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To me, nothing in the art world is neutral. The idea of ‘disinterest’ strikes me as boring, dishonest, dubious, and uninteresting.
The art world is an all-volunteer force. No one has to be here if he or she doesn’t want to be, and we should be associating with anyone we want to.
Wolfgang Tillman’s stunning large-scale pictures, being shown for the first time, were so offhand I failed to see them as art.
Galleries began growing in both number and size in the late seventies, when artists who worked in lofts wanted to exhibit their work in spaces similar to the ones the art was made in.
First let me report that the art in the Barnes Collection has never looked better. My trips to the old Barnes were always amazing, but except on the sunniest days, you could barely see the art. The building always felt pushed beyond its capacity.
There’s something pleasing about large, well-lit spaces. I love that dealers are willing to take massive chances in order to give this much room to their artists. Most of all, I love that more galleries showing more art gives more artists a shot.
The art world is molting – some would say melting. Galleries are closing museums are scaling back.
These days, newish art can be priced between $10,000 and $25,000. When I tell artists that a new painting by a newish artist should go for around $1,200, they look at me like I’m a flesh-eating virus.
Almost all institutions own a lot more art than they can ever show, much of it revealing for its timeliness, genius, or sheer weirdness.
In art, scandal is a false narrative, a smoke screen that camouflages rather than reveals. When we don’t know what we’re seeing, we overreact.