Here are the notes that David generously took while we had our first class. Hopefully we can draw from this and expand on some of the issues we touched upon.
Some questions:
1. What is the art world in terms of people? Who is it comprised of? Artists, duh, who else? We want a list.
Patron - someone who supports an artist buy giving them money/space and spreading the word. Art stors are part of the art world. Anything that gets the word out about art. How does word get out? Word of mouth, internet, fliers... We want to identify these people who get the word out.... are there are bloggers in Richmond? Art Critics? TV, is there a TV artpress on TV? BOB ROSS. Sometimes interview shows have interesting artists. La Ink. Work of Art ( a tv show that's like top chef for artists). There are also those people who are art renovators and who restore art (conservators). You have the whole museum group as well and the kids that are supporting them.
So a basic list:
Patrons
Art Stores
Bloggers
Art Critics
TV Show hosts
Bob Ross
Conservators
Museum Empluyees/Curators
Gallerists - people who own spaces. docent: a person who takes you around a museum and wants to be around art all the time.
Art teachers - the whole educational complex in the art world.
Art shippers - art handling and moving it to different places.
Archaeologists recover ancient art from history. Historians.
Publicisits - agents. People who get your name out. Police because they arrest graffiti artists.
Collectors, Black market, people who just show up and look. Viewers.
2. How do we start talking about these people about what they do? How do we learn from them?
This class is about asking questions and getting to know the art world and especially the people in it. This is a good way of breaking the ice as an artist with important personas. What do we want to learn from these people?
Andrew ansered: "What is important to them."
What more specific questions do we want to ask?
NOT "What is art?"
Collectors:
How is that a collector chooses to support one artist above another? What do they want to see? Why this artist?
Do you think about the interior design of your house when you're buying art? Does the painting have to match the drinks?
Collectors go to exhibitions with a different set of eyes than us because we don't collect.
*story* Artist that runs junk shop *Nancy Shaver* - antique store (called Henry, located in Hudson, NY) which is highly curated by her. It's all awesome. She also makes art by manipulating these objects that she finds lying around. At her show she had her art and her junk, and it worked just like a shop. The twist was that she priced things according to whether she considered things her art or her junk. Some of the junky things were 50$ and some of the artsy were 10,000$. And the price was her distinction.
POINT: When Matt went to the show he looked at stuff differently because he could buy some of it.
So collectors look differently depending on the type of person who is looking at them.
Talk to collector about shopping.
Side note: If you look at artist as cooky artist if they think about who the artist is does the serious collector buy stuff from nobody's or because they are speculating. Do they have to know the artist personally?
Some collectors expect to have dinner with you.
Curators:
How do you choose what to show? What you like or what other people like? How do you talk to an artist to get them to come? How do you convince them?
How do they find out about artists? Super-secret mailing list?
It kind of works something like that...it happens more often than not that it's simply word of mouth. They tell each other that this or the other work would fit into their exhibits.
We're in Richmond though, so things could look different. When do curators NOT go into some arrtists studio? How far will they travel? Have most curators been artists in the past? Or Collectors? Do they hang painting in their cars?
How does the business side of the art world work? There's this idea of luxury attached to what we (artists) do and it's an irony when we do get paid. As a culture the artists are not all that appreciated. Extraordinary sums can make art seem overvalued, but is this really true?
How do prices go up?
There's a whole psychology about it. Talk about this with dealers. There's a lot of reasons to be skeptical about the art world. Artists who don't deserve to get famous who do and ones who do who don't and petty critics and all that. Matt fears that we as a class will collectively assign the art world as crap. He's hoping that we can be both critical but still remain positive in our perception of the art world. Critical does not need to be associated with negativity. (Like the evening news). Critical tends to be about what's wrong and not about when good things happen. In Art Worlds we should keep talking about the positive thing. We don't want to end up completely cynical of our major!
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