Layers of Meaning

Critical Overview of Art Dealings

If you ever suspect that the rarefied world of fine art seems more like a street corner shell game than a pursuit for truth, wisdom and beauty, then the (U.K.) Telegraph has an article for you. 'It's not like selling socks' provides background on the upcoming Art Task episode of BBC2 series The Apprentice. The Art Task requires the candidates to sell an entire gallery of contemporary art in a single evening. A short clip from the article:

"The era from the Renaissance through to the mid-19th century was one of patronage. But then the capitalist intermediary, the dealer, took over. And as early as 1871 the prestigious periodical the Art Journal was lamenting their part: 'The influence of the dealer is one of the chief characteristics of modern art… to him has been owing… the immense increase in the prices of pictures.'

...But dealers are anxious to explain that this is a game properly played by experts unmotivated by the fast buck. Wigram prides himself on having a 'good eye' and being able to pick a winner; marketing instincts, he says, are irrelevant. His words chime with those of David Risley, a dealer now with his own flourishing gallery after making his first sale out of a bookshop, off the Charing Cross Road: 'I never think about what's going to sell, I just think about what I like.' Leslie Waddington, who has been running blue-chip galleries in Cork Street for four decades, warns of 'the great danger that people start seeing with their ears instead of their eyes.' Only Maureen Paley, the founding of whose gallery Interim Art in 1984 spearheaded the London art world's shift to the East End, is happy to think of herself as an entrepreneur. She describes art dealing as 'a life's work', in which she is ultimately 'promoting a cultural position'."