Hitler: Just This One Time . . . .

In this installment of the Hitler Finds Out series on You Tube, the mustachioed screamer learns that the MOCA job has gone to a different guy with round glasses. Happy snow day!

Marketing Mondays: Do You Really Need a Gallery?

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Whenever I teach a workshop to mid-career artists, their first question is always, “How do I get into a gallery?" It's a legitimate query, especially if they've spent years on the outside looking in.

But here’s how things have changed: The 20-something students in a senior-level careers class I teach typically get around to just the opposite line of thinking: “Do I really need a gallery?”

Chelsea: chockablock with galleries. Do you need one?

This new generation of students has figured out that with their fluency in the virtual world of Facebook, Twitter, blogs, websites, and e-newsletters in concert with real-world venues such as open studios and non-profit spaces—all coupled with the current strong D.I.Y. work ethic—they can create their own career opportunities early on.

I don’t think it’s a black-or-white issue. Working outside a conventional gallery now doesn’t mean you’ll do it forever. And I don’t think it’s strictly a generational issue, either. Indeed, After I wrote the first draft of this post I got this email from a 50-something artist who sums up the issue: "I'm wondering if, due to the recession, I might be better off to bypass galleries entirely and try to reach clients directly via blogging, FaceBook and so on. That feels like a huge gamble, but maybe that's because I've grown up with the gallery system. Am I crazy not to sell direct? Yet I also think galleries lend credibility that I cannot create on my own. My mind plays ping pong on this topic a lot."

With the promotional options available to artists now, and with a seemingly new respect for entrepreneurship (perhaps because there are more independent curators and critics than ever, and because dealers are also looking for new ways to run their businesses effectively on smaller budgets), it would appear that making a career without gallery representation really is an option. A few thoughts for artists of all ages, whether you're tending more toward the ping or the pong:

You don’t need a gallery if you:
. Want to do it your way
. Don’t wish to split sales with a gallery
. Don’t mind having a regional career or are willing to (literally) take your show on the road
. Can work well with others
. Don’t particularly wish to live in a big city
. Are prepared to not only make your work but market it, promote it, deliver it and install it
. Have a strong sense of entrepreneurship coupled with an equally strong business sense
. Can interact well with the public

Tech-savvy artists have the potential to explode the white box, and do-it-yourself thinking may knock hierarchical thinking down a few pegs, but let’s acknowledge that there have always been those who have worked outside of the commercial gallery system. Co-op galleries are a great example, organized by artists who band together to create exhibition space for themselves. Sure some may not be able to get into commercial galleries, but many artists choose the co-op system as a way to control what they make and how and when they show it. And let's acknowledge the value of the community that develops among artists in such a gallery.

Co-ops aside, I’m thinking of the Pacific Northwest artist who throws two big salon events a year in her large Victorian home, in which she shows her own work and that of others—and sells up a storm. I’m thinking of the couple upstate who combine art and life is the most artful way, selling their work to a devoted coterie of collectors; of the couple on Cape Cod who lives simply, rurally, with their two kids, raising their own vegetables and selling their work out of their studios to a summer clientele; of the various collectives, couples and independent entrepreneurs who make art all winter and then sell it all summer, whether in big tourist destinations like Cape Cod or Ogunquit, Maine, or along a circuit of art and craft fairs.

More recently, I’m thinking of two West Coast artists who opened their own gallery to show their work. You don’t need a gallery if you have your own! Their business is doing so well, they're thinking of applying for booth space in Miami next year. (To bookend this thought, there are dealers who have closed their physical spaces and are, with their original artist roster, maintaining their galleries online as they work with their collector base.)

In terms of online opportunities for artists, there are the electronic marketplaces Etsy and E-bay, as well as the Painting-a-Day sites. One Brit moved his studio to Provence, cranks out and sells his little paintings for a hundred bucks a pop and then has the time and money to make the larger plein air paintings that are his passion.

You do need a gallery if you:
. Aim for a career beyond your immediate region
Yes, you can do this on your own with travel, correspondence, and a lot of schlepping. But dealers share resources as a matter of course—the “resources” being us. A couple of dealers meet as neighbors at an art fair. Before you know it, an artist from Gallery A in Portland, Oregon, is showing at Gallery B, in Portland, Maine, and vice versa. Or a dealer you work with in one city suggests to a dealer in another city that s/he take a look at your work.

. Want a business partnership with one or more galleries
In my experience, having a network of galleries represent you is the way to actually earn a living from the sale of your work. Even in hard economic times, some regions of the country are in better shape than in others. For example, a friend from the Pacific Northwest recently explained why she was showing in Tulsa. Tulsa? “Its economy is based on oil money, and the economy has not crashed the way the rest of the country has. People are still buying art.”

. Expect to relinquish certain jobs in exchange for the gallery taking a commission You’re never going to be free of that dreaded administrative work. Indeed, working with eight or ten galleries takes a lot of desk work to keep track of who has what, when it was sold, and did I get paid yet. But the psychologically draining work of constantly submitting—sending CDs and packages, entering juried shows, putting out that choose me energy can be redirected into the studio

. Need an advocate to promote your work, find you commission, get the payment due you Curators and many consultants prefer to deal with a gallery rather than the individual artist. Decisions about whose work to include in a museum show, which artist to commission remain between those professionals and the dealer until a short list is decided upon, or a request for a studio visit or specific work is made

Says one dealer I work with, "I never like seeing one of my artists lose out on an opportunity, but I can absorb that rejection with less personal attachment. Sometimes my artists don't even know about the rejection; I don't tell them. I know there will be another opportunity for them down the road."

Here's another way your dealer is your advocate: A consultant was taking her sweet time about paying the gallery for work. My dealer knew just how patient to be before taking off the gloves. I was in awe. “It’s part of my job to make sure you get paid,” she said. She rolled up her sleeves, metaphorically speaking, and got the check.

.Want a barrier between you and rest of the world You get a taste of these questions and comments at opening or open studios: “How long did it take to make?” “Can you make this smaller and in chartreuse?” “My neighbor is an artist.” “We love art; we just bought a Thomas Kinkaid/collect posters/framed our pre-schooler’s drawings.” Your dealer is fielding that crap every day so that you don’t have to.

Personally, as an artist I wear enough hats. I don’t wish to add “dealer” to my headgear collection. And I like the partnerships I've forged with my dealers over the years. But I like participating in D.I.Y. projects or occasionally organizing one of my own. I'm curious to see how things develop outside the white box. Options for artists—respected, viable options—can only be a good thing.

What do you think?

A Six-Minute Trip Through the Known Universe

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Click here for a peek at eternity

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Cloth? Not

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Susanna Starr: Untitled (Folded Doily), 2007, handcut maple and mahogany wood veneer, cable, 45 x48x6 inches; image courtesy of Marcia Wood Gallery

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The splendid image that opens this post arrived last week via email from the Marcia Wood Gallery in Atlanta. It’s the work of Susanna Starr, a New York-based artist who’s having her first solo there, Not So Domestic. If you look closely, you can see that it’s not a textile at all but tissue-thin wood veneer that’s been cut into a simulacrum of a doily and draped over a rod. I love it!
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This piece started me thinking about Linda Besemer’s no-substrate acrylic paintings, which are also draped over a rod; of David Ambrose's perforated gouaches that compress architecture and textiles into exquisite rectangles of art history; and of my my own small reductive color fields of encaustic on panel, which assume some semblance of silk. Things developed from there . . .
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Starr's installation view at the Marcia Wood Gallery

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Carving the veneer with a penknife and then oiling its surface, the artist transforms the anachronistic doily into a larger-than-life object--an anti antimacassar, you might call it--which she describes this way: "The doily has gone wild and the wood has been fully domesticated."

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I love how Starr's works relate visually to . . ..

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. . . David Ambrose, Advancing Architecture in Umbria, 2007, watercolor or pierced paper, 60 x 45 inches . . ..

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. . . and Linda Besemer, pure acrylic painting, draped over dowel, at Angles Gallery, Santa Monica, at Pulse Miami, 2008.

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Clytie Alexander, perforated aluminum, from her solo Diaphans, at Betty Cunningham Gallery, February 2009.

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Detail below

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Nobu Fukui's high-intensity geometry partly veiled with a scrim of embedded pearl beads, at his solo at the Stephen Haller Gallery, Fall 2009.

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Detail below
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Ambrose again: Charlemagne's Chapel, 2005, watercolor on paper, 44 x 30 inches, from the artist's website
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Liz Hager, Strawberry Fields, gouache on paper, 10 x 8 inches, from a series called Imaginary Textiles on the artist's website
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Hager's work, as well as that of Barbara Ellmann, below, are reminiscent of Indian chintz and of the the woven and printed textiles, many with fruit and flower themes, from Central Asia, where decorative elements flourished in lieu of representation..

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Barbara Ellmann, River Town, 2006, encaustic on board, 24 x 24 inches, from the artist's website.

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Grace DeGennaro, gouache on okawara paper, each app. 24 x 16 inches; these from my post on her work, Wellspring

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De Gennaro's themes, particularly the tree of life, are familiar on carpets througout India and the Middle East. However, the transparency of the paper and the luminosity of the color call to mind swatches of sari fabric--and legendary Vogue editor Diana Vreeland's cultural observation that "Pink is the navy blue of India."

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Tim Bavington at the Jack Shainman Gallery, September 2009.

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Bavington's work is drawn from music. Here's New York Art Beat on his show at Shainman: "Taking music as a starting point, Bavington translates chords, notes, guitar necks and solos into visual systems by approximating their equivalents in color and then spraying them with synthetic polymer onto canvas."

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While it may not have been intentional, Bavington's painting is nevertheless visually akin to the ikat fabrics that are woven throughout Japan, Southeast Asia and Central Asia. To make an ikat cloth, the weaver (or dyer) colors the vertical warp threads in a particular pattern or sequence so that when the threads are woven, the resulting fabric features a vertically oriented, often flame-like pattern. Cloths with this kind of loose-limbed pattern come from Samarkand in Uzbekistan, Central Asia, a major stop on that fabled caravan route from China to Venice known as the Silk Road. Which brings us to my own work, the series Silk Road, whose color is built up from layers of translucent paint and whose surface has evolved to suggest the grain and shimmer of slubbed silk..
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Joanne Mattera, Silk Road 69, 2006, encaustic on panel, 12 x 12 inches .

Below: Studio wall, late 2009, before the work went to Metaphor Contemporary Art. See more here, here and here

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More: If you read this blog regularly, you know that I often talk about the textile sensibility that runs through some of contemporary art. A couple of recent posts on the topic can be found in my reporting from the 2009 Miami art fairs: Five Woven Grids and Pulling a Thread, and from the 2009 Armory Fair in New York, Sew Me the Money.
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Marketing Mondays. Out of Work. And Invisible

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Desiree Palmen, from the Internet

A recent article for MSMBC discussed the 9 Professions That Saw Most Job Losses in 2009.

Here's the list:

1. Architects
2. Carpenters
3. Production supervisors and assembly workers
4. Pilots
5. Computer software engineers
6. Mechanical engineers
7. Construction workers
8. Bank tellers
9. Bookkeeping, accounting and auditing clerks

Notice anything missing? How about this for #10: Artists

Not that this is a list anyone would want to be on, but how is it that a group struggling more than usual (and, as usual, more than most) to earn a living is not mentioned? Where’s the information that would have allowed the reporter, Eve Tahmincioglu, to acknowledge us?

The visual arts have seen countless artists lose what little paid employment they had. I’m not picking on the writer of the article; she’s simply the most visible indicator of how invisible the creative community is.

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The number of bank tellers without employment is greater than the number of artists without jobs, only because most artists never had a countable job to begin with.

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. An artist whose commissions dry up in this economy has an invisible job loss

. An artist who sees sales at Open Studios dwindle to nothing has an invisible job loss

. An artist who has been teaching privately and has no more students has an invisible job loss

. An artist who has no sales because her dealer closed the gallery has an invisible job loss

. The dealer who closes her gallery has an invisible job loss that impacts many other invisible jobs, not just for artists but for administrative staff, part-time installers, bartenders for the openings, and yes, #9, bookkeepers.

I wrote about this latter issue of collateral damage in Where’s the Bailout for the Arts? just after the banks got all those billions, while artists saw grant money dwindle, museums cut back, and galleries close. Think about the impact to our community in this economy: artists without dealers, dealers without galleries, galleries without collectors; curators without museums (or vice versa); and all the folks who are out of a job due to cutbacks and plain lack of work: art handlers, art critics, PR firms that focus on the arts, assistants, secretaries and all the backroom and behind-the-desk support that’s so essential to the running of these businesses.

The bottom line: Aside from a handful of famous names, 99% of artists—my figure, and it’s probably too low—and the art professionals with whom we work most closely are not given a second thought.

But I’m not posting this just to complain. My question to all of you: What do we, as individual artists and as a community, do to be more visible? And equally important, what can we do to stay off the list no one thinks to put us on?

Math Schmath. I Just Dig The Image

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The image above is a manifestation of something called The Exceptional Lie Group E8. I can't even begin to extrapolate the information from the scientific website. I believe it's the computer-generated representation of a formula, which would fill all the blackboards in Manhattan, that has something to do with multiple dimensions and the theory of everything. Or perhaps it's the mathematical formula for Marshmallow Fluff. All I care is that it's a staggeringly beautiful image. And--guess what?--it looks like nothing so much as an equally staggering work below by Mark Dagley, taken from the McKenzie Fine Art website.

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Dagley's work is from 1999, and the formula is more recent. If Dagley somehow imagined the form before the math produced it, well I'm thinking he's got a big career in physics. And if the math came before the art, Dagley's drawing is a beautiful and mindblowingly complex image that connects the artist with nature of the universe in a way rarely before imagined.

Mark Dagley, Cul de Sac, 1997, acrylic and pencil on canvas, 60 x 60 inches. From the exhibition Linear Abstraction, January 8-February 7, 2009

Art Auctions Officially Over?

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Over at Hrag Vartanian's blogazine, Hyperallergic, there's an amusing post called Best of the Aughts: The 11 Best Headlines for a Delusional Decade, which announces everything from a 1000% increase in arts funding to Frank Gehry's admission that he never intended for his art museums to actually display art. (Image from Hyperallergic)

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In the comment section, I've proposed a 12th headline story:

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Art Auctions Officially Over!!

Organizers of charity events say they finally understand the essential unfairness of asking artists, many of whom earn less than zero in any fiscal year, to give away work, which is then typically picked up by fledgling collectors for pennies on the dollar.

In a bold move, the organizers have announced a massive reeducation program to help artists learn to say no, and to reacquaint collectors with the gallery system for the acquisition of art.

Artists have been asked to donate work to help fund the program.

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Studio Visit with Gloria Klein

. Gloria Klein's work table, laden with recently completed paintings on paper

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In September, on a roll from my studio visits throughout the summer, I visited Gloria Klein on the Lower East Side. Klein lives in a large apartment complex two blocks from the East River on a stretch between the Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges. Her one-bedroom apartment, filled with a decade-spanning collection of work by New York artists, is both home and studio. The studio takes up most of the living room.

I’ve been a fan of Klein’s geometric paintings since the first time I saw them, well over a decade ago at, I think, A.I.R. Gallery. (One such painting is visible on the wall in the picture above.) Her razor-sharp compositions call to mind rapidly multiplying crystalline structures, which she has assembled carefully into a grid matrix, so what looks initially to be wildly out of control visually in fact exists within the exquisite tension of chaos and order.

I'm dispensing with the captions. Just scroll down and take a look. All the paintings are 22 x 30 inches, acrylic on heavy watercolor paper

In Klein's most recent body of work she has switched from stretched canvas to 22 x 30” paper. These are the works I saw and photographed, and which appear here. It seems that in the process of moving from a tensioned surface to the smaller and more relaxed rectangle of heavyweight watercolor paper, the tension in her compositions has also relaxed.

“I paint a lot on paper now,” says Klein. The smaller workspace engendered the change in material, but she is careful to point out that the intent remains the same. “To me, it’s the same surface, the same concentration, the same hard edge.”

But the work seems, well, less edgy and more joyful, no? “Not joyful, playful. I wanted to relax the triangles."

So here you go: playful, saturated, geometric, a bit less tension but still intense.


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Klein does still paint on canvas, though in relatively small proportion. This is a work in progress

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Marketing Mondays: A Curator Connects the Dots for an Exhibition

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In the previous post, Mary Birmingham, Exhibition Director for the Hunterdon Art Museum in Clinton, New Jersey, talked about how artists get on her radar and offered advice to anyone looking to connect similarly with curators.

In this post, she talks specifically about how she found the artists for Material Color. Although the show is over (it ran for four months, October 2008 through January 2009), the curatorial process by which she developed the exhibition continues in her practice. I think it's worth hearing about how Birmingham made the selections she did, because her process complements the ideas that Marketing Mondays has put forth in other posts: Show, show, show your work; network with your colleagues in the art world, whether they be artists, dealers, critics or curators; and understand that networking may lead to referrals, which are a big way artists find their way into exhibitions. (Disclaimer: My work is included in this show. Indeed, it's how this dialog with Birmingham came about.)

Above: Mary Birmingham, facing camera, talks with artist Leslie Wayne at the opening of Material Color. James Lecce painting, left; my Vicolo 35
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The words below are Birmingham’s, except for a couple of lines in italic by me to set the scene. I simply organized the comments into paragraphs with subheads to deliver the narrative. The work of most of the artists she mentions can be seen in my blog post about the show. .
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One Artist Sparks an Idea
At the Miami art fairs in 2007, Birmingham was taken with the work of Robert Sagerman. His lush surfaces, comprised of thousands of brush strokes built up into a tangible wall of color and light, provided an Aha! moment for her.

"I saw Robert Sagerman’s work at no fewer than four places in Miami. Then I started to become more aware of other art work that shared this sense of weighty materiality and seductive surface. I saw the work of Peter Fox, Markus Linnenbrink and Omar Chacon--all works that were colorful as well as having a visceral feeling about them. By the end of my stay in Miami I had seen enough to tease my thinking about a possible future exhibition."

The material color that sparked an exhibition: a surface by Robert Sagerman (The detail here, from 7373, 2008, oil on canvas, was painted after Birmingham's Aha! moment; it's one of my photo file images)

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More Looking
"My idea was reinforced when I returned to New York. In March [2008] I saw Ivana Brenner's work at Scope and Leslie Wayne’s at the Armory Show. Those six artists were enough to get me going."

Another jumpstarter: the work of Leslie Wayne. This detail, from my photo files, is from a painting at the Jack Shainman Gallery booth at Pulse Miami, 2007

Referrals by Dealers and Artists, and Serendipitous Finds
"I found Carlos Estrada Vega through Margaret Thatcher, who also pointed me to dealer Valerie McKenzie, who represents James Lecce. I like Elizabeth Harris's gallery and and was happy to find that that she represents Carolanna Parlato, whose work I had also seen in Miami through a West Coast dealer. I've known the work of Lori Kirkbride and Paul Russo for several years. Robert Sagerman introduced me to Gregg Hill.

"Alana Bograd was recommended to me by the artist Amy Wilson, who is a friend of mine. Another artist I’ve become friendly with, Molly Heron, was in the [2008] No Chromophobia show at OK Harris and invited me to see it with her. While we were there, I happened to meet Louise Sloane. This is also where I saw your work in person for the first time. I found the other artists either while wandering in Chelsea or through searching the Internet.
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"By then I had sharpened my idea to explore different processes and materials, with the common denominator of color. I was especially interested in seeing how different artists found different ways to handle [the materiality of] their paint. "

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Installation view of No Chromophobia at OK Harris, spring-summer, 2008, curated by Richard Witter
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Birmingham found two artists there: Louise P. Sloane, on far wall above (Martha Keller, left); and me, left and center, below (Siri Berg, right)

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Birmingham connected the dots into the curatorial mix that became Material Color

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Above: Louise P. Sloane, Cecilia Biaggini and Gregg Hill

Below: Hill, Sagerman and Carlos Estrada Vega

A Typical Approach
"This is pretty much my process for organizing group shows. Something stimulates my thinking. Then I start collecting names, which connect to other names. Studio visits follow each round of discoveries and leads until the show develops."

Atmospheric

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Dan Flavin, Alternating Pink and Gold, at David Zwirner Gallery

There’s a lot of atmosphere in Chelsea right now. Not air, which is a given, but ethereal presence. Light and space.
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The David Zwirner Gallery is just pulsing atmosphere over on 19th Street in that block long building complex of his. First there’s the Dan Flavin sculpture that’s been up for a while, glowing yellow, pink and white in a semi-darkened space the size of a small airplane hangar. The effect is at once quietly grand and oddly intimate.
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In the gallery proper there’s Primary Atmospheres: Works from California 1960-1970. This is beautifully rendered minimalism. Much of it is etheric, though there’s a strong sense of surface (now there's an oxymoron). The cool white exhibition spaces allow the work to appear to levitate. Don’t make me talk about it any more. I’m going to show you pictures. It’s up until February 6, so go see it for yourself.

But Zwirner’s California boys (and one girl) are not the only luminous game in town. In its Abstract Ensemble show, ACA Gallery on 20th Street has a lovely chromatic mirage of a painting by Leon Berkowitz. On 22nd Street, Ameringer/McEnery/Yohe’s Helen Frankenthaler show has a couple of small acrylic paintings on paper that fairly float.
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While everything I've just mentioned is from decades past, I have recent work to show you, too. At Kathryn Markel on 20th, there's Will 'O the Wisp, a show of paintings by Julian Jackson so softly diffuse and radiant they seem to be lit from within, as was his intention. And at Cynthia-Reeves Gallery on 24th Street, there are beautiful large-scale graphite drawings by Anne Lindberg whose striations pull you deep into their finely rendered fog. These two shows are also up through February 6. Go.

Doug Wheeler, Untitled, 1969; acrylic, neon tubing, and wood; 91.5 x91.5 x 7.5 inches. The work was set into it's own little space within the gallery

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Robert Irwin, Untitled, 1969, acrylic lacquer on formed acrylic plastic, 52 inches diameter. That large disc is barely visible even in person

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The side view, below, may help you understand what you're seeing

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From left: Peter Alexander polyester resin sculpture ; Larry Bell glass and metal sculptures (on pedestals); Robert Irwin painting
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Below: Helen Pashgian, Untitled, 1968-69, resin and acrylic sphere, 8 inches diameter

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In the large gallery, from left: Craig Kauffman hanging, Larry Bell "levitating" cube of moneral-coated glass, two of Kauffman's Untitled Wall Relief works, acrylic and lacquer on vacuum-formed plexi

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Below: a closer view of Kauffman's Untitled, 1969, acrylic and lacquer on plastic
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Leon Berkowitz, At ACA Galleries: Up Green, 1983-84, oil on canvas
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Julian Jackson at Kathryn Markel: Quadrant (Shimmer), oil on wood, 42 x 38 inches; the diptych Thanka, oil on wood, 56 x 96 inches

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Helen Frankenthaler at Ameringer/McEnery/Yohe: Untitled, acrylic on paper, 22 x 30 inches

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Anne Lindbergh at Cynthia-Reeves : Title unknown, 2009, graphite on cotton board

Cri du Coeur

At the foot of the transparent Jean Nouvel building on 11th Avenue is this cry from the heart. Even without punctuation its message is crystal clear. For godsakes, Anthony, do something!