Last night, many students in FIT’s art market program and a few cynical members of the art press gathered in the school’s amphitheater for “Size Matters,” a panel discussion on the importance of scale and spectacle in today’s art market (the livetweets from the event have been Storified here).
It largely was not about the art market, but the grand spectacles of the art world — the Met’s Big Bambú, Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s larger-than-the-Giza-pyramid Abu Dhabi sculpture, anything that fits in the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall — which are mostly institutional projects. The exception to this in the discussion was Urs Fischer’s giant hole, which panelist Gavin Brown hosted in his gallery in 2007 (it is now owned by collector Peter Brant). The real meaning of the evening, however, ended up being the exploration of the roles that we play — as artists, dealers, critics, observers — within the art world, and how often we are so consumed by our own tiny corner of the sprawling enterprise that we forget to think about the big picture.
The audience collectively chuckled when Brown mentioned that he hardly thinks about art outside what he shows at his own gallery and the works he sees when he’s showing at an art fair. There was a similar snicker when popular street artist KAWS said that he thought what kids care about these days is art and commerce. The other panelists, New York Times critic Roberta Smith and artist Peter Halley, did most of the work of contextualizing contemporary art — and its spectacles — within the larger art history narrative.
The takeaway, for me at least, was that succeeding in the art world means ceasing to think about how everything fits together (and thus how to fit yourself in) and narrowing your focus to what art means to your very specific audience: for Smith, it’s very much about whether the art and the gallery space work together aesthetically. For Brown, it’s about whether he can fill his gallery space (and whether his clients want to buy what’s in that space). For Halley, it’s about where his work fits into art history. For KAWS, it’s about how to reach his mass audience.
This near-sightedness is perhaps why the panel didn’t talk enough about the questions I had hoped they would tackle: how the preoccupation with size affects the young and struggling artists who would really like to sell something that pays the rent. However, it’s also possible that this theory is entirely wrong and KAWS and Gavin Brown are just the totally ridiculous people they seemed to be last night.
— Shane Ferro
(Image: Olafur Eliasson’s “Weather” at the Tate’s Turbine Hall/Dan Chung)
Tags: FIT, Gavin Brown, KAWS, Panels, Peter Halley, Roberta Smith, Size Matters
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Shane: Wouldn’t it have been so cool if you had actually asked your question instead of lamenting that the ‘ridiculous’ panelists didn’t address your issue? There was plenty of opportunity!
I tend to agree that size is determined by specific markets. Some galleries feature large scale pieces while others show mostly small to medium (under 40″) works. It seems to be a personal business decision based on client demographics, access to artists who create for those markets, and perhaps a preference for a certain size range of artwork. When I visit galleries in the same geographic area I see large works in some galleries, and small works in other galleries. The range is there, you just have to know where to look for what you want.
@Anni — I did ask the question. The panelists talked about Dan Colen’s show at Gagosian for a bit, but it wasn’t a focus of their discussion, which was my point above.
— Shane
@Cathy — I agree with you. I guess I’m not trying to suggest that artists don’t produce smaller pieces, or that certain galleries don’t carry them, but being mostly a reporter on the secondary market I have seen how much more money a larger work fetches as compared to a smaller one — works by the same artist in the same series from the same time period. I just wonder if that has any effect, even subconsciously, on new and struggling artists who just want to be able to pay their bills by selling their art.
— Shane
@Shane – As an artist I can tell you it’s easy to chase the art market, trying to figure out what the trends are and how to make the art irresistible to a gallery and the art buyer. So, yeah, that subconscious thing is always active. Creating work at a certain size, whether large or small, is certainly a part of the decision making process, but there is so much more to it. I’ve concluded the best thing to do is paint what feels right, then find the best gallery or venue (brick and mortar or internet) to get it sold.
As a reporter you analyze the market. As a painter I try to predict it. I think both perspectives are interesting, full of questions, and trying to figure it all out keeps the creative juices flowing.
name brand artists and name brand galleries deserve each other