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?”

Reine Claudes en Kruisbessen by Hanneke van Oosterhout
14 x 18 cm
oil on panel
2006

Normally I think of an art dealer as someone with a gallery. But is this a requirement? Consider an alternative. You know someone in your town (say in Kansas) who you think would like to buy one of Hanneke’s paintings (which are in The Netherlands). You take this person to Hanneke’s web site and say a bit about Hanneke and how you feel about her work. Your guest sees the painting, likes the price, and buys the painting online with PayPal. What have you done? Have you not acted as an art dealer for Hanneke? Should you not receive a commission for what you did, say, 10% of the sales price?

I’ve discussed this idea with Hanneke. She thinks it is interesting. I discussed it with an economist (an expert, but not an art expert) and the economist finds it a good idea. What do you think? Would this be a good idea, or is it nuts?

Let me make some things clear. Hanneke would not sell the pictures that are in the gallery this way, this would be for artwork that is not in any “off-line” gallery. And at the moment, she is not even trying this idea. But it seems worth discussing. What are the potential problems? Would you like to start being a dealer?

Fall of the Art World
The art world as we know it is the product of the historical era between the invention of photography and the development of the internet.

Photography took away the artist’s monopoly on creating images of reality. Art survived this challenge because, as Cennino Cennini wrote several hundred years ago, art is about more than merely depicting that which exists.

But the challenge of photography led to a crisis: it became difficult to answer the question, “What is art?” In this context, control of public exhibition space became key. The answer to the question “What is art?” became by default, “That which is in museums and galleries.”

In this context, art is created not in the studio, but in the gallery or museum itself. Art is created not with the paintbrush, but with the wire that attaches the work to the museum or gallery wall. The curator and dealer become the creators of art; the artist’s productions are merely their raw materials.

The internet changes the equation; it allows for the juxtaposition of all art, removed from the bounds of physical space. The museum or gallery art-object, stripped of its mystic surroundings and exposed in the harsh light of the computer monitor, must compete on the basis of its own merit with every other artwork.

By diminishing the importance of the physical exhibition space, the internet strikes at the core of the dealer’s and curator’s power. The answer to the question, “What is art?” will no longer be “That which is in museums and galleries”, but, “That which looks good on the internet.”

This will be the end of the art world as we know it. Decision-making about art will be widely distributed. The art world, as a closed and controlled system, will cease to exist. The creative power unleashed in the new era might astonish us.

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P.S. Thanks to Candy, David, Kris, Lisa and Tracy for valuable comments on the previous post. I will take your views into consideration when I do the rewrite.

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.

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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Fall of the Art World