aRTsEEN

The LIST(s): Power Money and Art

2005-12-20T15:39:00.000-05:00

I think it's interesting to gather facts and look at them side by side to see if patterns emerge. Although these facts are not scientifically collected nor symmetric, they still reveal a lot about what is happening in the international art world.

above: Jasper Johns

ART POWER Top 10
Larry Gagosian, dealer/gallerist
Glenn Lowry, museum director
Sir Nicholas Serota, museum director
Maurizio Cattelan, artist
Sam Keller, fair director
Dakis Joannou, collector
Bill Ruprecht, auction house
Ronald Lauder, collector
Robert Storr, curator
Takashi Murakami, artist

Financial Times' Top 10 (2005)
1 Damien Hirst, artist
2 Larry Gagosian, dealer/gallerist
3 Francois Pinault, owner of Christie’s /collector
4 Nicholas Serota, museum director
5 Glenn D Lowry, museum director
6 Eli Broad, collector/philanthropist
7 Sam Keller, art fair director: Art Basel, in Basel and Miami
8 Iwan Wirth, dealer/gallerist, Hauser and Wirth
9 Bruce Nauman, artist
10 David Zwirner, dealer/gallerist

Art Review TOP 10 (from 2003)
1 Ronald Lauder, US billionaire and collector
2 Francois Pinault, owner of Christie's auctioneers
3 Nicholas Serota, director of Tate galleries
4 Larry Gagosian, US gallery owner
5 Gerhard Richter, German painter
6 Charles Saatchi, art collector and gallery owner
7 Takashi Murakami, Japanese artist and designer
8 Maja Oeri Hoffmann, president of Swiss art foundation
9 Leonard Lauder, art collector
10 Dakis Joannou, Greek art collector

In 2002, Charles Saatchi topped the list, but has since dropped a bit to 6th, with billionaire Ronald Lauder leading the pack.

above: Charles Saatchi

Top five best-selling living artists
1 Jasper Johns - £92.8m
2 Gerhard Richter - £80.9m
3 Cy Twombly - £54.5m
4 Robert Rauschenberg - £36.5m
5 Fernando Botero - £35.7m

The 10 Most Expensive Living Artists (from Art News, May 2004)
1 Lucian Freud
2 Jasper Johns
3 Jeff Koons
4 Brice Marden
5 Bruce Nauman
6 Robert Rauschenberg
7 Gerhard Richter
8 Richard Serra
9 Frank Stella
10 Cy Twombly

All on this list have sold a single piece for $5 million or more. Some have done many times that figure. I guess it's no wonder Jasper Johns can afford to paint only a scant few pieces a year, and at his age I doubt he would want to do more.

At the age of twenty-four, living in New York City, he made the decision, as he describes it, to stop becoming an artist and actually be one. A dream led him to paint the American flag. He began to paint other iconic "found" images such as targets and numbers. These works were the polar opposite of abstract expressionism, the reigning style in New York City in the 1950s.

005 Fred Stonehouse

2005-12-01T23:25:00.000-05:00

Being born in 1960 makes Fred Stonehouse the oldest artist I have reviewed to date -- not that makes any difference whatsoever -- it's just that I noticed the fact because I realized I have been giving a lot of attention to the younger set. He currently lives outside Milwaukee, Wisconsin where he earned his BFA from the U of Wis., and has been showing in Chicago, Minnesota, and Milwaukee.

His work is in a style known as pop surrealism, and incorporates devils, angels, wrestlers, and creatures part human, part animal. Asked if they reflect anything about himself we are told "Sometimes the faces might have only my nose or my eyes·but I guess I still think of them as self-portraits or maybe alter-egos."

Koplin Del Rio Gallery describes his work as such:

"This exhibition features paintings of memories, dreams, anecdotal bits, and pieces from everyday life; the ingredients that go into developing one’s personal mythology. Everybody has this personal mythology, a combination of truth and fiction, accurate and blurred memories, which make up the story of their lives. In this recent body of work, Fred Stonehouse has continued and expanded on his cast of characters, including various emotionally scarred saints, veggie heads, and animal/human hybrids.

In Dreams of Youth the artist is experimenting with distressed overlays of color and shapes, partially obscuring the carefully painted image beneath or, perhaps, beyond the veil of visual noise. It’s as if the artist is struggling to reconstruct a long forgotten narrative that comes back to him in fragments where the images are not quite clear and the specific meaning, while seemingly portentous, is even less clear. More than narrative, these paintings are like moments from a larger, lost or yet to be discovered epic. They hint at mythic complexity and suggest an order that remains elusive in its details. These paintings, while clearly describing some alternate world, full of miraculous and disturbing images, have the familiarity of our own past. While a character may have a tomato for a head, he struggles with the same emotions, the same quest for self-knowledge and fulfillment that we all struggle with."

Regardless of how you attempt to describe the undescribable, his work is not to be missed. I've got to meet this guy, seriously.

Related Links:
www.artscenecal.com
www.koplindelrio.com

Getting Started Marketing Your Art

2005-11-30T14:04:00.000-05:00

Lance Rubin
Acrylic on Canvas
24 x 60 dyptych
"neuronic"
2005

Ok, you've made a pretty picture, and your Mom and your cat like it. Now what? Oh sure, you can hang it next to the Thomas Kinkade in the living room, but that's not much of a life for your new work is it? Why not make it work for you?

You might be thinking well I'm no Picasso, and my work could never fetch what a Van Gogh would at auction. You would likely be right, but you need not be discouraged based on that. The most powerful man in the art world today is Damien Hirst, and he got that way by marketing what he does. That's what you will need the most — a fearless spirit and boundless enthusiasm.

I've made this easy for you. Here's a list of things to do if you want to succeed with your art. Mind you, it's only a start, and you will need to continue far beyond this list, but it is a very solid start.

Here we go:
1) Set a price. Go find art somewhere, anywhere that you think is similar to yours and note the price and dimensions. Let's say the piece is 20 x 30, and is selling for $1000. Ok 20 x 30 is 600 square inches, so we divide 1000 by 600 and get $1.66 per square inch. Now do this with a few more pieces that are similar to yours, and you will start to see a pricing pattern emerge. You will find a range that you might be able to sell in.

Now let's also consider the lower end of the market. Let's say you observe a piece priced at $240 for the same 20 x 30 dimension. That would yield a price of .40 per square inch. Realistically you would be wise to price your art closer to that figure when you are first starting out, but you will be able to determine what you are worth simply by observing what price points sell for you.

2) Make a business card. It doesn't have to be fancy or expensive. Whenever you talk to someone, and the conversation drifts over to your artwork, you are to whip out a card and hand it to the person. You should have your name, phone number, website address, and maybe a picture of one of your pieces. Carry these cards with you everywhere. If you want to go a step further, you can make a little portfolio book of pictures of your work and carry that with you too. That way, you're a walking gallery.

I live in New Jersey, and commute on the NJ Transit train. I can't tell you how many people on that train have seen my work. I've even sold work by simply starting a conversation which evolves into looking at my mini portfolio book, and taking a card. One guy I met is an interior designer, and he calls on me to provide art for the work he does. What a jackpot!

3) Set a goal and write it down. Put it somewhere where you will see it every day. Get in the habit of crossing items off your goal list. Notice I said HABIT. You are creating a new habit.

A goal is just a goal, but a goal with a deadline is an ACTION PLAN!
What you need, my friend, is an ACTION PLAN.

Sample goals:
Sell 5 paintings by next month
Find a place that will let me hang my work in the next two weeks
Create 10 canvasses this month
Create or join a website for your web portfolio by tomorrow

Always remember, you are the master of your destiny. If you take no action, you will get NO RESULTS. If you sow no seed, you will reap no benefit, and it is solely you who are to blame, so don't even start with the excuses.

Nike said it best: JUST DO IT!

4) Take pictures of your art. A digital camera is by far the best tool for this. If you have photoshop or another photo editing program, you are set. There are free programs you can use as well.

You can also have a photographer do this for you if you know one or can afford it. Your pictures are very important, so take plenty of them and experiment with different angles. For each painting I photograph, I take about 10 pictures. I especially like the extreme angles and the close-ups to show texture and glossiness and the like.

5) Create a website. You need a place to park your art on the web. A place where people can find it, and read about it, and about you. You don't have to buy a domain name or learn programming to get this done. You can join an existing website that takes care of all that for you. Some are free, some charge a tiny fee.

6) Talk to people about your art. Talk as if you are a professional artist. Believe that you are a professional artist. See yourself as a professional artist (even if you do keep your "day" job). Soon (and it might be years), you will become what you think. Here is a free clue. You are your thoughts. Your thoughts are very very powerful.

Example: In horse racing the horses only run so fast. There haven't been any "breakthroughs" where a horse goes faster than any other horse ever has in history. In human racing, however, there have been breakthroughs throughout history. These breakthroughs are not a result of humans getting stronger than the humans who came before. It is the result of brain power, and the ability of the human brain to focus the power of the mind to achieve the goal.

7) Show your art. If people don't see it, they can't become interested in it, and they certainly can't buy it.

When I was in art college, I wanted to hang my art for people to see, and I asked the administration about it, and was rejected. They had art hanging in our school that was created by commercial artists that had nothing to do with the school. I thought this was odd at best, and kinda stupid.

I came up with an idea. I made title cards that match the ones the school was using, and I took my art over there as soon as they unlocked the doors in the morning at 6am. It was just me and the security guard. He didn't stop me when I told him I have to hang this show before 9 am. Long story short: my work hung in the hallways and was seen by thousands for 44 days before the administration realized what had happened. I wrote a press release for the local paper, and they did a nice little story of the renegade one-man show. I was an overnight celebrity among my peers at the school. The school made me write a letter of apology stating that I wouldn't do anything like that again, but I had my first one-man show, and I was very happy.

Moral of the story: get your art in front of some eyeballs by any means necessary.

8) Find the right venue to sell your art. This might take a little trial and error, but you really have nothing to lose. Just don't treat your art like it's precious. Make it, and sell it, and don't get attached.

I started out on Ebay, and I sold 15 paintings in my first two months. All but one painting sold, and that was because I experimented with the reserve price, and set it too high. It was a challenge to do that many paintings in that short of a time, and I have never been so prolific in my life. My attitude toward the whole thing was to keep the paintings flowing out, and the money flowing in so I can continue to produce more paintings, and buy more art supplies. My results far exceeded my expectations. Paintings sold in the range of $60-320. That's a bit low, but that's the nature of Ebay, and I really learned a lot from the experience.

I now market my paintings on boundlessgallery.com. The painting above was listed there for $1640.00 on October 20, and I got an offer for $1100.00 (which I graciously accepted) on November 28. I was very happy to have a sale in only one month.

There are many places online where you can sell your art, and each one has it's own unique feel and way of working. You will have to experiment to find what works for you best.

9) Join a professional organization or two, and list it on your CV (you DO have a CV don't you?). I am a member of ebsqart.com. You could join the Texas Association of Gay Rodeo Artists or the Minnesota League of Women Watercolor Artists, or whatever you have online or locally. It adds a little professional touch to your resume and credentials.

10) Put together an art CV / resumé.

+++
This list should be a big help to those who are getting started. It will also keep you out of trouble for a while. Let me know if this was helpful to you. As always, thanks for tuning in, and be sure to stop in again soon!

-Lance Rubin

004 Camille Rose Garcia

2005-11-22T10:50:00.000-05:00

Great Gadflies! It's a gothgirl's paradise.
Camille Rose Garcia is a hottie born in 1970 in LA. Sounds good already, right? She does these creepy little creatures that would make any little goth girl crawl on bloody stumps over razor blades to get to. Camille is represented by Merry Karnowsky Gallery (their street address is below) and they have giclees, prints and postcards as well as the original art. Hey the posters are only $10. Nice.

She also did the cover art for JELLO BIAFRA & THE MELVINS
Sieg Howdy! (<----Album title)
virus350 (2005) LP - $9.00 | CD - $12.00
I gotta tell you, this album is dope.
I won't be mad if you click on over there to check it out... just hurry back, k?

Refreshingly, one sentence in her bio really captured my attention: "Her paintings of creepy cartoon children living in wasteland fairy tales are critical commentaries on the failures of capitalist utopias." I now have a new hero.

Camille's style is rather illustrator-ly, with a color palette that really enhances the creepiness of her creepy creatures. She often decorates the edges of her work with a black cloud-like mass. The creatures tend toward droopy downtrodden with a very early (think 1920-30's) cartoon effect. Outstanding!

And, in the upcoming events department, we have...
an events already gone! Wow, how does he do it?
Seriously, drop by to see the show!

The Saddest Place on Earth
The Art of Camille Rose Garcia
Opening Saturday, October 1st, 2005
Reception 7-10 pm
Show runs October 1st thru December 18th
At The Grand Central Art Center
125 North Broadway
Santa Ana, Ca 92701
714-567-7233
website: grandcentralartcenter.com

Plan B
New works by Camille Rose Garcia
Reception: Saturday, October 29th, 8-11 pm
at the Merry Karnowsky Gallery
170 South La Brea Ave.
(In the ART 170 Building)
Los Angeles, Ca 90036
ph. 323-933-4408

You bring the spiders, I'll bring the cupcakes.

003 Marion Peck

2005-11-21T23:19:00.000-05:00

Sweet, Soft and Sick and Twisted. This is what babies see if they are fed LSD-25.

Ok, before we get started with Marion, let me wield the blade of knowledge towards those who are prone to conjure images of Mark Ryden when they encounter the luscious work of Marion Peck. No one wants to hear such a comparison (and I speak for the entire world -- don't worry, I checked with them first, and it was exhausting) with your blah blah Pop Surrealism blah blah lowbrow art scene blah blah Roq La Rue vs. La Luz de Jesus scene bullshite. Just stop. Instead, go relax yourself at cherry capri's place.

Ok, back to Marion. First, she was born October 3rd, 1963, and I was born October 16th, 1962... mere coincidence? I think not. She grew up in Seattle holding an umbrella (obviously, since it rains all the time), and avoiding the grunge offspringingingings of Kurt Cobain. She graduated RISD in '85, and has divided her time between Italy and the Pacific NW since then.

Her work has been compared to Donald Roller Wilson, Odd Nerdrum, and Mark Ryden. But then again, who needs these silly comparisons? If you can't afford an original Marion Peck, you might want to check with Pressure Printing as they have plans to do a series of Marion's fine work later this year (better get on it since it's November, guys!). I'll give them until Christmas, then I'm sending Vinnie over there with a baseball bat and a little advice about making empty promises. Capiche?

Marion has items for sale at a place called Excellent Virtu, but it also seems to be called Porterhouse Fine Art Editions, but then again the website goes by www.florida-art-gallery.com.... Um, I hate to be critical of your efforts down there in Florida, but you might want to stick with one name or clarify what is going on with all those entities floating around... that's not very good for your "brand".

Anyway here it is:

Excellent Virtu
139 N. Woodland Blvd. DeLand Florida 32720
(386) 740-1209

002 Joshua Petker

2005-11-20T20:52:00.000-05:00

"The Psychic"
Acrylic 2005
Sold

Joshua Petker is a California guy (born 1979) who lives in LA, and paints (from what I have seen as of yet) primarily women in somewhat modern but hauntingly retro style. His color palette tends to the unreal (which I really like), and his rendering style is fairly contrasty and graphic not unlike stencil street art almost, or borrowing from a graffiti style. Very satisfying if you appreciate an illustrative style.

His linework is simplified and very expressive. Some of the work almost resembles the way pictures are broken down when doing photo serigraphy. This is a beautiful effect making the composition become pieces or groups of color and form. A tender and delicate abstraction.

I hate to make comparisons like this, because these guys don't even know each other, but I just have to point out the wonderful similarity in the use of color in the portrayal of a portrait of a woman's face that Josh executes very graphically, and the chunky vivid facial abstractions of color of California native Susy Keely.

Gallerywise, Josh is no amateur. He's appeared in Roq La Rue in Seattle for three different shows in the past year among others. I particularly love Josh's work because it strikes a chord in me with my own work. I don't know Josh, but I would be willing to bet we would be great friends. And so it is I raise my glass in adoration, and recommend you get to know this very talented fellow.

Now get your butt over there. Skeedaddle!

The Mission

2005-11-20T14:45:00.000-05:00

A painting in a museum hears more ridiculous
opinions than anything else in the world.
-Edmond de Goncourt (1822 - 1896)

As an artist, I love art. From the traditional dutch masters reeking of linseed oil and the dust of the centuries, to kids on skateboards gliding through the streetlit nights with Krylon and stencils.

The mission of this blog is to be your Chamber of Commerce to the galleries, your tourguide to the wonderfully vast aggregation of innovative and intoxicatingly creative minds who dare to call themselves "artist".

I really hope you like the stuff I dig up on these pages, and will return again and again to see what's new. I hope to eventually set up an RSS feed to make that part a bit easier, but in the meantime, please bookmark my blog. I'm planning some very tasty treats, and I don't want you to miss a bit of it!

-Lance Rubin

001 Joe Sorren

2005-11-19T18:56:00.000-05:00

Pictured above:
"Elliot's attraction to all things uncertain"
36" x 36"

Joe Sorren is a master of the brush. Living in Arizona with his wife Jessica and two children Martha and Henry, he has been represented by galleries in New York, LA and internationally as well. He uses a delicious palette of rich luxurious colors to represent characters both whimsical and enigmatic. Their little faces are at once striking being shaped in a childlike manner in which the little eyes and noses are so small and dainty, and far apart that the head becomes a minimalist landscape seen through a fisheye lens. At his website, Joe offers prints, sculpture, books, his bio, he takes commissions, and has a mailing list.

He's even offers music at his website. I listened to November Song (Bright Yellow Song) which is a melancholy mellow folky-emo (I don't really know how to categorize it) song. The link on his site takes you to www.sparkletunes.com which appears to contain the music of lyle motley... another artist who works in a pop surrealist style that seems to come from a very loose illustrative style.

Joe really offers something special in his art, and I think you would really enjoy getting to know his work better. If you ever hear of a Joe Sorren show happening near you, by all means don't miss it. Oh and tell him Lance Rubin sent you.

Joe Sorren