I remember standing in the middle of a drafty warehouse in 2008, surrounded by thirty uncratered canvases and a mounting pile of invoices that made my stomach do slow, sickening flips. Everyone tells you that preparing a large scale art exhibition is about the grandeur of the vision or the emotional weight of the work, […]
People will tell you that the art of hunting for classic comic books is about finding that one “holy grail” issue in a dusty basement, as if it’s some grand, romantic scavenger hunt. They want you to believe it’s about luck or a divine connection to the medium. It isn’t. In my twenty-six years of […]
I remember sitting in the back office of my gallery in 1994, staring at a stunning 19th-century daguerreotype that had been handed to me by a client who thought a velvet-lined wooden box was a substitute for actual climate control. The silver was flaking, the image was ghosting, and the sheer negligence of it made […]
I remember standing in the backroom of my gallery in 2004, looking at a series of stunning, high-priced oils, only to realize the artist had let their pigments turn into a crusty, unusable mess because they treated their supplies like an afterthought. There is this pervasive, romanticized myth that “true artists” live in a state […]
Stop treating color theory like it’s some sacred, mystical ritual that only happens in a high-end studio with expensive pigment sets. I spent twenty-six years watching artists approach their palettes with a sort of reverent hesitation, as if picking the wrong shade of ochre would somehow offend the gods of fine art. It’s nonsense. In […]
I once sat in a meeting with a painter who had just spent six months’ worth of grant money on a custom-built, climate-controlled storage unit and a set of Italian brushes that cost more than my first car, yet he couldn’t afford to pay his studio rent. He thought he was investing in his craft, […]
I remember standing in the corner of a crowded opening in Chelsea, clutching a lukewarm glass of Prosecco while watching a young painter try to “network” his way through a room of collectors. He was using every rehearsed, hollow pleasantry in the book, looking less like a creator and more like a man reading a […]
Stop performing for the security guards. There is this pervasive, exhausting myth that if you walk into a museum solo, you are somehow required to adopt a look of profound, intellectual suffering—as if you’re one wrong glance away from being exposed as a fraud. Most people treat a solo trip like a high-stakes exam they […]
I spent twenty-six years watching people treat art like a commodity and even more time watching collectors treat their music like mere clutter. There is a particular brand of nonsense floating around the internet lately—expensive, aesthetic-focused nonsense—suggesting that you need custom-built mahogany shelving and a professional archivist to manage your library. Let’s be clear: if […]
I remember sitting in the back of my gallery in the late nineties, watching a young landscape painter try to work with a twenty-piece “professional starter set” he’d bought online for a steal. He was struggling to control the pigment, looking more frustrated than inspired, because he was trying to use a tiny, expensive detailer […]