ジョアン・ミッチェルのアート・ディーラーが突然変更に:「このアート界はとても野蛮になった」/ (+ ポンピドゥー・センター・メッス画像) In the context of recent changes by Joan Mitchell’s art dealers: : “This art world has become so uncivilized” // (+ pics from the Centre Pompidou-Metz)
1940年代頃から始まったニューヨーク・スクールの画家の作風(抽象表現主義)を連想させるジョアン・ミッチェル(1925 – 1992)。
彼女の晩年は、レオナール・ツグハル・フジタと似ています。性格の難しい画家で、1959年、祖国 (ニューヨークのアート界)と喧嘩別れをし、二度と米国の地に戻りませんでした。
二ヶ月前、ニューヨーク・タイムズの大きな記事で、ポーラ・クーパー・ギャラリーのオーナーでいらっしゃるPaula Cooperの怒声がグローバル・アート界に響きました:「このアート界はとても野蛮になった」(This art world has become so uncivilized)。笑う人もいるかもしれませんが、アート・ビジネスをする方々にとってはシビアな問題で、ぴりぴり、冷えきった状態になり得ます。
ジョアン・ミッチェルを米国の美術史に残すため、数十年間、彼女の絵画を真剣に売り込み、国際的に企画した展覧会を実践したチェイム&リード (Cheim & Read) ギャラリーは、ようやく専門批評家の評価(critical acclaim)を得ることに成功しました。
そこに、突然、デイヴィッド・ツヴィルナー(David Zwirner) ギャラリーが、割り込み、ジョアン・ミッチェル (= ジョアン・ミッチェル・ファンデーション)を引き抜いてしまったわけです。
ポーラ・クーパー氏の発言では、
“I thought it was so insulting to Cheim & Read, who’d done such a great job for Joan Mitchell. This art world has become so uncivilized. I was more offended and more upset about this than any gallery stealing an artist from me.”
「盗む」という意味の(stealing) を使い、ツヴィルナーがチェイム&リードから「ジョアン・ミッチェル」を盗んだ、と公言しています。
よく見れば、日本アート・ビジネスの中でも、小山登美夫ギャラリーが、村上隆と奈良美智を「失った」ことも、アート・イン・モーションと言えるでしょう。
結局、ニューヨーク・チェルシーのチェイム&リード・ギャラリーは、本年末に閉店となり、「アーティスティック・プラクティス」や「private dealing」への皮肉的新言葉を用いて、これからは新住所で「private practice」を行うとプレスリリース。
Cheim and Read, Storied New York Gallery, Will Close Its Chelsea Space After 21 Years and Transition to ‘Private Practice’
https://news.artnet.com/market/cheim-read-quits-chelsea-private-upper-east-side-space-21-years-1311122
典型的なゴシップはさておき、私がフランスとスイスで観たジョアン・ミッチェルの作品を少しですが紹介させていただきます。 また、ニューヨーク・タイムズ記事の引用は、現代アートの「今」の参考となるでしょう。
Is the Art World Too Big for Its Own Good?
Four gallery owners — Paula Cooper, Elyse Derosia, Bridget Donahue and Sean Kelly — discuss art fairs, auctions and staying in business.
By M.H. Miller, New York Times, June 12, 2018
…
Sean Kelly: I think the question is a much bigger one. I’m really concerned with the larger ecology of the art world, on a macroeconomic scale. If we don’t get that fixed, then we won’t have enough galleries to sustain fairs. Where I want to start that conversation is with the collectors. The collectors are not coming to galleries anymore. And I feel very strongly that if we don’t sustain galleries, with collectors — and that means getting the collectors to go to the galleries to look at art, and by that I mean the smaller galleries and the midsize galleries because it’s a bottom-up system — it’s like watching the Great Barrier Reef die. And I think the fairs are symptomatic of that, but they’re not the only problem.
Paula Cooper: Auctions. Auctions are a killer. But art is now absolutely a consumer product, and that’s the huge difference. It’s a whole different world. Where do people fit in who are interested in art and helping young artists and developing careers and lives? Why are the big galleries getting everything?
…
SK: And a lot of the market is being controlled in that way. It’s not collegial. We can sit around and talk about it, but I think we have to do something about it. We have power too. We have to demand changes. And we’re all guilty. We’re all part of this system, and we all have a responsibility to change it.
PC: But it’s so much more than art fairs. P.R. has become a huge controlling factor. I remember when people didn’t have P.R. firms. That would have been disgusting!
…
SK: I think the thing we haven’t talked about so far is responsibility on the artists. Artists have a responsibility to resist the industrial complex of the corporate galleries. Certainly I think nobody has suffered at the hands of that more than Paula has. Artists have a responsibility to be as loyal to their dealers as their dealers are to them.
…
SK: I agree, Paula, but my point is I think we’re all at risk. I am increasingly being spoken to by collectors who are turned off by being contacted by six or seven associates at some of the larger galleries who are trying to sell them the same thing over two days. An overpriced piece of inventory because they have quotas to make. And there is a difference between a conversation they could have with Paula and a conversation they could have with a sales associate at one of the larger galleries.
PC: Can I tell you something that really annoyed me? I got so furious. Joan Mitchell was recently stolen away from Cheim & Read by David Zwirner. And in The New York Times, it quoted the woman who is the head of the Joan Mitchell Foundation. Now number one, I know Joan Mitchell would have been very unhappy about this, but the woman very ungraciously said it’s about scholarship — implying that there would be more and better scholarship found at David Zwirner. Cheim & Read actually worked with the artist for so many years. And they’re going to get better scholarship from some gallery that’s going to look things up in a book? I thought it was so insulting to Cheim & Read, who’d done such a great job for Joan Mitchell. This art world has become so uncivilized. I was more offended and more upset about this than any gallery stealing an artist from me.
SK: It’s about venality. It’s about greed.
PC: It’s about a lack of civility. It’s about ruthlessness. It’s … ugh.
…
BD: I think 90 percent of art journalism is propaganda, feeding the market. Everybody convincing everyone else that everything is fine and that everyone is doing fine. It’s been so co-opted by the P.R. machine that the only things that get written about are the things that get sent out in an email blast in the way that a publicist wants it presented.
…
Link to the NYT article:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/12/t-magazine/gallery-owners-paula-cooper-sean-kelly.html
2018/9/12 up-date:
The Gray Market: What Mary Boone’s Tax Evasion Plea Reveals About All Galleries (and Other Insights)
Tim Schneider, September 10, 2018
quote:
On Wednesday, the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York announced that veteran Chelsea gallerist Mary Boone had pleaded guilty to two counts of tax evasion stemming from federal returns for 2011. Boone is scheduled for sentencing in January and faces up to three years in prison. My colleague Eileen Kinsella also notes that Boone “has agreed to pay restitution to the IRS of just over $3 million, which the US Attorney’s office said represents the additional taxes due for returns filed in 2009, 2010, and 2011.”
For a host of reasons, I’m not going to comment on Boone’s fate or how she reached this stage. What I want to address instead is a gallery sector rarity revealed in the court proceedings. According to the prosecutor’s office, Boone’s gallery claimed a small net loss of just over $52,000 while accounting skulduggery hid that the company “made a profit of approximately $3.7 million” in 2011.
This is noteworthy because we rarely ever learn how much actual profit a successful commercial gallery makes. Sure, we’ve all heard the Wall Street Journal’s estimate that Gagosian generates $1 billion in annual sales. But there is no indication of where that number was sourced, and annual sales revenue tells us nothing in the absence of the gallery’s annual expenses. The US Attorney’s office, on the other hand, confirmed what Boone’s gallery took home in 2011 when all the math was done.
For a sense of scale, what does a company that generates $3.7 million in annual business look like outside the art world? I did some googling, and it turns out that Boone’s 2011 net profit was modestly above a good year for Maryland construction company Therrien Waddell, which generates up to $3 million in annual profits “grinding out friendly storefronts, those anonymous data centers, and even swimming pools.” So apparently, moving high-value artwork through two sleek Chelsea spaces propels a gallery to about the same financial scale as blessing the east coast with server farms and Panera Bread franchises.
If you’re wondering why this amounts to anything more than a fun cocktail-party factoid, ask yourself this: How many galleries around the globe sell as well or better than Mary Boone? Certainly under 100. Probably under 50, I’d guess.
Which means netting $3.7 million after nearly 40 years at the top of the business (Boone opened in 1977) in a year when the art market had rounded into a post-recession recovery borders on a best-case scenario for art dealing. And given the dozens of small- and modestly sized galleries that have shut down in the past few years, it’s safe to say that the average dealer is a lot closer to netting nothing than being Boone.
I’d guess everyone outside of the IRS will still be groping their way around in the dark about gallery finances in another 40 years. After all, as Marc Spiegler told me last week, Art Basel didn’t even feel it could get profit/loss numbers from its exhibitors for the sake of crafting fairer booth fees. But whether we’re talking about art-fair expenses, artist-representation terms, or gallery-staff benefits, Boone’s 2011 profit should remind us that the vast majority of gallerists are closer to buying themselves lunch from their local Panera than sniffing the same scale as the firm that built the franchise.
https://news.artnet.com/opinion/mary-boone-tax-evasion-gray-market-1345439
up-date 2018/10/5:
Joan Mitchell Is Having More Than a Moment. Here’s How the Artist’s Foundation Has Championed Her Market and Legacy
The artist’s market has skyrocketed, but the Joan Mitchell Foundation’s work to secure her legacy is constant.
Sarah Cascone, October 4, 2018
Quote:
“In May, the estate announced plans to cease working with longtime representative Cheim & Read, signing with David Zwirner. How did that decision factor into the foundation’s plans?
I actually don’t want to talk further about it. There’s been so much speculation about it. Cheim & Read was wonderful and great to work with, and we have deep appreciation for them. I think the show they have up right now [“Joan Mitchell: Paintings from the Middle of the Last Century, 1953–1962,” through November 3] is phenomenal. I am excited about what Zwirner is doing, but I don’t want to comment about the process of this.
And when will Zwirner have its first Mitchell show?
In April or May in 2019. I will leave it to them to announce that. We’re working on it right now!”
see:
https://news.artnet.com/art-world/joan-mitchell-foundation-interview-1328939
photo courtesy:
Abstract Expressionist Joan Mitchell Was Complicated, Driven—and a Genius
Alina Cohen, Jul 6, 2018 Artsy.net
…
“In 2020, the Baltimore Museum of Art is mounting a major retrospective of the artist, which will travel to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and New York’s Guggenheim Museum. The show promises to increase scholarship and broaden Mitchell’s audience.”
https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-abstract-expressionist-joan-mitchell-complicated-driven-genius
この機会で、ポンピドゥー・センター・メッスを紹介させていただきます:
2018年 第30回 高松宮殿下記念世界文化賞 受賞者
絵画部門にベルギー出身の画家、ピエール・アレシンスキー氏(90)
http://www.praemiumimperiale.org/ja/laureate/laureates/alechinsky
【Official Video】2018 Praemium Imperiale Laureates announced