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.
Not to say people shouldn't get rich from art. I adore the alchemy wherein artists who cast a complex spell make rich people give them their money. (Just writing it makes me cackle.) But too many artists have been making money without magic.
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.
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.
Robert Rauschenberg was not a giant of American art he was the giant. No American created so many aesthetic openings for so many artists.
Rumors sound of galleries asking artists for upsized art and more of it. I've heard of photographers asked to print larger to increase the wall power and salability of their work. Everything winds up set to maximum in order to feed the beast.
I realised the bohemian life was not for me. I would look around at my friends living like starving artists and wonder 'Where's the art?' They weren't doing anything. And there was so much interesting stuff to do so much fun to be had... maybe I could even quit renting.
Great artists are people who find the way to be themselves in their art. Any sort of pretension induces mediocrity in art and life alike.
One of the interesting things here is that the people who should be shaping the future are politicians. But the political framework itself is so dead and closed that people look to other sources like artists because art and music allow people a certain freedom.
I was the least Pop of all the Pop artists.