Marketing Mondays: Signing Your Work

In several recent conversations with artists, the subject arose of where we sign our work. To be honest I hadn’t thought much about it. I sign my work on paper with my last name on the front in the conventional right hand corner. I sign my paintings with my full name on the back so as not to interfere with the edge-to-edge color field.

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Then the issue of size came up: How big do you make the signature if you sign on the front? My printed last name is in pencil, smallish. 

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And then the issue of dating the work: Do you? Don’t you?  I date where I sign, and I do date because each painting or body of work on paper has a particular place in the development of my oeuvre.

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Scrolling through a Facebook post on the topic, I found a number of artists who feel that signing on the front is the mark of an amateur, others who sign on the front and have done so for years, and still others who front sign using their initials only. Some front signers do so large, others small; some quietly, others in-your-face boldly. Some artists date their work, some don’t. What seemed so routine to me turns out to be rather quite complicated.

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Where to sign?

I asked Marcia Wood, owner/director of the gallery that bears her name in Atlanta, for her thoughts on the issue (disclaimer: Wood represents me). “Almost no contemporary artists I am aware of put their signature on the front of paintings,” she says.

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Why? “It’s all about the integrity and importance of the image.”

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Picasso—whose has probably the most widely identified artist signature in the world—might have disagreed, and there are others, including some early Rymans with the name so large it’s part of the composition, but I’m with Wood on this. Imagine a Bridget Riley canvas with a signature, or a Rothko.

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Bridget Riley standing before  Après-Midi, 1981, oil on linen, 91 x 77.75 inches. You're not likely to find a signature on the front

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Robert Ryman, Untitled, 1958; casein, colored pencil, and charcoal on paper, 9 3/8 × 9 3/8 inches, Whitney Museum of American Art

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What about work on paper?

“Paintings and photographs are usually edge to edge. Work on paper has some sense of background, or margins—a stopping point for the image—and the signing is always outside the stopping point.”

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And dating the work?

“Dating is placing the work in your span of ideas and growth as an artist so it’s historically relevant.” Down the road, she notes, when a curator or art historian is looking at your work, the dates provide a reasonable guide to the development of your work. “The date helps the catalog.”

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Ultimately, says Wood, “The location of the signature doesn't matter to my collectors. It does matter sometimes to people who are not art savvy and think that if there isn't a signature on the front the work is somehow suspect. Or they need an explanation why it's not on the front."

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On the other hand, Wood notes, “Folk, naive, and outsider artists almost always sign the fronts.”

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For those of you who think where we sign is less important that what we're signing, you know what's coming. "The main signifier," says Wood, "still needs to be the quality of the art itself."

Possibly the most famous folk artist ever: Grandma Moses, The Pond

(You can make out her surname at the bottom center, between the figure and the fence)

 

Digital watermarking
Finally there's the issue of watermarking an image to prevent cyber misuse. I'd show you an image or two, but they're copyrighted so I can't. But I think we can all agree that if the watermark interferes with the viewing of the image—and some do—then it's too large. I understand that you don't want people to steal your image, but you want viewers to be able to see it.

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As always, your comments are essential to this conversation.

Color: Field and Form, Part 4

Part 1: Truitt, Appleby, Jackson, Shils, Donaldson.
Part 2: Estrada-Vega, Johnston, Korman, Gimblett
Part 3: Aaron, Chong, Glessner, Mattera
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Charline Von Heyl

Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston, March 21 - July 15.
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It's Vot's Behind Me That I Am (Krazy Kat), 2010, acrylic and oil on linen and canvas
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BOSTON--Just before the exhibition closed its run, I visited the Institute of Contemporary Art to see Charline Von Heyl, the paintings and collages of the German artist who now lives in New York City. I'm taken with the way Von Heyl combines the organic with the hard edge; indeed, there's an insistence on geometry that I love. She plies color against black and white, and she uses a variety of picture-making materials in her paintings. Some are rich and drippy; others, rendered more minimally with charcoal and a light wash, look to be scrubbed almost clean in parts; others still are scraped and painted over. Von Heyl's paintings are energetic, restless, explosive. Some suggest containment about to be breached. She describes them as "melodramatic abstraction." There's a lot going on. .

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This view into the gallery, above, gives you a sense of scale. I like the size of these works, larger than life-size but still relatable to human proportions.

Here's a bit more of the installation, with the foreshortened painting on the far right shown full on below

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Title unknown, 2008, acrylic on linen, 82 x 78 inches

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Installation view of P., shown below and in detail

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P.,  2008, acrylic, charcoal and crayons in linen, 82 x 74 inches

Detail below

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Solo Dolo, 2010, oil and charcoal on linen

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I'm pulling this from the wall text: "Von Heyl says, 'I want my paintings to be ambivalent, with paradoxical space and needs, each one a kind of self-satisfied silent universe.' As for the slang term . . . it is defined online as: 'to do things by yourself (solo) and on the down low (dolo).' "

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Installation view with Solo Dolo and Black Mirror

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Black Mirror #2, 2009, acrylic and oil on linen, 82 x 72 inches

Image from the Friedrich Petzel Gallery website

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Lazybone Shuffle, 2010, acrylic on linen

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Detail below

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Charline Von Heyl was curated by Jenelle Porter, senior curator at the ICA/Boston. The institution offers a stingy visual overview of the exhibition here. Fortunately you can see more from the previous venue, the University of Pennsylvania's Institute of Contemporary Art, in Philadelphia, here, where you'll find some good installation shots, along with images of collages that I'm not showing you. Many of these paintings were also on view at the Friedrich Petzel gallery in Chelsea in 2010.

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Next week: Guy Goodwin and Douglas Florian

Marketing Mondays: The "Difficult Artist"

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Dismantling Training Ground for Democracy at Mass Moca in 2007, the out-of-control project by artist Christoph Buchel

Image from The Boston Globe

“Count me out if you include him in the next one,” said an artist friend, stunned by the unreasonable demands of a particular artist during a collaborative project.

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“She would have had a different kind of career if she weren’t such a whiny pain in the ass,” said a dealer I know.

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"Never again,” said another dealer recently, reeling from the extra work a difficult artist caused her at a time when she was already overburdened with a project.
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As always I’m not naming names, but I guarantee these comments are 100 percent true and pretty much verbatim

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What Makes a Difficult Artist?
Well, of course there are degrees of difficulty, but here's an extreme: Swiss artist Christoph Buchel, who worked on Training Ground for Democracy for Mass MoCa in 2007. Commissioned to create an installation in the museums's vast, former-factory space, Buchel amassed an unmanageable 150 tons of stuff—including, according to Geoff Edgers in The Boston Globe,  "a 35-foot oil tanker, a two-story house, a carousel of bombs, and an old movie theater, rebuilt down to its water-stained ceiling tiles"—conceived to reference war, poverty and consumer culture. The exhibition, which reportedly went several hundred thousand dollars over budget, was neither completed nor shown. Suits and countersuits followed in a year-long legal battle. Buchel was described as "difficult, demanding and temperamental."

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I think it's reasonable to say that most artists don’t come close the kind of behavior described, whether or not we have access to projects of that scale. (Also, in fairness, let's assume the artist has a different take on the situation.)

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So what makes the average artist—that would be us—difficult?  
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Here’s a list, drafted by a few friends and myself during a casual conversation:.

. Lack of attention to protocols set in place

. Disregard for deadlines
. Disrespect for peers, whether dealers, curators, collectors or colleagues
. Unreasonable demands that create extra time, trouble or work for the institution, gallery or people the artist is working with
. Someone who’s never satisfied, never says thank you, never seems to appreciate the effort expended on his or her behalf
. The coupe de disgrace: a personality that's obnoxious: loud, rude, sexist, racist, vulgar
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An Unreasonable Demand
Megashows aside, here's an example of a difficult artist with unreasonable demands: At a recent project I happened in on, one artist created extra work for his already overworked colleagues because of the way he had managed his part of a collaborative project. He did not communicate with his colleagues or return emails; consequently, as plans evolved, his colleagues didn't know what or how much he was aware of—or even if he was still in. His oversize work was delivered late and to the wrong address. On the day of installation he arrived several hours after his colleagues and then started suggesting (“demanding,” clarifies one of the group members) changes in placement because his work was fragile, required special attention and, well, was just more important than everyone else’s. Never mind that they had moved his work into the space for him and that the show was mostly installed by the time he’d arrived.
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A collective sigh was breathed when Mr. Self-Important Artist received a call on his cell and dashed out, leaving the rest of the group to finish the job they'd started without him. .
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Standing our Ground

As artists we sometimes find ourselves finessing a difficult balance. My assertive request may be seen as aggressive. Your quiet request may be dismissed for not being forceful enough. We don’t want to create problems—we have worked hard to get into a gallery or included in a curatorial effort—but we labor mightily to create our art, and we want it to be presented in the best possible way.
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For a solo show there are many issues about which an artist should reasonably speak up: selection of the art, the design of the postcard, the information on the press release (provide a good artist statement, because that's where the info is going to come from), the installation itself, the date of the opening, the ad, the catalog. For a group show, exercising the same kind and degree of request would likely be seen demanding, since a curator is considering the best way to represent many artists in an institutional context.
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A Double Standard
Women, in particular, can be at the receiving end of considerable scorn for asserting our needs and intentions. While a male artist may be seen as rightfully attending to business, the same attitude in women is often seen as bitchiness. Damn, how does one finesse that?
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The Opposite of Difficult
On the other hand, there are the artists everyone responds to warmly and positively.
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“She’s so professional, I love working with her,” says a dealer I'll call Juan Smith, about an artist he has been working with for some years. What makes her so special? Smith listed several qualities: “She’s easy to work with. Her paintings are dependably good. She delivers them on time—dry and ready for hanging. She provides the materials I need to promote her and responds quickly to my requests for information. She gets that I’m working hard on her behalf and she meets me halfway. It’s always a pleasure to do business with her.”

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Smith says in an aside: "You wouldn't believe how much time can be wasted chasing after artists for information, or following up for better versions of what they send."  [He's talking about good images and appropriate information about them, updated resume and statement, and clips of or links to recent press.]

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You never disagree on anything? “Sure we do,” says Smith. “This is a relationship, and like all relationships, we have learned how to give and take. But it's a professional relationship. Our livelihoods depend on it working well. Maybe I'm lucky, but I have relationships like this with all of the artists I represent.”  

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So, is it fair to say that the personable, responsible, easy-to-work-with artist has a greater shot at the  gallery roster?

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“All things being equal, yes. I would prefer to work with talented artists who don't make my job more difficult." 

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And the talented artist who’s a pain in the butt?  

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"Listen, running a gallery is not easy. Over time I've learned to identify and avoid the personality types I think will make my job harder—and believe me, I do my homework," says Smith. "There are many talented artists out there. I want artists I can work with, not fight with.”

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Artists, dealers, durators and other art professionals: Your comments are welcome here.

Color: Field and Form, Part 3

Part 1: Truitt, Appleby, Jackson, Shils, Donaldson

Part 2: Estrada-Vega, Johnston, Korman, Gimblett

.Rolling in the Deep

Kenise Barnes Fine Art, May 19  - July 21

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Through the window: Hey those are my paintings!

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You didn't think I would leave my show out of this series? Actually, it's not my how. It's a four-artist exhibition--with Christine Aaron, Cecile Chong, Lorraine Glessner and myself--at Kenise Barnes Fine Art in Larchmont, a quick Metro North ride out of Manhattan. Barnes wanted to mount a show of contemporary encaustic painting with the artists she represents. While the four of us work differently, and to different result, Barnes focused on the quality of depth--in hue, layer, visual narrative and image--as handled by myself, Glessner, Chong and Aaron, respectively, even adopting Adele's Grammy hit, Rolling in the Deep, for our title.

Since I already wrote about the work in a preview in May before the show opened, here let me take you on a walk-through. We start by looking through the window, above, and  walk clockwise around the gallery.

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Joanne Mattera, Coming Up For Air, 2012, encaustic on panel, 24 x 60 inches.

Inside, on the left wall,  Barnes played my saturated geometry against Lorraine Glessner's baroque weave of culture and time

Above: From the window with my  Coming Up for Air, Uttar 234 and Uttar 230

Below: Three by Lorraine Glessner, including Burn Baby Burn, Angels Without Wings and, on back wall, Secret
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Lorraine Glessner, Burn Baby Burn, 2012, encaustic, horse and human hair,  mixed media on  silk on panel, 48 x 48 x 1.5 inches

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The right side of the gallery, looking in through the front window

Inside, from window: Paintings by Cecile Chong and Christine Aaron. Here Chong's complex cultural narrative of displacement and alientation and Aaron's richly dense woods pull us deep into their respective paintings

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 Cecile Chong, Eastern Time, 2010, encaustic, 48 x 48 inches

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Continuing along the wall: Paintings by Christine Aaron

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Below: Aaron's  Forest Muse I, encaustic on patinated copper, 24 x 24 inches

Read the Huffington Post review by D. Dominick Lombardi here.

Read the PDF catalog here, the gallery's press release here.

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Rolling in the Deep is up through tomorrow. For more color, Super Saturated: Pigment and Pattern, also curated by Kenise Barnes, is at the Schweinfurth Art Center in Auburn, New York, through August 19.

I previewed it here. You can access a PDF Catalog here.

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Next week: Charline Von Heyl at the ICA/Boston

Color: Field and Form, Part 2

Part 1: Truitt,  Appleby,  Jackson, Shils, Donaldson

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In this post I'm looking at construction, physical and compositional. Carlos Estrada-Vega and Gregory Johnston build their paintings from multiple elements. Harriet Korman constructs hers from geometric compositional elements, while Max Gimblett creates a flat painting on a sculptural form.

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Carlos Estrada-Vega, Building a Painting

Thatcher Projects.

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Detail of Africa's Sorrow, shown below in installation

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Carlos Estrada-Vega, whose work opens this post, builds his paintings block by painted block. There's a small magnet at the back of each block, and Estrada-Vega creates grids by the placement of the blocks. It's not an interactive painting--he places them as he wants them--but the manner of construction is sculptural (also a bit like quiltmaking).

Read more here.
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Installation with Tanganyika, left, and Africa's Sorrow, each 2011; oleopasto, wax, pigment, oil, limestone, 68 x 68 inches
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Tanganyika with detail below
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The imperfection of the grid and the surface of each element greate a gestalt of movement and richness, a kind of maximalist minimalism
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Mariquita, 2012; wax, limestone dust, oleopasto, oil on wood, metal backing, 17.5 x 15.5

This image from the gallery website

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Gregory Johnston, Superleggera

Stephen Haller Gallery, May 17 - June 23
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Installation view upon entering with Übermenschamorfati, enamel on aluminum plates, 36 x 36 inches

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With gleaming enamel surfaces on aluminum plates, Gregory Johnston has referenced both racing car colors and the geometric neoplasticism of DeStijl--Mondrian on speed, you might say. His specific sectional arrangement consists of a vertically divided central field sandwiched between bands of color. Larger paintings retain the format but increase the number of elements. These are coolly elegant paintings whose installation--frameless, hovering slightly away from the wall--has a lightness that complements the title and meaning of the work (superleggera is "super light" in Italian, a  reference to the kind of automotive construction that produces a vehicle built for velocity).

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See more here.
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Installation view on left wall of the main gallery

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Swinging around to the right, with Bahamagelbrossofioranomintschwarz (you can make out color names here in German and Italian) and Cogito Ergo Sum.

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Harriet Korman, New Paintings
Lennon Weinberg, March 1 - April 14
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Converge, 2011, oil on canvas, 40 x 60 inches

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In Harriet Korman's paintings there's a lot going on with an economy of means. The brushwork is minimal but the color is rich. The color is saturated but it's flat. The shapes are simple but the geometry is complex. The geometry sets up a dynamic that makes the viewer dance--a pull-you-in-push-you-back two-step-- that engenders physical engagement while providing a retinal workout as well.
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Installation view of the right wall, leading to Converge under the skylight in the back

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Detail of Converge
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. . . ..Max Gimblett,  The Holy Grail

Gary Snyder Gallery, March 1 - April 7

Treasure Island, 2011; acrylic and vinyl polymers, epoxy, metal leaf on wood panel, 60 x 60 inches

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Gimblett was a surprise for me as I was unfamilar with his work. My bad. Really, my bad, because the artist, born in 1935, has had a long career as an exhibiting artist. This show at Gary Snder was an eye popper, especially the wall of quatrefoils below, a visually satisfying walk through abstraction with lyrical, expressive and geometric strains; with elements of  Pop and even minimalism.

Installation view containing all the works shown here

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Above: Inner Sanctuary, 2011

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Below: Lord Ganesha, 2012

 Both acrylic and vinyl polymers, epoxy and metal leaf, 25 x 25 inches

These three individual Gimblett images from the artist's website

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Next week: Charline Von Heyl

Marketing Mondays: On Vacation

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PROVINCETOWN-- I'm on vacation this week. Yeah, yeah, it's a tough job and someone's gotta do it. The sign in the picture, shot in Salem, Mass., will stand in for me while I'm away, because it's everything we talk about here on Marketing Mondays: Do it yourself, assume control of your career, make your own opportunities.

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Feel free to post your comments on this thought. I'll be checking in. And Color: Field and Form, Part 2 will post automatically on Wednesday. (If only it had been written automatically.)

Color: Field and Form, Part 1

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Color: Field and Form is a series that will show you some of what I've seen over the past few months in New York City, and in a few instances, Boston.  I'm going to keep the text brief but provide links where appropriate. The series is planned for six parts (maybe more?)which I'll post over the next few weeks.  In this post we look at the work of Anne Truitt, Anne Appleby, Julian Jackson, Stuart Shils and Rory Donaldson. .

Anne Truitt, Drawings

Matthew Marks Gallery, February 5 - April 14

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Untitled, 1967, acrylic on paper, 27.5 x 41 inches
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This retrospective exhibition presented 40 years of Truitt's works on paper—flat color, largely monochromatic, yet with color shifts that become more apparent with sustained looking. Truitt created these "drawings"—really, paintings on paper—concurrently with her iconic minimalist sculptures. (I reported on a 2007 exhibition of the sculptures at Matthew Marks here.)

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You can see three installation views below, which I shot. The gallery has more images here and a video here.

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View from the entry . . .
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. . . swinging around clockwise, with a far-wall view of the work that opens this post  . . .
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. . . and contining around the room with the dividing wall to our left

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Anne Appleby, Paintings

Danese Gallery, February

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Faded Sweet Pea, 2008, oil and wax on panel, 33 x 33 inches

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Appleby, who divides her time between San Francisco and Montana, builds her color fields layer upon layer. In her case “field” has a literal meaning, as she sees herself a landscape painter. There is a distinct seasonal feel to the palette in her work here: spring pinks and greens, autumnal ochres, wintry grays. The photographs do not do justice to the works, since the layers of oil and wax are luminous and subtle, deepening toward the center. I suggest you seek out an exhibition of Appleby's paintings and stand before them to absorb what they have to offer.

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View the online catalog here.

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Installation view with Winter into Spring, left wall, Late Summer Aspen, far wall, and Faded Sweet Pea, right

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Julian Jackson, Crossing

Kathryn Markel Fine Arts, May 17 - June 16
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View from the entrance showing Crossing Earth, left, and Crossing Green, both 2012,  oil on canvas

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Forget that hack Kinkaid, who appropriated a title he didn't deserve. Julian Jackson is the real painter of light. Handling oil masterfully, he appears to illuminate each meditative canvas with a source that emanates from deep within. Says Jackson, “I try to bring a sense of movement and the experience of time into the stillness of abstract painting.” Done. Exquisitely.
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See more here.
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Entering and turning to the left, you see the painting below: Crossing White,  2012, oil on canvas, 54 x 54 inches

(Image below from the Kathryn Markel gallery website)
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We're now in the second gallery looking back into the first.
Below: Crossing Air, left;  Crossing Blue in the front gallery, right
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Stuart Shils, The Residue of Memory

Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects, April 26 - May 27
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Installation view with End of a Summer Day, Last Blast of Warm Light, Looking Back, 2012, oil on linen, 30 x 42 inches, shown above and below
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Drawing from landscapes in Vermont and Ireland, Shils has created a series of moody, warm-toned canvases, all easel size, in which hues merge and dissolve. Indeed, the titles provide the time and place, and even the frame of mind of the artist, like the one here.

See more here.

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Rory Donaldson, Shared Roadway Ahead

Winkleman Gallery, March 23 - April 21
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Installation view with Time Shardin, 2012
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Donaldson is a photographer whose most recent work is about as close to painting as photography can get. Manipulating the images digitally, he creates fluid, Frankenthaler-like abstractions from the urban landscape. I selected two of the most chromatically lush works to show you.

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See more here..

View in the Curatorial Project Room, which for this exhibition was an extension of Donaldson's work. The image below, Atomic: Bordeaux D'Amour, 2011, is shown on the left wall above. See more images here

(Photo from the gallery website by Etienne Frossard)
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In coming posts I'll show you Carlos Estrada-Vega, Gregory Johnston, Douglas Florian, Guy Goodwin, Harriet Korman, Fran Shalom, Charlene Von Heyl, Martha Clippinger, Fabienne Lassere, Sheila Hicks, and a fab show at Schroeder Romero with three artists working with color and form. I suspect there will be more if I can make the time.
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