museum-quality exhibition, with one work per artist, the spare installation provides an opportunity to immerse yourself in each work while finding yourself in the middle of visual conversations between the geometric elements. It turns out there's a lot going on with these "simple gestures." As a title, Stripes/Solids is something of an understatement.

.