THE BUSINESS OF ART
30th Anniversary Edition
by
Lee Caplin
Copyright 2011 Lee Caplin, Evening Sun Press
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The
business of art / [edited by] Lee Caplin.—3rd ed. p. cm.
“Published in cooperation with the National Endowment for the
Arts.” Includes index.
ISBN 0-13-597998-6 (ppc). —ISBN
0-7352-0013-0 (p)
1. Art—Economic aspects. 2. Art—Marketing.
I. Caplin, Lee Evan
II. National Endowment for the
Arts.
N8600.B875 1998
98-8034 CIP
706’. 8—dc21
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, without permission in writing from the author.
This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering legal, accounting, or other professional service. If legal advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional person should be sought.
… From the Declaration of Principles jointly adopted by a Committee of the American Bar Association and a Committee of Publishers and Associations.
In the two decades since The Business of Art was first conceived, the art world has undergone upheaval and change. Art, in all its forms, has generally been considered part of the so-called nonprofit world. Ironically, in the aggregate, the arts comprise an almost $40 billion industry, giving rise to approximately 1.5 million jobs. According to some estimates, the more than 30,000 arts organizations in the United States contribute over $3.5 billion to the federal government in taxes. In terms of underwriting the arts, the government actually funds less than 1 percent—primarily targeted for administrative and operational activities.
Individual visual artists receive virtually nothing from the charitable activities that characterize the nonprofit world. Perhaps in today’s society that does not seem surprising. The 1980s saw a veritable art boom. By 1989, the inflated Japanese yen had created a bull art market, where even mediocre artists became millionaires. Art speculators were out in full force. However, by 1991, the public witnessed a true arts recession: Artworks failed to reach their reserves at auction. Collectors began to feel that they had overpaid for white elephant art pieces that would never again achieve their original “value.” Dealers became more cautious in adding new artists to their rosters. Galleries refused to honor their promises to “take back” artworks if clients became dissatisfied, or wished to “upgrade” their collections. Some galleries even demurred in giving their own artists shows of new work, fearing that the new work would fail to find the same surefire audience that had made them all wealthy.
Artists who rode the crest of the 1980s, but fearing the worst in the art market, boldly struck forth in the entertainment business, trying to make their way. One wealthy 1980s artist underwrote his own lowbudget movie, hoping for the chance to become a Hollywood director. Another made a short-lived appearance as a Country Western singer on a self-produced album. Still others looked to expand their market shares to other mediums such as dance, theater, and even MTV, where they could enhance their careers by painting sets and costumes, or making minimovies. As with all businesses, however, financial results were, and are, a direct reflection of the marketplace. In the case of the super-star artists of the 1980s, the new marketplaces were far from those in which they made their reputations. Trying to “sell” the public on a movie or album made by a famous artist simply made no financial sense. Ultimately the end product had to rise or fall as a result of a public uninterested in new arrivals whose calling card was fame in the world of visual arts. Those particular artists were back to ground zero in their new careers.
In 1996, the art business began to turn around. Auctions at Christie’s and Sotheby’s started attracting crowds again. There was the sense of theater that characterized the boom market years earlier—news cameras awaited the arrival and exit of the glitterati. Outside, street performers regaled the crowds, while inside, black-tie audiences applauded multimillion dollar sales prices for modern masters such as Willem de Kooning, Roy Lichtenstein, and Andy Warhol. But people were definitely hedging their bets.
Banks, for their part, were wary of extending financing to even their good art-business customers. Thus, money some dealers had advanced to artists to help with cash flow or to create new bodies of work was in short supply. Dealers and auction houses were forced to put their heads together to form public alliances that hitherto had been implied or covert. Both Christie’s and Sotheby’s diversified by purchasing large holdings in private gallery operations, breathing new life into struggling art boutiques. Some disparate dealers openly shared representations of large collections or artists’ estates, thereby redefining their own marketplaces and, by sharing customer bases as well as marketing costs, expanding the number of potential buyers.
At the same time, potential conflicts of interest threatened the art buying public with the aesthetic equivalent of price fixing. After all, what is art worth? In business, fair prices are those numbers upon which willing buyers and sellers agree. But in art, value often is that which a trusted art advisor or consultant supports. Even among regulated government activities auction and gallery prices set important insurance and IRS standards for valuation. One piece of art seen in the context of another, perhaps superior, piece may fetch a price far higher than the same piece of art seen out of that context. By developing exhibitions, catalogues raisonne, and carefully choreographed reviews, those who sell art in galleries or at auction can position artwork for sale at higher prices. These issues are discussed in the chapters devoted to art at auction and the politics of art, among others.
But for those artists who are driven to their studios by the passion of producing art, regardless of what happens, the goings and comings of the New York or world art market mean very little. It is to these individuals that this volume is dedicated.
Surveys in recent years estimate that over 300,000 people in the United States consider themselves artists. The figures go startlingly higher worldwide. These artists range from students and housewives/husbands to weekend painters to dedicated practitioners who grapple with outside jobs to support their passion for making art. Picasso once opined that everyone is born an artist; what is it about life, he asked, that allows some to stay artists and forces others to forget the joy they once knew as creators. Part of what happens, we might answer, is that people age and begin to face the realities of social and financial responsibility. Sylvia Stone, the sculptor, once remarked that life for an artist is a long time: “Even if you draw or paint or sculpt for a quarter of a century, what are you going to do with all the rest of your years?”
For an artist committed to his or her art, the answer is obvious: persevere. While everyone may not wish or be able to treat art as a means of earning a livelihood, The Business of Art is a means of understanding enough about business to make informed choices. While scoring a dealer may not be the way of choice or within the realm of possibility, this volume describes alternative paths that can be followed. Practical suggestions are always valuable: protecting one’s body from chemical harm, protecting one’s family from legal action should an installed work fall from the wall, creating new environments in which artwork can be created and displayed. In the writing of this handbook, even the idea of a “career” in the arts drew controversy. Purists claimed that even the word “career” was antithetical to art. Others disavowed any knowledge or attention paid to the marketing of their works, insisting that their sales were wholly attributable to the fact that their art was “good.”
Sadly, business “techniques” will enable some artists to survive regardless of the quality of the art they create. But everyone seems to agree that demystifying the business aspect of the visual arts is a positive step. In addition to this volume, we have assembled a video tape presentation that replicates the spirit of the original conferences. Use of both the tape and the text can offer the basis for actual course material that arts groups and art schools can offer to their local communities of artists. We still have a National Endowment for the Arts as well as state and local art agencies. The United States Small Business Administration is still open for business, and is willing to assist in planning and executing local conferences. In the wake of federal cutbacks in direct financial aid to artists, the path is still open for all who make a serious attempt to be self-reliant, whether on a full or part-time basis.
Lee Caplin
Los Angeles, 1998
The author would like to acknowledge the invaluable assistance of the Washington, D.C. law firm of Caplin & Drysdale in preparing the technical aspects of this text.
FOREWORD
Livingston
L. Biddle, Jr.
LIVINGSTON L. BIDDLE served as Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts from 1976-1980
These are perilous times for the arts.
Recent decisions to reduce by record amounts support for the National Endowment for the Arts produce a chilling effect on state and local funding. The arts are perceived by many as increasingly vulnerable to attack and no longer, as they were earlier, of central worth to our society.
Too often it has become politically advantageous to berate the arts. Too often defenses have become insufficient.
Conceived as a catalyst to encourage nongovernmental assistance to the arts, the National Endowment once succeeded mightily in that mission. Now, that strength is seriously diminished. Arts activity, growing at an unprecedented rate since 1965, is placed in similarly unprecedented jeopardy.
Private initiatives, those undertaken by the private community, are thus of crucial importance.
Especially now, visual artists need to focus on how best to address their efforts and energies to the business in which they are engaged—the business that allows them to grow in excellence and bring reinvigorated attention to the abiding value of their creative expression.
This new edition of The Business of Art has an immediate, a most timely, significance. Its broad range of subjects and approaches demonstrate practicality, imagination, and ingenuity. It is compelling and rewarding reading for artists seeking to succeed, for those interested in helping artists to enhance their work, and for all who are enriched and moved by the artistic experience.
When the first edition was compiled and published in cooperation with the National Endowment, which I then headed as its chairman, we were immensely gratified, and indeed astonished, by the magnitude of response. The variety of thoughtful and thought-provoking advice offered involved not only artists, but art dealers, lawyers, collectors, experts in tax matters, gallery owners, and leaders of small businesses sharing with the arts world their own relevant expertise. The benefits to artists throughout the country were described as exceptional.
The new edition promises an update to meet, with special understanding and wisdom, the urgency of present needs.
My admiration goes to the pioneering Lee Evan Caplin who worked at the Endowment with me, and who has produced previous editions as well as this one, and to Prentice-Hall, the publisher.
My own goal through a lifetime devoted to the arts is to be of help. To be associated with Lee and with Prentice-Hall in the presentation of this unique book is a privilege.
Washington, D.C., 1998
INTRODUCTION:
THE CREATION OF A FEDERAL PROGRAM
FOR ARTISTS
Lee Caplin
LEE CAPLIN created and directed the Federal Program “The Business of Art and the Artist” while serving as Special Assistant to the Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts in Washington, D.C. Mr. Caplin currently produces feature films and television through his company, Picture Entertainment, in Los Angeles. Lee Caplin also spends time in northern California, where he was part of the founding faculty at California State University Monterey Bay, and served as Chairman of Starium Encryption Technologies, specializing in telecommunications privacy equipment and software.
Between September 1979 and May 1980 over 4,000 artists gathered together in Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York City, where, for perhaps the first time, two federal agencies combined forces in four major events to assist art in America. Blue jeans and paint-stained windbreakers merged with three-piece suits, and an air of lively curiosity and expectation filled the auditoriums at L.A.’s and Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry and New York’s American Museum of Natural History. After 18 intense hours at each location, artists were still talking, listening, taking notes, exchanging names.
The events were conferences, co-sponsored by the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) and the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), to give artists basic business and marketing information.
This apparent unlikely pairing had a rational basis embedded in the purpose and philosophy of the two agencies involved.
The National Endowment for the Arts is the federal agency that was charged with giving support to all aspects of the arts in America. It not only supported the arts through grants but also supported artists and arts groups through technical assistance—helping them to be better organized and to get on their feet financially. NEA also had been involved in advocacy efforts to try to get members of the private sector to become involved with supporting the arts. One segment of the private sector was the business community.
The business community at large has primarily been active in supporting the arts as a patron—purchasing art for office buildings, giving support to symphony orchestras, dance companies, museums, and theaters. However, the business community also possesses the practical knowledge of how business affairs are run—knowledge potentially very valuable to artists or arts groups in managing their own affairs—and in making the most of opportunities to earn income.
Each year as the Endowment’s budget was reviewed by Congress the questions inevitably came up: “Are artists hooked on the federal dollar? How much do they really help themselves?” The NEA/SBA joint project seemed like an ideal opportunity to start answering those questions in the most positive of ways.
The Small Business Administration offers a variety of assistance projects for the small businessperson. It makes loans and loan guarantees and gives technical assistance to individual entrepreneurs or businesses. However, one major distinction between the purposes of the Arts Endowment and of the SBA was that SBA gives direct support only to groups or individuals who are trying to make money, while NEA gave grants only to individuals or to art groups which were tax exempt and therefore primarily not engaged in making a profit. However, indirect or technical assistance to individuals was ground common to both agencies.
SBA brought to this new partnership a widespread “delivery mechanism” for technical assistance. It has field offices in all 50 states and territories that give business training sessions to all aspects of the small business community. While SBA does not have programs that deal specifically with artists, artists occasionally have found their way to SBA training conferences on accounting or establishing business operations. Nevertheless, SBA has previously given no specific attention to the arts. And most of the arts community is unaware that SBA gives technical assistance applicable to the arts.
The National Endowment for the Arts realized that it could help SBA develop a mechanism to train artists in business and marketing affairs that would respond to some real needs in the arts community. So with SBA to purvey technical information, and NEA to help develop that information, the two agencies began their task of putting together a training program for artists.
The development of this partnership received interest and support from the wife of the vice president of the United States, Mrs. Joan Mondale. As honorary head of the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities, Mrs. Mondale saw the NEA/SBA alliance as embodying the goal of the Federal Council—that the Council should act as a catalyst in involving other federal agencies besides the Endowment in assisting the arts. With Mrs. Mondale’s strong endorsement, the project was off to a fine start.
NEA’s Visual Arts Program—dealing with individual painters, sculptors, printmakers, photographers, and varied craftspersons—was chosen as the most practical area on which to focus this first program. Since the area of visual arts is so broad, subject areas dealing with art marketing and specific problems of artists were best addressed both by practicing artists who had “made it” in the financial sense and who understood the business aspects of their activities, and by accountants and lawyers who, in the course of their practice, handled artists’ affairs.
In its training activities, SBA traditionally uses lecturers picked from its “service corps of retired executives” (SCORE) and an “active corps of executives” (ACE). These experts are business executives who donate time to SBA to assist in training and advising small businesspeople. While such resource people often do not have familiarity with the arts community, the Arts Endowment found them especially receptive to tailoring their remarks to fit the artists in the audience. With an array of experts from both the arts and business communities, NEA and SBA felt that the subjects would be fully addressed.
Three pilot conferences, in Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York, were planned. These cities were picked because of the size of their arts communities and because of the quality of SBA’s district offices. The key to the success of these conferences was identifying and engaging local conference co-sponsors. Such co-sponsors would take part in the planning and execution of the conferences and would continue to be available on the local level for future artist training efforts by SBA. The Los Angeles co-sponsor was the California Confederation of the Arts. In Chicago and New York, co-sponsors were both the state and the city arts agencies. An additional cosponsor in New York was the Foundation for the Community of Artists. These organizations gave unselfishly of their time and resources to supply the essential support so critical to a successful program.
The response was amazing. Whereas SBA’s past experience in training led it to believe that no more than 200 applicants would attend each conference, about 1,000 artists attended in each city. In Los Angeles, there was such an overflow crowd that there had to be last-minute closed-circuit TV coverage in an adjoining auditorium. In New York an entire second conference was scheduled to accommodate nearly 1,000 additional artists who were unable to fit into the auditorium during the first New York conference.
During the course of the four two-day conferences, over 80 panelists appeared. On the first day, artists talked about planning; an artist’s accountant talked about arts accounting problems; and experts explained the intricacies of insurance, retirement plans, money-lending sources, banks, credit, tax, and the law in relation to the arts. Monona Rossol, of New York’s Center for Occupational Hazards, described health hazards facing artists and art buyers from the materials used in making art. The second day was all about marketing. Successful artists from various corners of the arts community, experienced in traditional or alternative marketing possibilities, spoke on such subjects as galleries, museums, alternative spaces, and commissions. Dealers who were involved as brokers, middlemen, or direct sellers of art, spoke about marketing art in those settings. According to the evaluation forms and other responses the Endowment has received, artists found the program format ideal. Certain areas, such as law and accounting, are so complex that they deserve specific attention if they are to be explained fully. However, NEA and SBA simplified their presentations within a larger context, sensitizing artists to the need for legal and accounting advice, and devoting more time to some of the specifics of where and how artists go to sell their work.
Surprisingly, some artists who were approached to serve on panels were at first skeptical about the program. They feared such a conference might emphasize elements antithetical to art. But ultimately all agreed that artists could generally benefit from exposure to business and marketing basics.
Despite the practical purpose of the conferences, it was far from a simple “How-to” program. The basic philosophy of those who make their lives in the arts was explored thoroughly by the artists on the panels. As these artists later unfolded their stories it was evident that they wanted to make certain that people in the audience, who call themselves artists, were not putting the cart before the horse; art is not so much a business as it is a calling and it is not so much the manufacture of products for sale as it is a matter of producing something because one is obsessed with producing it, and only then wondering, once the art is produced, what should be done with it. On the one hand, artists who had developed formulas for success did not want to reveal their formulas to the audiences. In many ways such formulas were unique to those artists. On the other hand, some of the speakers did not care to admit that there are any business oriented steps that artists could or should take. Painter Ed Moses suggested, “There’s art, there’s stuff that looks like art, and there’s stuff that just looks good. If you’re into the last two, you’re into business.” The point being that “if the art is good, it will speak for itself.” In the words of sculptor Bruce Beasley, however, “If you hide your light under a bushel, nobody will see it, but first you must be sure there’s a light.”
Several of the artists’ presentations were discouraging, in their hesitancy to validate a business element in “getting one’s art out.” Painter Philip Pearlstein urged that each artist ask the question, “Do I have talent?” He said that the drop-out rate of artists over 30 suggests that many are asking themselves that question. “There are very few artists over 50,” Pearlstein said.
Other panelist-artists, who are adept at promotion and marketing, made the assumption that everyone in the audience had work that he or she was proud of, and therefore it was valid to probe the extent to which business techniques were adaptable to the professional structure surrounding the making of art. They were able to identify means by which artists could go further in promoting and selling their own work.
A significant point was made that in all instances there is a quotient of “luck” and a quotient of “quality” involved in any success by any artist. Painter Joan Snyder called hers a “Cinderella story.” Larry Bell was unable to explain what he had done to promote himself other than by doing his work, observing those he admires, and “emulating their style” in handling their own affairs. Most subscribed to doing only what is comfortable in terms of self-promotion. What may be easy for one artist, such as shaking hands at gallery gatherings, or setting a market value on a piece of art, may be anathema to another. Sculptor Sylvia Stone admitted that she tended to undervalue her work and preferred to let her dealer establish the prices. Conceptual artist Newton Harrison even advised his fellow practitioners, with some humor, to cultivate the “appearance of incompetence” for the purpose of conducting business affairs, since any attempt on their part to compete on an equal footing with other business practitioners would only lead to greater exposure and susceptibility to the various government rules and regulations.
Artist June Wayne suggested that government agencies lack sophistication about the unique business problems of the arts. To those who draft tax legislation, an artist’s overhead looks suspiciously large compared to the slim profits or repetitive losses the artist’s tax return may reveal. Because Congress assumes that the only credible reason for pursuing any business or profession is to make taxable profits, the persistence with which artists pursue their unprofitable activities greatly puzzles and vexes both our lawmakers and our enforcers. As a result, for an artist to fit into the tax laws is, according to Wayne, “for an eagle to fly while wearing an ox-yoke.”
The traditional rules of business do not always apply in the business side of the arts. Gallery owner Ivan Karp stated that he chooses the artists he represents on the basis of how he responds to their work—not on the work’s marketability.
One theme of conflict recurred and was never fully resolved: Some artists felt that planning was essential in having a professional career as an artist. Other equally successful artists felt that any plan is out of place—that it stifles one’s creative instincts. Painter Jim Rosenquist gave his view by quoting President Eisenhower: “A plan is nothing, planning is everything.” On balance, however, everyone seemed to profit by some aspect of the conferences. Few expected to be given a list of “ten easy do’s and don’ts” for becoming a successful painter or sculptor. But despite their individualism, most artists share many of the same problems and needs. As they listened and asked questions, artists were able to arrive at a balanced view of the various options available to them in marketing and promoting their work.
Certainly the gatherings themselves were significant events apart from the valuable information conveyed. Many of the artists in the audience had never seen or heard dealers such as those on stage. Many had never been in the company of artists of major reputation, such as appeared in the three cities. There was great value in the audience’s listening to sculptor Fred Eversley, on the one hand, showing clear knowledge of how to market art work or Bob Graham, on the other hand, suggesting that there is little an artist can do in marketing artwork; that his work somehow seemed to sell almost by itself. On a human level, it was reassuring to encounter colleagues of one’s own discipline or geographic surrounding, who attended the conferences to get the same information, and to be able to communicate with these people afterward at the receptions that were held.
The Endowment, for its part, certainly did not advocate treating art as a business or artworks as commodities for sale. Rather, its main role in participating in the project was to make available as much technical business and marketing information as possible, so as to offer the broadest range of choices to artists pursuing their callings as professionals.
As a result of the pilot program “The Business of Art and the Artist,” the Endowment and SBA produced a documentary videotape and a conference organizer’s manual to be used in presenting workshops throughout the country. That videotape may now be purchased via the 800 telephone number included in this volume.
This volume can supplement these workshops and is a useful introduction to the business side of art for all those who have not yet received such technical assistance. The material presented here is not meant to be inclusive, nor is it supposed to supplant courses in business and marketing. Rather, it is a first step toward understanding many aspects of “survival” for artists in a commerce-oriented society. The artists, dealers, and business professionals who have contributed their thoughts in producing this book hope it will help you discover the types of questions you ought to be asking either yourself or those whom you enlist to help you. They hope that their views on the professional side of art will illuminate and demystify many seemingly technical and complicated details that might seem burdensome to those who just want to make art. Their ideas apply to all forms of visual arts and crafts. Whether the topic is sculpture or the Los Angeles art scene, the information can be generally useful. Artists as a group are less eager to share “techniques” that have worked for them. Dealers, too, sometimes are reluctant to be candid about their colleagues and the practices they use. But for the first time, gathered in one place, a composite of the art scene is depicted by what is said—and what is left unsaid—by the authors of this book.
Larry Bell once stressed that each of us is responsible for the best and the worst of what happens in our careers. What you won’t get by reading this book are any “Ten Commandments” for becoming a successful artist. What we hope you will get is a better sense of what you really want from your art and how far you are willing to go to achieve your goals. If you can place all the elements of your art and the business of art in perspective, you will have achieved a lot, especially in terms of being responsible to yourself as an artist and as a professional. For some there may be a period of time when fame and fortune are a reality. For others, there may be a perpetual obscurity. In between are many variations on the theme, as well as behavior patterns ranging from the promiscuous to the recalcitrant. Sylvia Stone made a keen observation when she said that “making art is one of the true areas where we have a kind of independence and serve our own sense of morality. It is one of the free activities still left to some of us. And I say; ‘Use it. Use it and enjoy it.’”
CONTENTS
Preface
to the Third Edition
(Lee Caplin)
Foreword
(Livingston L. Biddle, Jr., Chairman, National Endowment for
the Arts, 1978-1981)
Introduction:
The Creation of a Federal Program for Artists
(Lee
Caplin)
1.
An Artist’s Way of Life
(James Rosenquist)
2.
Practical Planning
(Bruce Beasely)
3.
Stepping Through the Looking Glass: Forming a Business Entity
(Joshua J. Kaufman, Esq.)
4.
Understanding Everyday Finances
(Robert J.
Higashi)
5.
Estate and Gift Tax Planning
(Ira M. Lowe)
6.
Keeping Your Artwork Unique: Copyright, Trade Secret, Patent, and
Trademark Law
(Richard L. Stroup)
7.
Insuring Artwork and the Artist
(Huntington T.
Block)
8.
Safeguarding Your Health: Health Hazards for Artists
(Michael McCann and Monona Rossol)
9.
Financial Resources: Art in Public Places
(Judy
Baca)
10.
Support for Individual Artists in the Empire State
(Kitty Carlisle Hart)
11.
Joining Together: Artists’ Unions
(Olive
Mosier)
12.
Career and the Artist
(Henry Geldzahler)
13.
Entering the Mainstream
(Julian Schnabel)
14.
Preparing Your Portfolio
(Kate Keller and Mali
Olatunji)
15.
Selling Art Under Contract
(Tennyson Schad)
16.
The Integrity of the Artist, Dealer, and Gallery
(Tibor de Nagy)
17.
New York: A Dealer
(Ivan Karp)
18.
Los Angeles: A Dealer
(James Corcoran)
19.
Washington, D.G.: A Dealer
(Christopher
Addison)
20.
Chicago: A Dealer
(Rhona Hoffman)
21.
Houston: A Dealer
(Betty Moody)
22.
Artists’ Spaces: Alternative State of Mind for a Temporary
Exhibition
(Kenny Schachter)
23.
Museums: The Artist and the Museum How to Crack the Sight Barrier
(Tom L. Freudenheim)
24.
Art Advisory Services: The Age of the Art Advisor
(Jeffrey Deitch)
25.
Individual Art Collectors: The Role of Art Consulting in the Art of
Collecting
(Barbara Guggenheim)
26.
Art Collections in Corporations
(Mary Lanier)
27.
Contemporary Art at Auction: That Was Then; This Is Now
(Frank Giraud/David J. Nash)
28.
Commissions
(Helen and Newton Harrison)
29.
Craft Fairs
(Carol Sedestrom Ross)
The
Great American Art Game
(Lee Caplin)
Mary Boone • Sidney Janis • Leo Castelli • Arnold Glimcher • Paula Cooper • William Rubin • Patterson Sims • Hilton Kramer • Peter Schjeldahl • Richard Brown Baker • Nathan Cummings • George Segal • Jennifer Bartlett • Chuck Close
Planning
The first thing you have to decide is whether you have talent. It’s a hard decision to make but a lot of people seem to make it. There’s a big drop-out period when people reach 30. There are very few artists over 50.
PHILIP PEARLSTEIN
1. AN ARTIST’S WAY OF LIFE
James
Rosenquist
JAMES ROSENQUIST is an artist and a former member of the National Council on the Arts.
The question I ask myself when art and business are discussed together is, “Has art grown into a desk job?” I started drawing in 1949—or even before that—but I arrived in New York in 1955. The Third Avenue El was just being torn down, the Colosseum wasn’t built yet, and the Whitney Museum was still on 54th Street. At that time the art world was very small. The number of galleries was few, and I would say the number of people who collected avant-garde art—which meant that it had come from young living Americans—was perhaps less than a dozen.
While art, historically, has always been related to communication, in 1955 in New York many famous underground artists lived within a few blocks from each other but did not know each other, had never met each other. In the 1950s, Jim Harvey—the man who designed the Brillo box— who used to travel to the Middle East, brought back slides of his travels and invited the whole art world to come and see the slides down at Coentie’s Slip. So everybody and his brother showed up, and I was surprised to find that people did not know each other. I met Ad Rinehardt— one of America’s most famous artists—for the first time. Major artists were not in close contact. In the late 1950s, American artists such as Baziotes, de Kooning, Gottlieb, Guston, Kline, Motherwell, Newman, Pollock, Still, Rothko, and others had tremendous underground reputations. They had worked for years—some of them, like Franz Kline, in the WPA programs—yet they hadn’t had one-man shows, and they were already in their late forties or older. Some of them would get up at the Friday Night Club and broadcast their art. They’d talk about it, be assertive about it, defend it, and they were, I would say, very self-conscious about their work. They talked among themselves. They would try to establish the work; in other words, they were not cool about it. They were hot about it compared to the next generation, called Pop Artists, of which I was a part.
When I arrived on the art scene, the art audience had already begun to increase. In 1958 de Kooning had a show, and one of his paintings sold for the highest price for a living American artist—$14,500. Just after that, Jasper Johns appeared on the scene. He seemed to be a reactionary to a style in painting sometimes described as drips and splashes. Actually it was called “abstract expressionism.” His style resulted in critics trying to group artists in a “movement,” but they were not all alike.
At that time in New York, Ivan Karp, Henry Geldzahler, and Dick Bellamy would prowl the streets, going to artists’ studios to discover new talent. They actually went from door to door to find out who lived in each loft. I think this was the first time artists were solicited. Young unknown artists felt they didn’t have a chance to show their work when they saw someone like de Kooning walk down 57th Street in an old Levi jacket and bedroom slippers, looking very poor. If he wasn’t doing well, how could a lesser known artist expect to do well?
One day in 1960 I ran into Bob Indiana. He said, “Guess what I saw, Jim. I saw a dirty new collage of Bob Rauschenberg’s behind a big glass table on Park Avenue! Let’s go out and have a drink and celebrate!” So we celebrated Bob Rauschenberg’s breakthrough. At that time artists supported themselves any way they could. Some did commercial art jobs, some worked on construction jobs, and some sold coffee in Madison Square Park from the coffee stands. I painted billboards and created window displays for Bonwit Teller and Tiffany. Rauschenberg also did window displays for Bonwit Teller. We all had to make a buck.
When Henry, Ivan, and Dick started looking for people, Henry was a curator at the Metropolitan Museum, Ivan was at the Castelli Gallery, and Dick was about to open his new Green Gallery. Dick asked me to be in his gallery. I knew I could make a living at that point, so I quit my commercial artist’s job just to paint. I was very happy. I lived frugally, and was able to live on very little. I could eat breakfast for 25 cents at the Seamen’s Institute! I found it a tremendous luxury to be able to live in a cosmopolitan city and not have to deal with it except to dream. The dealers urged me to hurry up and have a show as fast as I could, but I was happy just to live with my pictures and simply let things happen. My paintings were like my companions, and I wasn’t consciously trying to sell them. But then Dick sold some of them to Bob Scull, the Tremains, Dick Baker, Jan Streed, Morton Newman, and others, for prices ranging from $350 to $1,100.
In the 1950s you could walk into the Whitney Museum annual exhibit and buy almost anybody’s painting for a thousand bucks. Then things started to heat up. People became interested in art—I don’t know why. Leon Menuchin bought practically a whole show for Brandeis University. People followed his lead. Harry Abrams, who had been buying French Impressionism and Old Masters’ works before that, saw what Leon had done and began buying young artists’ work. John Powers saw what Harry and Leon bought, and he bought what they bought. So collectors of young unknown American artists began to proliferate.
ART AS A BUSINESS
I’ve been asked, “How does an artist relate to business?” and “Can I plan a career as an artist?” As for planning, Eisenhower once said, “A plan is nothing. Planning is everything.” Being an artist, whatever that is, involves constant questioning of everything. It is very difficult to set out a plan in a businesslike manner because a happy accident could happen and someone might like your worst work.
Artists work in unknown territory. If it were known, they probably wouldn’t be artists. This is difficult for an artist to realize, but it’s also more difficult for an audience to understand. However, when an artist is through with a work, then strange things can happen, like people wanting to be near it, people talking about it, and people wanting to own it. When this happens, artists usually don’t know what to do.
My first experience in relating to business was like building a better mousetrap. I never had to ask my friends or potential buyers to visit me. One day Barbara Durkee visited me. She told her husband Steve about my work, and he told his dealer Alan Stone. Alan told Ileana Sonnabend, and she told Bellamy and Karp, and they told Leo Castelli. Jasper Johns even asked to come to my studio. He said, “Where did you learn to paint like that?” People beat down the door to my studio. Artists, then, were usually indifferent to galleries; they didn’t expect much money, only the possibility of having their work on view in a neutral space. Before I had any reputation, I never had to schlep my paintings anywhere. That’s how it happened with me. Other people’s introductions to a gallery and to business happen differently. Frank Stella just walked into the Castelli Gallery, and Leo asked him, “What do you paint?” Frank said, “I paint. I just paint, man.” The artists of the 1960s and the 1970s were a little luckier because they didn’t have to solicit their art. In the 1980s there [was] an entirely different situation. There were many more artists living in New York City, and there were many more galleries. I liked it that way; there was more to look at, more to investigate.
All through the 1960s my daily routine was waking up with a hangover about ten o’clock, painting all day, at five o’clock renting a tuxedo from Silver’s Tuxedos, going up to 57th Street to an opening, going up to the Jewish Museum to Rauschenberg’s opening, or somebody else’s opening, or my own opening, then going out, staying out till one or two in the morning, waking up with a hangover, working the next day, renting another tuxedo at Silver’s (or keeping the same one), going out again— every night of the week! Sometimes I was invited to three dinners at a time. Life was fast and fun.
But getting back to that planning thing: Planning is like looking for your wallet under a street lamp when you didn’t lose it there in the first place. When I started planning, I wanted to be a mural painter. I tried to go to school where they would teach me mural painting. All these men teaching had read books about it, but they had never done it. I looked around and I saw billboard painters painting, and I thought, “Gee, those guys can handle any kind of space. They must know how to handle paint and brushes.” So I went right into billboard painting as a master billboard painter—no apprenticeship, no nothing. I learned a great deal from my helpers: David Mishnick, a sculptor who had come from Russia in 1927 and had shown his work with Arshile Gorky; Solly Schnee, Harold Bernstein, who had a lot of knowledge about paint. These old-timers were like teachers to me. They told me what not to do. It was like going to school—but it was a tough commercial business.
Successful artists as well as businessmen use creative thinking to get from point A to point B. The attempt to repeat an approach or a style that has been successful in the past in order to achieve new success can lead to a dull result. Creative, successful artists and businessmen rarely approach the same thing in the same way twice. Art isn’t really done for any reason other than a means of the artist’s self-expression. Business, on the other hand, is traditionally done to make money.
Now art may not be done to make money, but that doesn’t rule out its value. The problem for any artist has always been either having money and no time or a lot of time and no money. The ideal life for an artist would be to live in a cosmopolitan city and be free from the burden of having to make a living. And, however one accomplishes it, that freedom from “making a living” could be essential to being an artist. I think a problem comes when an artist does start to sell something, for then he becomes connected with business and his life is no longer free from that involvement.
For myself, I don’t have the slightest idea of how to allocate time between art and making money except on a case-by-case basis. I really have no plan at all. The reason I work, the reason I make things, is to illuminate physically some feelings I’ve had. Then they exist outside of myself in some kind of form, so when I am old and gray I’ll be able to look at them and realize that I was alive at a certain period. I really regard it almost like a philatelic thing. When I’m dead, that’s outside the human condition and I don’t care any more about the works.
There’s a whole new crop of young artists who grew up surrounded by materialism, as I did, but who try to plan their art careers like the climb up a corporate ladder. I can’t imagine an artist’s life being as steady as that. People who don’t know what an artist does ask me, “Are you doing pictures for magazines now? What are you doing this for?” My answer is that I’m not doing art for anyone but myself. The reason why is that if I did art for somebody other than myself, I wouldn’t know what to do. I don’t have to paint something this color or that color because of someone else’s reason. I can do anything I please. And that’s the lovely, scary thing. It’s challenging to go into a room with a canvas and know that you can do anything you want to do. This is probably a Far Eastern attitude about learning. You confront yourself totally, whether you’re able to work or not.
So, getting back to the idea of planning, to an artist’s mind there are no holds barred, no barriers. The only thing that stops you is the old Catch-22 thing, the financial problem that you just don’t want to deal with. Yet you have to face it.
When I began painting, James Michener came to my studio and said, “I want to buy that painting.” I said, “I’m sorry; it’s already been sold. Richard Bellamy sold it.” He said, “I’d like one just like it, or something like it.” I felt that the look of my art wasn’t like anything else being done at that time, so I was very reactionary, and I said, “No, I can’t possibly do that.” Now if he hadn’t said what he did, I might have made four more paintings similar to that one, or studied it further. But I viewed his request as an interference. I was very sensitive then!
Just a few years ago it wasn’t fashionable to want one’s son or daughter to be an artist. Now sons and daughters are encouraged to study art because it could be possible to make a handsome income from it. I can’t think of art as a desk job. Avant-garde artists still face hardships in spite of a current government attitude that art is alive and well in the United States. Artists have a hard time getting credit, getting hospital care. Their work is sold, and resold quickly for high prices in a short time, and the artist gets only the first piddling commission from a dealer—or may not get paid for years. Artists can’t contribute their work to museums for a tax deduction as art collectors can, because the government says the only value coming from an artist’s work is the cost of the materials! Back in the 1960s, when it was lawful, the art dealers’ association carefully scrutinized donations, so there were very few overvalued works. The person possibly most responsible for stopping contributions was former President Nixon, who donated his writings for an unrealistic deduction.
Artists’ heirs are often stuck with a huge inheritance tax on unsold works and have to sell them off cheaply to be able to pay the taxes. There are a great number of artist problems pertaining to business and taxes. If the speed of thinking of the IRS and the government could accelerate at the same rate as the speed of artists’ and inventors’ thinking—that is, linked with communication—I think we could get away from a guns or unemployment society and get into space without bringing war with us.
During the time I’ve taken to write this, the current acceleration of the change of events regarding government support for the arts, business support for the arts, and the fate of the National Endowment for the Arts under the new administration has changed drastically. The new government senses a need for extreme budget cuts in every area except military spending. In The New York Times, during the height of the Vietnam conflict, the annual government military contracts to major corporations were published. If one added up the cost of all the arts activities in the United States for the same year, including dance, music, museums, theater, and even large Hollywood films, it wouldn’t be a drop in the bucket compared to the enormous military expenditures for Vietnam.
On a television program on Sunday, April 28, 1981, the panelists seemed to agree that art should become a business in order to be able to make it on its own. Mr. Herb Schmerz, of Mobil Oil, stated that art groups should be able to function and survive as a business. Mr. Schmerz was happy to announce that art finance should be left to the private sector and will happily be taken over by big business. One panelist said that art in America is alive and healthy, and always was, despite government support. Another panelist suggested that viewers should send their ideas to their congressmen.
I remember a time not long ago when art barely existed in New York. And the future of art in America doesn’t look good now. In this great country of ours, let’s encourage the arts and humanities, and new forays into visual art. Let’s build one or two fewer missiles and provide the National Endowment for the Arts—with its history of a hands-off attitude—with a healthy, growing budget. Let’s not let large corporate control lead us into 1984.
2. PRACTICAL PLANNING
Bruce
Beasley
BRUCE BEASELY is a sculptor with works in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modem Art, the Guggenheim, and the Musee dArt in Paris, among others. His large sculptures can be seen in public places such as the federal courthouse in San Diego and the San Francisco International Airport.
I have been asked to address the rather vague area of planning in regard to a career in art. I am not sure what this encompasses, but I know for certain that I did not plan to be an artist. It just happened just as falling in love happens.
Although I myself cannot imagine being anything but an artist, I do not believe in soliciting others to follow me in this field. Art is a joy too precious—and painful—to proselytize. Therefore, I extend my sympathies and, of course, my warmest feelings for anyone who has the art monkey on his or her back.
I am asked what can be expected when you have been bitten by the art bug. You can expect challenge, the joy of expression, exploration, and sometimes exploration that leads to exhilarating accomplishment. You can expect frustration, self-doubt, and loneliness. You can also expect damn little practical support.
THE ESSENTIAL DILEMMA
There is much known history about artists and money problems, and a lot of it is true: Michelangelo fighting with the pope over payments, Van Gogh writing his brother for more money. The stories are endless, and they point to a terrible historical dilemma: an artist must have money to live and to make art. But the motives for making art are not financial. This puts artists’ needs in direct conflict with their motivation. In fact, artists are economic victims of their own aesthetic, which of course is not news to anyone who is an artist.
The purpose of this chapter is to shed some light on this dilemma. Perhaps the reason I was asked to address this question is that some years ago I made a decision to throw myself on the world of galleries and sales of my art for my sole livelihood. I am therefore supposed to know something about it.
I am not sure this is true, nor am I sure that I know any more about it now than I did when I made the decision. However, in looking back on that decision (which at the time was made more in passion than in logic), and also in observing and sharing the lives and careers of friends who made both similar and dissimilar choices, I have thought of some things I have learned which I would like to share. Maybe they will sound simplistic and obvious, but they have been lessons to me.
MAKING CLEAR CHOICES
Basically, I would say that the artists I have known who have had rewarding and successful careers are those who have been able to make very clear choices about their priorities and expectations. Once these priorities were selected, they wasted no emotion on the other things they gave up’
I want to make it clear that when I refer to a successful artist I do not necessarily mean financially successful. To me a successful artist is one who continues to make art and is not more than 50 percent bitter about the rest of life.
If you teach for a living, the pay per hour is good, but for some it is aesthetically draining; if you drive a cab you have to put in more hours, but it’s less complicated. If you work in California you don’t have the New York scene; if you live in New York you can’t work outside as you can in California.
To cast in bronze is expensive. If you work in plaster, people won’t pay as much for it. If you work monumentally, you can do only a few pieces per year. If you work small, you can’t be in the shows of monumental work.
These trade-offs are endless, and in addressing the specific and terrifying question of how one can make art and also make a living, there are myriad answers, and all of them have a good part and a bad part.
My most sincere advice is to take a hard look at your desires, your abilities, and your temperament, and then pick the solution that is the least repugnant.
I purposefully put the phrase as “the solution that is the least repugnant,” not as the best, because that is how I see it. The best part is the art you are going to make. The negative part is that somehow you have to get some money in order to do it. And believe me, there are no perfect solutions.
BE AWARE OF DRAWBACKS
If you are rich to start with, you and others will wonder if you could have made it on your own. There are the same and even greater doubts about marrying for money. If you teach, there are time constraints, and for some there are aesthetic drains and the general diversion of your time and energy that university involvement demands. For many, selling their art has its drawbacks also. It requires the drive to sustain a regular output even at difficult times. Some have difficulty in letting the work go once it is finished. It requires that your prices be set by what the work will really sell for rather than by what you think it should be worth; this often requires facing painful realities. Some artists find the whole business aspect of galleries and sales to be unpleasant.
My decision to try to live off my work and cut the bridges to teaching in the early days involved my acquiring a mechanical skill to fall back on when nothing sold, and also being willing to live very cheaply for many years. I do not mean to go into a long lament on the suffering and starving artist, but there is more than an element of truth in the cliché. If you are going to depend on the sales of your work as your means of livelihood, you must expect to go through a period of very real deprivation. This may mean forgoing a family, living in genuinely inadequate conditions, and, in every material sense, living a lousy life. On the other hand, this will also be a period of great excitement and reward as you hit a stride with your work that was previously prevented by the demands of school or regular work.
There is, of course, no guarantee that your learning the elements of business will produce any financial success in your art. After all, we are not talking about earning merit badges or getting into heaven.
It is hoped that you will have found out your work capacity, discovered the depth of your ideas, and produced a good body of work.
For myself it has been a good choice and one that I would make again. It is not, however, as good as it often looks from the other side of the fence. I am under constant pressure to produce and exhibit. I must actively seek out and enter into competitions for sculpture commissions that are often time-consuming and unrewarding. Aside from the actual making of the art, it is a rather practical life—full of details of crating, shipping, photographs, installations, and so on. And there is, of course, no certainty that because things sold this year they will sell next year. But I am not complaining. I made my choice, and when the payoff isn’t worth the pain, I will make another choice.
But it would be a critical mistake to eat myself up with bitterness about the bad part that came automatically with the choice I made. If I am going to live off my work, I must pay more attention to the business part than if I had another source of income. It is just like sweeping up the studio or changing the oil in the air compressor; it isn’t interesting or aesthetic, but it is reality that has to be dealt with.
KNOW YOURSELF
So, basically, what I am saying is this: Pick where you want to be and go there without looking over your shoulder, without looking back. If you are gregarious and good at self-promotion, do it. If you are not, do as much as you can stand; realize that you are making a choice not to do more, and don’t be bitter about your not being better at it.
If you love working in the mountains, great. But don’t badmouth the New York “conspiracy.” If showing in public is painful, don’t show. If you can’t manage a variable income, get a secure job.
These are a lot of don’ts, but I also have some do’s: do make art; do make good art; and do make it all through your life, because, really, that is the only reward you can expect.
Selling your art is nice; public acclaim is nice; but it’s like the warmth of a sunburn. It’s superficial and short-lived.
Be practical but only about practical matters. Expect damn little, but expect a lot from yourself—because finally your relationship with the art you make will be the major source of joy and sorrow in your life.
3. STEPPING THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS:
FORMING A
BUSINESS ENTITY
Joshua
J. Kaufman, Esq.
JOSHUA J. KAUFMAN is a partner in the Washington, D.C.-based law firm of Kaufman & Silverberg. The firm specializes in art law and has associated offices throughout the United States. Mr. Kaufman is an adjunct professor at American University Law School where he teaches Art & Entertainment law. He is the founder and Executive Director of both Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts, DC and The Society to Prevent Trade in Stolen and Fraudulent Art (STOP).