I see I missed shepaints question about whether the artist or the agent is market driven. Few artists hire agents -- it's kind of anethema for the artist as well as gallery owners. They want do establish a personal relationship with their artists, unencumbered by third parties. That doesn't happen if the artist signs with a publisher and it is the publisher who is definitely market driven. Gallery chains like Martin Lawrence are also market driven but then they are owned by a publisher -- Chalk and Vermillion (Erte's publisher).
They train their sales staff to be predatory which is certainly good for the artist as far as money in their pocket but not so good for the image because most of the sales staff are clerks and unable to really come to grips with the intricacies of selling art. They come off as pushy and often lie to make a sale.
This doesn't mean, of course, that some artists are pressured into being more market driven. The publisher begins telling them what sells and, basically, what to paint. It is unavoidable.
(BTW, then we have Kincaid and Weyland who are a complete package of the crass marketer and an artist who has totally turned art into a manufacturing process).
What about Leroy Neiman, that guy is everywhere and it is so boring.
How about D'Grazia (sp?)? This guy stuff sells like crazy all over the Southwest, and any sappy Sunday hobbiest has better grasp of technique. My wife, and a lot of our friends dislike Gorman's stuff, but I appreciate his skill.
Does anyone remember the Kean pictures of big-eyed waifes that were so popular during the early 1960's? Finding schlock isn't difficult.
Gorman is a skilled master printer himself and can create beautiful lithographs. However, he really doesn't do his own plates anymore which makes the art less desirable and way more commercial. I guess he's stopped drinking but don't know if he's given up his desire for little boys...
Actually, D'Grazia and Kean were the very bottom of the barrel -- they even make Kincaid look good.
Ah, Leroy Neiman -- actually represented and published by Knoedler who represented De Kooning. He was a big money maker for them. I'll never forget the quip which I've quoted before that, "Neiman is to fine art what the ukelele is to the symphony orchestra." That's from Martin Mull.
Good one LW and the truth as well
The ukelele serenade" by aaron copeland, is a funny piece of music. I wonder if peter Schikele has written a piece for Ukelele and Accordian?
i know this is off topic but every branch of the road discloses new and greater opportunities for rich sophisticated humor.
P.D.Q. Bach write for the ukelele? He's written for other odd instruments. Hoffnung floored me with his "Overature to End All Overatures" which is a take-off of the "1812" -- only this time, it is vacuum cleaners and garden hoses making cacophony on stage. And, of course, the overture never seems to end. Just when one thinks it's over, a solo instrument picks up the tune and it starts all over again. Not nearly as funny as the pianist and the orchestra who get their sheet music mixed up -- one is trying to play the Rachmaninoff and the other, the Tchaikovsky. They keep realizing their mistake and simultaneously switch. Falling on the floor funny.
I would likely say today that Warhol and Dali really hold the position of the most market driven artists in the "high art" world. Warhol prints are still being traded at pretty high prices and they were initially meants to sell for under $1,000.00. He even started the series with small images of different colored dollar signs.
just got my Vanity Fair. Can't wait to read the Warhol article. There's also a piece on The Phillips.
The Phillips Collection documentary was on KCET (our local PBS station) and in high definition! What a pleasure seeing art reproduced in such accuracy one can imagine it is actually hanging in the room. Phillips was, of course, the first collector and art historian to give modern art its place in America beginning with the 1913 Armory exhibition.
LW...if you get a chance please read the Vanity Fair article...I would love to hear your opinion on the controversy.... The dilemma that the article raises is that of getting authentication from a board that a work submitted is the authentic work of Warhol.
Without authentication the work is not worth $$$$$$$$......and is in fact, rather worthless, deemed to be the work of a forger etc........Very tricky since Warhol was so prolific, had assistants and didn't sign everything he made....It all makes the investment in a Warhol rather scary to me.......
We still see a bunch of Remington sculptures out there in the market place. I wonder who's collecting the royalties on those? I remember seeing a fairly good collection of Remingtons at the art museum in Houston.
THe FBI raided a gallery in Las Vegas selling Remingtons in the early Nineties. Turns our they were not restruck from the original sculptures but were out-and-out reproductions. They also arrested the sales staff but they were let go. This is, unfortunately, the state-of-the-art and farmerman's link to the satirical E-Bay fake art market is funny but also disheartening. It's the old Dali scandal brewing up again and E Bay could be right in the middle. They do have a disclaimer in their agreement that does not stand behind anything they sell. However, they will ban anyone caught selling any fake art. We've been on E Bay for over six years and because there is a brick-and-mortar location, we have little problem with any bidder recognizing we're honest. That and the fact that the gallery is owned by two IRS auditors!
There has been a real hot market in California Impressionists and Bucks County artists , fakes I mean. Its as if someone resurrected Otto Whacker or han van meejeren.
i had a fact given me by a conservator last years. the longwood Collection is a major decorative arts collection, representing the collecting hobby of EI Dupont. He has amassed the largest private collection of, among other things , federalist silverware. AND-85% of it is fake. They determined this by modern chemical analyses which showed that the silver was too pure to be 1700s. The refining of silver was not sophisticated enough until the late 1800s to remove trace elements (including gold) from the silver pigs. So EI DUpont got scammed by major houses and well known dealers who, probably acting in total good faith, were getting sold fakes themselves.
Unquestionedprovenance always is a scam waiting to happen.
I wonder how many fake abstract expressionists , say, some well known collector like Steve mArtin has?
I know about the California Plein Air or Impressionistic fakes -- I walked into a commercial gallery several years back and could immediately tell that several of the works were by a contemporary artists mimicing the style. It's an easy style to fake -- there may even be a small factory turning these out and it may not even be in this country. It really is shameful. Caveat emptor.
the Calif impressionists are big here in the east as well. The fakes are easy to spot. The use of Titanium dioxide white is fairly recent. the works of Fern Coppedge and walter Baum are big fake items. These were bucks County artists who painted till the 60s and their work has gotten pricey, thus making faking pay.
There are too many amateur collectors who haven't really studied art history and get involved with colelction art they really know little about. They rely on a salesperso in a gallery who likely was selling perfume and a perfume counter before they took a job as an "art consultant." It's up to the collector to familiarize themselves with who they are dealing with. Even then, some old, seemingly legitimate galleries in our area have fakes in their galleries.
