Still life by Hanneke van Oosterhout, detail

Last Friday I helped Hanneke and Maurice set up the exhibition at Galerie de Provenier. While doing this, I started to ask myself, “What does it take to be an art dealer?”

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Looking back at this piece (first posted 4 May) I can laugh at the melodramatic style. But I confess that I am still under its spell. Fall of the Art world continues to influence my world view, how I look at things like the Painting a Day movement. Which is to say, I could use some serious criticism of this piece. Tear it down, if you can.

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I am reading The Merchant of Prato by Iris Origo. The life of the merchant (Francesco di Marco Datini: 1335-1410) was around the same time that Cennini Cennino wrote his Il Libro dell’Arte. This was a period when artists were considered craftsmen who worked for specific commissions. What I found interesting was this example of an order by the merchant for work to be done in Florence in 1373. It is not a direct commission to an artist, but a letter requesting a partner to order the pictures:

A panel of Our Lady on a background of fine gold with two doors, and a pedestal with ornaments and leaves, handsome and the wood well carved, making a fine show, with good and handsome figures by the best painter, with many figures. Let there be in the centre Our Lord on the Cross, or Our Lady, whomsoever you find–I care not, so that the figures be handsome and large, the best and finest you can purvey, and the cost no more than 5 1/2 or 6 1/2 florins. Also a panel of Our Lady in fine gold, of the same kind, but a little smaller, the cost 4 florins, but no more. These two panels must contain good figures: I need them for men who would have them fine.

In some sense these seem like constraining directions that would limit the artist’s creativity. But in fact, the carving and gilding aside, the descriptions given for these pictures could apply to any of hundred of paintings made over several centuries in a wide array of styles.

The conventional wisdom is that the rise in selling art on the internet will swamp the market with mediocre work. The implication is that a more restricted art world, with dealers and curators as guardians, would protect us from this fate.

In fact, a marketplace swamped with mediocre work is exactly what we should hope to see. If there is a large quantity of artwork produced, the average quality indeed may be low. But the average is not the important metric. What matters is the variance, the overall distribution. If there is a broad distribution, there may be a small fraction, say the top 1%, that is remarkable artwork.

In speaking to many artists, I have heard about the hopeless feeling of never being able to break into the art world, the world of dealers, curators and collectors. This sentiment discourages artists and discourages artistic production. Fewer artworks mean fewer great artworks — probabilistically speaking.

If the internet becomes the dominant art market, then no one need worry about breaking in. The focus can be on the more important question, “How to make the best art possible?” The more that artists feel empowered to produce, the larger the number of paintings that will be in the top 1%.

Of course, the discerning buyer will have to search for that top 1%. But since when did shopping become unpopular?

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Related:
Fall of the Art World