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.
If you listen to most art historians, they’ll try to sell you a version of the Renaissance that is all divine inspiration and celestial light, as if Donatello just woke up one morning with the secrets of the universe etched into his brain. It’s a lovely fairy tale, but it’s absolute rubbish. To truly understand […]
I spent twenty-six years in a gallery where the air smelled of expensive floor wax and quiet desperation, watching people freeze up in front of a canvas because they didn’t know how to bridge the gap between themselves and a stranger. Most “experts” will tell you that you need a curated list of icebreakers or […]
Stop letting the sheer, performative pretension of a museum lobby make you feel like you need a chaperone just to look at a canvas. I spent twenty-six years watching people hover in groups, nodding in synchronized, empty agreement because they were too terrified to admit they didn’t “get” a piece without a companion to validate […]
I remember a collector coming into my gallery ten years ago, clutching a glossy catalog like it was a holy relic, convinced he’d found the next big thing because a certain critic had used the word “sublime” in a review. He was ready to drop five figures on a piece that, frankly, had all the […]
I remember sitting in my small gallery back in 2004, staring at a stack of applications from artists who clearly thought they were writing for a PhD committee rather than a human being. They would hand me these dense, impenetrable walls of text, filled with words like “juxtaposition” and “liminality,” used as if they were […]
I remember sitting in a dimly lit corner of a London auction house twenty years ago, listening to a man in a bespoke suit explain the “sophisticated complexities” of liquidity management. He spoke about how loans between institutions work as if he were describing the inner workings of a star, using enough jargon to make […]
I remember sitting in my back office in 2008, nursing a lukewarm Earl Grey and staring at a smudge of cobalt blue on a signed agreement that had no mention of shipping insurance or payment timelines. A lovely, talented painter—the kind of person who thinks a legal document is an insult to the creative spirit—had […]
I remember sitting in my gallery back in 2004, staring at a stack of twenty-two wildly different oil on canvas works, all roughly 40x40cm, 2004, from a painter who had just “found their voice.” They were all technically brilliant, but they were a mess—a scattergun approach that left me with nothing to pitch to my […]
I remember the distinct, sickening sound of a heavy oak frame hitting a concrete floor in my gallery back in ’98—a sound that felt less like breaking wood and more like a financial heart attack. I spent the next three hours on the phone with an agent who spoke in nothing but impenetrable legalese, trying […]
Most artists approach the search for a residency like they’re looking for a holy grail, convinced that a few months in a drafty studio in Tuscany is the only thing standing between them and a career at the Tate. They spend thousands on application fees and travel, chasing a prestige that often doesn’t exist, only […]