The art world runs on information asymmetry and it suits almost everyone except the artist. I write about what a commission split covers, why your work is priced wrong in both directions, how a gallery decides who to show, and what a collector is actually buying. I sold other people's work for twenty-six years and took half, so I can tell you exactly what that half was for and when it was not earned.
People love to talk about art auctions as if they are these grand, high-stakes dramas where the elite gather to battle for cultural supremacy. They’ll hand you a glossy brochure and call it a “complete guide to art auctions,” but they rarely mention the mathematical carnage happening behind the scenes. I remember sitting in a […]
I remember sitting in my back office in 2008, nursing a lukewarm Earl Grey and staring at a contract a young painter had brought me, looking like he was handing over his firstborn child. He thought a representation agreement was a sacred, mystical bond—a sort of spiritual marriage between creator and curator. He didn’t realize […]
I remember sitting in my gallery back in 2008, watching a perfectly lovely man—someone who had worked thirty years in insurance—stare at a small, textured oil on linen, 30x30cm, 2005, and proceed to buy it with a frantic, sweating desperation that had nothing to do with the art and everything to do with a lack […]
I remember standing in my gallery back in ’98, staring at a landscape that had cost a local collector three months’ salary, only to realize the artist had completely botched the light. They’d used every expensive pigment in the tube, but because they didn’t understand the actual physics of how colour works in painting, the […]
I once stood in a client’s sunroom, staring at a landscape that cost four thousand pounds, only to realize the surface was spider-webbing into a thousand tiny, hideous cracks. The artist had been so caught up in the “soul” of the piece that they’d completely ignored the physics of the medium. People love to treat […]
I remember sitting in the back of a crowded, overheated exhibition in London, watching a seasoned collector stare at a large-scale landscape for nearly ten minutes. He wasn’t lost in the “sublime beauty” or the “emotional resonance” of the brushwork; he was simply confused. His gaze kept snagging on a muddy corner of the canvas, […]
Most people think a “complete guide to starting a collection” involves attending black-tie openings, sipping lukewarm champagne, and developing a sudden, inexplicable interest in the provenance of a post-war minimalist sculpture. They think it’s about status. It isn’t. In my twenty-six years of running a gallery, I’ve seen more collectors go broke chasing “investment grade” […]
I remember sitting in my back office in 2004, staring at a ledger and feeling a profound sense of guilt as I calculated the cut I was taking from a young painter’s first major sale. The industry loves to shroud the math in a certain kind of prestige, acting as if the numbers are some […]
Most people think that learning how to develop taste requires a private jet to Basel or a postgraduate degree in semiotics, but that is a lie sold to you by people who want your commission. They want you to believe that discernment is a high-altitude, intellectual performance, something reserved for the velvet-roped elite who spend […]
I remember sitting in the back of a dusty studio in 1994, watching a young painter spend three hundred pounds on “professional grade” pigments only to have the entire surface crack and delaminate within six months because he hadn’t grasped the most basic mechanics of the medium. Most art schools will feed you a romanticized, […]