I remember sitting in my back office in 2004, staring at a beautiful, large-scale oil landscape that a regular collector had just returned. The artist was devastated, but the truth was much uglier: the paint was literally flaking off the surface because the foundation was rubbish. Everyone tells you that the magic happens in the […]
Oil on canvas, 60x80cm, 2014. I remember staring at it in my gallery’s storage room, realizing it was ruined because a junior assistant thought a standard homeowner’s policy was a “complete guide to insuring art.” It wasn’t. It was a death sentence for the artist’s bank account. Most people treat insurance like a tedious checkbox, […]
If you listen to the academics, they’ll try to convince you that how abstraction happened was some grand, inevitable teleological shift in human consciousness. They’ll serve it up with a side of heavy jargon about “shifting paradigms” and “the dissolution of the object,” making you feel like you need a PhD just to look at […]
I remember sitting in the back office of my gallery in 2004, staring at a landscape that looked, for all intents and purposes, like a genuine mid-century master, only to realize the “certificate of authenticity” was nothing more than a beautifully printed lie on high-grade linen paper. The industry loves to pretend that verifying a […]
I remember sitting on a rickety stool in a drafty warehouse in East London, clutching a lukewarm espresso and watching a young painter sweat through his shirt because he thought he had to perform a choreographed dance of “artistic mystery.” He was so busy trying to sound profound that he completely missed the fact that […]
I remember sitting in my gallery back in the late nineties, nursing a lukewarm espresso and staring at a folder a young painter had practically shoved under my nose. It was a chaotic, heartbreaking mess of half-finished studies, blurry photographs of canvases leaning against studio walls, and more “process” than any serious collector would ever […]
I remember sitting in a dusty backroom in 1998, staring at a landscape that looked suspiciously like a high-end forgery, while a dealer tried to sell me on the “aura” of the piece. He spoke in riddles about prestige and legacy, but he couldn’t produce a single scrap of paper to prove where the damn […]
I remember sitting in my small market town gallery back in ’98, watching a young painter practically weep because a collector had offered him half of what he’d listed his canvas for. He thought he was being insulted; I knew he was just being unprepared. Most people will try to sell you a “complete guide […]
If you listen to most art historians, they’ll try to sell you a tidy, academic fairy tale about how perspective developed as if it were a sudden, divine spark of genius that landed in Florence one Tuesday morning. They love to talk about Brunelleschi and the math of it all, wrapping the whole thing in […]
I remember sitting in the back of a dusty studio in 1994, watching a young painter attempt to justify a four-figure price tag on a series of works that looked suspiciously like failed watercolors. He was trying to lecture a collector on the “mystical layering properties” of his medium, but any seasoned eye could see […]