For the 1%:
Hollywood Agency Announces Plans to Represent Visual Artists
United Talent Agency, the Beverly Hills-based talent agency known for representing actors like Johnny Depp, Angelina Jolie, and Gwyneth Paltrow announced the launch of a new division called UTA Fine Arts, which will manage the careers of visual artists.
The Wall Street Journal reports that the agency will not seek to replace galleries in terms of showing or directly selling art. Instead, they will help artists find financing for projects, sign corporate sponsorships, or get involved in the movie business if they desire.
For the rest of us:
Advice for Art Writers: Keep Your Standard of Living Extremely Low
Which is probably why Whitney Kimball said…
I consider this leave from the art world as a lifeline. I saw my career flash before my eyes, a looping treadmill through an animatronic hell where robot choirs sing the same praises of blue chip artists and hollow prefab trends. I’ve watched an art dealer praise a mirrored Damien Hirst sculpture for its reflective quality; I’ve watched collectors in Miami contemplate buying a multi-million dollar artwork, because “that would go with the one in the foyer”; I’ve watched galleries stock up on safe painting, zombie abstraction, and bland conceptualism all calling back to the same Modernist touchstones. And if an art writer wants to eat, this is the world you’ll be covering for your for-profit collector-driven art magazine.
Can you blame the galleries for perpetuating this crap? A few years ago, rent in Chelsea hit $30,000/month; I can only imagine how much art you have to sell to stay in the game now. “There isn’t a place for us in this world”, one of my friends observed a few years ago. That conclusion has not changed. Worst of all is watching my emerging artist friends aspire to break into this system.
Meanwhile…
For his 50th birthday, Jim Tananbaum, chief executive officer of Foresite Capital, threw himself an extravagant party at Burning Man. Tananbaum’s bash went so well, he decided to host an even more elaborate one the following year. In 2014 he’d invite up to 120 people to join him at a camp that would make the Burning Man experience feel something like staying at a pop-up W Hotel. To fund his grand venture, he’d charge $16,500 per head.
There would be no roughing it at Caravancicle. Accommodations would consist of a series of cubical tents with carbon fiber skeletons. Each cube would have 9-foot ceilings, comfortable bedding, and air conditioning. The surrounding camp, enclosed by high walls, would be safe and private. Amenities would include a central lounge housed in a geodesic dome, private showers and toilets, solar panels, wireless Internet, and a 24-hour bar. Guests could count on a “full-service” staff, who would among other things help create “handcrafted, artisanal popsicles” to offer passers-by. To help blend in with the Burning Man regulars, who tend to parade around the commons in wild, racy outfits (if anything at all), the camp would include an entire shipping container full of costumes.
And, even grosser, the Times recounts the sordid (and pointless?) story of Joe Lonsdale’s relationship with a Stanford undergrad he was mentoring in an entrepeneurship class: The Stanford Undergraduate and the Mentor
I see all these headlines as I’m trawling online for residencies and shows to apply to. The whole thing makes me want to commence sequence:
– Enact an unconditional basic income for everyone
– Move to Wyoming
So. That’s not going to happen, but it does make you wonder where an artist go to escape this climate of money and social climbing. (Read: “the city has started the process of adding the couple’s name to the hospital, making it the Priscilla and Mark Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center.”) I’ve never been the type to wish I could move to NYC to make it and now SF is starting to acquire a very overt NYC feel despite its outward prettiness. I’ve been harboring fantasies of moving to a remote wilderness all my life but now it feels more like a push than a pull.
There seems to still be a fair amount of denial in the art world, as people cobble together residencies and grants and whatnot and convince themselves that this is a sustainable way of living. Yes, perhaps for the younger crowd, but what about those who will want a family eventually? What about those who are thinking about their 70s? Yes, we can residency hop and not have many expenses, but can you save for your dotage? How can all of us pretend that everything will work out for all of us when it’s obvious that it only really works out for a tiny percentage of people? It makes me sick to try to convince myself that I will be one of those few people, because I hardly believe it. It feels like to really be confident about my work and prospects, I have to engage in a level of self-delusion that the logical, data-driven half of my brain will not allow me.
If we’re talking money, then we’re talking business, and it seems to only make sense to me if someone can actually put a number on what my return on investment would be. What is it exactly that I’m getting in return? What are my concrete chances? That’s what I need to know to make decisions about my future. I’m taking a writing workshop this semester, and the instructor made an observation about the art world: it isn’t an art world per se. It is the intersection of art and business. All of us who complain about the prevalence of money in art perhaps simply naively misunderstood from the very beginning. At least in America.
The art world, for all its liberalism seems to be stuck in a backwater where the labor movement never happened and labor is cheap and exploitable. In what other field do you do work without getting compensation and pay fees to apply to jobs? Imagine paying $30 every time you emailed a resume! I’m looking at all those residency application fees and mulling over the argument that it’s an investment in the future. Fact is, I’ve already made the investment of aiming my entire life, all my time and effort, toward the making of art. Aside from shaping our household finances such that we can support my art habit, I still need to make further financial investment? I get it; those who are willing to stick in there and deal with the art world as it is now will remain at the end and reap, but it doesn’t change the fact that this is such a harsh profession. We found ourselves discussing, in an institutional setting, the potential payoff versus the risk in just ignoring one’s student loans. Things are pretty bad if this is what the establishment has for its emerging talents.
The whole structure of the art world bears an unfortunate resemblance to those scams where modeling agents convince young women that they could be supermodels if only they’d “invest” hundreds or thousands of dollars in workshops and classes and “development.” Of course one or two do make it, so it’s not technically a scam, but there is some power imbalance that makes the whole thing feel funny. And of course those who can afford to pay at the outset are always at an advantage, have less to lose if things don’t work out. So – is being an artist a middle to upper class endeavor?
We met to prepare for application to a local prize for MFA students, and found out that one criterion stipulates that work cannot be collaborative. It must be made by only you and if you worked with people, you had better have been telling them exactly what to do. It has to be about one person’s vision. This is insane. It’s so every man for himself, and that’s the worst collective strategy when the whole ship seems to be yawing and pitching like it’s about to sink.
The dynamic right now is competition – we all feel supportive of each other, but ultimately, it’s either you or me, 1 out of 10, 1 out of 20, 1 out of 250 who gets the opportunity. I’m curious about whether there could be a scenario where all of us could come up together. I wonder what we artists can do for each other. In our local scenes, how do we construct our livelihoods so that it is more impervious to the ups and downs of the market? How do we do something together and not scatter to the four winds? How do we secure spaces in our cities that won’t be handed over to the highest bidder?
The thing is, since most of us don’t require riches or fame, this might not even be out of reach. Maybe we just haven’t tried hard enough? Obviously, the culture at large does not care enough about art to help us or give us much, so it’s something we need to do ourselves. It seems high time that we thought a bit harder and more practically about it, instead of each waiting on our own for the Koonsian golden ticket. I really don’t want to be “elevated” to those levels. I just want my normal life that I have now to be sustainable into my 60s and 70s. I am happy eating noodles and living in my little 700 sqft space for two. I just want to figure out how to do it. Maybe if a few of us sat in a room regularly and made a plan, a space and a livelihood would start to look attainable.