Author and curator Matthew Israel embarked on a yearlong tour of the contemporary art scene, uncovering the working lives of artists, curators, gallerists, critics and he wrote of his experiences. Nice work if you can get it. The book was published in early 2020 which possibly represents unfortunate timing, given the devastating impact of the Covid 19 pandemic on the art scene. As to how the art world emerges from the pandemic – only time will tell.
There are two chapters I want to focus on – art fairs and art schools. Israel describes art fairs quite correctly as trade shows for the art world. They are a booming business and he claims that there are over 260 fairs held globally as of 2017, and he begins with the biggest and most influential – Art Basel which is held in Basel, Miami and Hong Kong. Apparently Art Basel works with roughly 500 galleries per year and upwards of 300 can take part in an individual fair. I can imagine such an event as being overwhelming.
These fairs can be major tourist attractions with several other events running nearby and they can remake or establish a city’s image. Art fairs come in various shapes and sizes of course, with some restricted to a single city. The smaller ones start with significantly lower price points and tend to attract far less press coverage and critical acclaim. They can present a more intimate setting and many are long established and very successful.
Israel claims that the transactions galleries make at art fairs have become more significant than the business they do at their own locations. In some cases, the bulk of a gallery’s revenue comes from art fairs. So why are art fairs so popular? One explanation is they provide a one-stop shop for viewing art from around the world without the expense of “globetrotting”. Another possible reason is the rise of the internet which enables people to access art from around the world rather than visit individual galleries. So when they decide to see some art in person, this is what they expect to see.
Art fairs have their critics. Some in the art world argue that fairs diminish art with their trade-show design, overwhelming size and sales-first agenda. Some galleries say the fairs are too expensive to take part in, or too exclusive in that they squeeze out smaller operators. Others argue that fairs are killing the gallery as a site of business, turning gallerists into travelling salesmen, stealing time and energy away from the creation of good art and exhibitions and strong relationships with collectors. Some collectors get irritated at being hassled by salespeople when trying to view art uninterrupted.
I can remember visiting an art fair at Melbourne’s Royal Exhibition Buildings a few years ago and seeing how little thought some exhibitors gave to the presentation of their stock. I saw two large, brightly coloured works (all surface, no content) on display with a Bill Henson photograph squeezed between them – dark, moody, intense. It was awful. It was akin to visiting a car show and seeing a Ferrari parked between two Hyundai Excels. But art fairs appear to be here to stay.
In discussing art schools, Israel focusses mainly on the United States, but I can relate to much that is written. The argument being presented here is that these days “art school” can mean many different things. With the vast amount of money that has poured into the art world in recent decades, art world roles have become more specialized and streamlined into professions. Accordingly, training has been adapted to cater for these new professions.
Some art schools are being set up to train people for careers as artists, art historians, art journalists, curators, auction house specialists, conservators, advisors, gallery owners, publicists, collection managers, social media experts as so on. Most of these courses are run at graduate level. These new courses reflect a broader trend in higher education towards gaining more vocational skills with an emphasis on developing practical skills rather than on art theory. And the predominant focus is on working in the field of contemporary art, hardly surprising given the boom in interest in this area in recent decades. Most of these new programs are marketed as a means of accelerating one’s progress in the art world – in a business sense.
But many students still prefer the graduate studio art programs despite the relatively high costs involved (brought on by a lack of government funding) and the little likelihood of making any money from their art practice afterwards. Thus many graduates will be saddled with massive debts that they may never be able to pay back.
So how does a student decide what program to study? Complicating things in the studio art programs is the influence of artists such as Marcel Duchamp who asserted that anything can be a work of art if the artist says so. Therefore there has been a diminution in the teaching of traditional skills such a painting, drawing, sculpture, print making and photography as well as a questioning of the notion of quality. Now “art” can be almost anything from a painting to a sculpture to a meal or a conversation or an installation consisting of any materials that the artist sees fit to include. Whilst I was studying at RMIT, I found exhibitions that were staged by my teachers to be the least inspirational of any that I saw.
There is also a debate about how separate to make such schools. There is the ivory tower approach where artists are insulated from the art market. The benefit of such an approach (theoretically) is that it gives the student an opportunity to develop his/her ideas without being pressured by ‘the market’. Alternatively, there are schools which focus more on placement services, such as offering more professional development and encouraging exposure to the business of art and galleries and to subjects like branding as well as strategies for enabling a long-term career.
I believe I would have benefitted from this approach at RMIT. There was simply a lack of interaction with working artists.
Among the many people Israel interviewed for the book was Steven Henry Madoff, chair of the Curatorial Practice program at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. Madoff believes art school buildings should be remodeled into separate components, a network catering for different aspects of an arts course but functioning simultaneously. He also believes that ethics should play a greater role in what is termed foundation. Given the rise of authoritarian governments, ethics is something that artists need to integrate into their practices, he argues.
Just as a footnote, not long after I graduated in 1997 with my arts degree, the RMIT abandoned its part time program. I was still working full time back then so perhaps I was lucky.
References;
A Year In The Art World – An Insider’s View, by Matthew Israel. (Thames & Hudson, 2020)