Editor’s Observe: This story initially appeared in On Steadiness, the ARTnews publication in regards to the artwork market and past. Join right here to obtain it each Wednesday.
In June, New York Instances artwork critic Roberta Smith took a stroll down reminiscence lane on the Impartial artwork honest’s podcast Beforehand Unknown. She described her early days exploring the Seventies artwork world, a spot so small it might be unrecognizable in the present day.
“I might see every thing I wished to in a day,” she mentioned.
As Smith famous, the artwork world has since grown exponentially. There are 362 reveals in New York at the moment listed on See Noticed, an app that acts as a information to galleries in a number of cities. Past New York, the mega-galleries have expanded into international company behemoths, with boards of administrators and areas from London to Tokyo. The worldwide artwork market has grown to $65 billion. Gone are the times when a mom-and-pop vendor coaxed a number of eccentric artists into MoMA and artwork historic stardom.
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Because the artwork world has grown right into a bona fide trade, PR companies, consultants, and advisers have turn into fixtures of the enterprise. Right here comes yet another: the artist’s agent. And the company everybody has been speaking about recently is 291 Company.
For Max Teicher, a former Gagosian staffer who based 291 somewhat over three years in the past, the arrival of the company mannequin is a consequence of the artwork world’s improvement, which has include some rising pains.
“Folks ask if companies like 291 exist as a result of galleries aren’t doing their jobs,” Teicher instructed me at a Tribeca espresso store, not removed from the company’s places of work. “No. The very last thing I’m is an artwork vendor. It’s that galleries did their job too nicely. Curators, writers, artwork handlers—they’ve all performed their jobs so nicely that the artwork world has graduated to a bigger a part of the cultural zeitgeist. And when that occurs, it’s essential for brokers to exist. Our enterprise is a byproduct of the artwork world’s success.”
Teicher runs 291 with fellow Gagosian veterans Andrea Crane and Valentina Castellani (each of whom even have public sale home credentials), Russia Murphy, Jessy Arisen, and a group of consultants, venture managers, former gallery administrators, and content material producers. The company’s title is a nod to the well-known gallery run by photographer Alfred Stieglitz within the early twentieth century. The aim of 291, Teicher mentioned, is to behave as a holistic extension of the studio mannequin with an total mission to develop an artist’s apply and affect. In fact, affect can are available in many kinds: important, institutional, monetary, public, generational.
“It’s greater than asking an artist what they need,” Teicher mentioned. “What we actually deal with is asking ‘What do you wish to be?’ after which planning the best way to get there. It’s each short- and long-term progress.”
The company takes inspiration from not solely the Hollywood heavyweights like Inventive Artists Company, which was based by 5 energy brokers who fled William Morris, together with High 200 collector Michael Ovitz, but additionally expertise and literary brokers Worldwide Inventive Administration Companions. “The artwork world till just lately existed just like the studio mannequin 100 years in the past in Hollywood or the publishing trade when the home represented the expertise,” Teicher mentioned.
His company is discreet. The stylish, monochromatic web site for 291 has no shopper checklist and no pricing—not not like CAA’s web site—and when requested to reveal any of that on the report, Teicher demurred.
“We are supposed to be within the background,” he mentioned. “I don’t speak about particular tasks we work on with artists as a result of I might by no means counsel for a second {that a} particular venture or state of affairs occurred solely due to their agent, and I don’t wish to promote one artist’s venture as a approach to encourage different artists to work with us. Comparisons like which might be simply inappropriate.”
Three artwork world professionals with information of 291’s operations, talking on situation of anonymity, instructed ARTnews that the company takes a ten p.c fee on every thing an artist earns—from a college speak to a museum acquisition—and that it really works with round 15 artists, together with Laurie Simmons, Hank Willis Thomas, and Eddie Martinez.
One artist who has labored with 291 and requested to stay nameless instructed ARTnews that their relationship with the company was project-specific. “It’s actually about complementing the efforts of my major gallery,” the artist mentioned. “I’ve at all times believed it’s extra productive, and infrequently simpler, to have a number of contacts and good relationships. It opens up prospects. That mentioned, every thing I do has to assist my core goal: working within the studio.”
Bolstering an artist’s studio apply is a typical aim among the many new set of artwork world brokers. Earlier this yr, Valeria Szabó Facchin launched her personal London-based company, Studio Expanded, which can open an exhibition by the Frieze Artist Award winner Himali Singh Soin at Greatorex in London on Thursday. In contrast to Teicher, Facchin instructed ARTnews that she doesn’t draw back from being labeled an artwork vendor.
“I don’t consider my enterprise as a conventional agent, however somewhat as an incubator within the [Leo] Castelli mannequin,” Facchin mentioned. “I’m greater than an agent or a supervisor. It’s about taking the time to know an artist and create a method round them, defending them, and constructing a partnership the place they will succeed, the place their gallery can succeed, and naturally the collectors and establishments [can succeed].”
Earlier than Studio Expanded, Facchin labored because the founding director for the Nicoletta Fiorucci Basis, which she mentioned afforded her the chance to purchase major market works instantly from an artist’s studio. Over time, Facchin mentioned, artists started asking her to signify them, assist them navigate the labyrinthine construction of museums, and even open a gallery.
“What I’d seen is that artists who’ve turn into institutionally robust are becoming concerned about how a lot the market dictated the artwork world. They fear about getting too near the industrial area, about over- or under-producing, and about shedding the assist of extra artwork historical past–minded curators and collectors,” she defined.
Facchin mentioned that she works with artists on a retainer after which takes a fee on prime for particular tasks, with the understanding that the precise association can change relying on the place an artist is at of their profession. She described her function as being extra akin to what a vendor was like within the Seventies, the place smaller operations allowed gallerists to be extra nurturing to particular person artists.
“As we speak, due to the scale of the market and the quantity of competitors, I feel many galleries are put able the place they will’t make investments a lot time in an artist’s long-term profession,” she mentioned.
Speak to some artwork sellers and also you’ll discover that they don’t disagree with Facchin’s evaluation. In spite of everything, galleries as of late should handle a grueling year-round artwork honest calendar on prime of rising rents, an usually erratic secondary market, and a slate of round ten reveals a yr. The pressures and incentives sellers face in the present day implies that their staffs are closely weighted towards salespeople and short-term quotas.
“Sure issues have turn into luxurious actions for galleries in the present day,” Elizabeth Dee, the founding father of the Impartial artwork honest and a former vendor, instructed ARTnews. “Sadly, a kind of issues is working towards museum exhibitions and institutional gross sales. These tasks are lengthy lead—they take quite a lot of time, effort, and analysis. It’s a unique manner of working than the market permits proper now, particularly given the buildings of scale that a number of galleries have moved into.”
Some have resisted the artwork world’s current—and, seemingly, its future. A senior gross sales director at a serious New York gallery instructed ARTnews that they and lots of of their colleagues bought into the enterprise to work intently with artists, not experience round on a collector’s non-public jet.
“My drawback with this complete mannequin is that it assumes that galleries don’t wish to have a deep connection to their artists,” the vendor mentioned. “The concept that a gallery would somewhat cope with an middleman, it’s absurd. Coping with the artists is the most effective a part of my job. Being within the trenches with the artists, serving to them make choices, and constructing their careers, that’s essentially the most exhilarating a part of my life. If an artist thinks they want an agent, what they really want? A brand new gallery.”
Ovitz, who helped discovered CAA, had a extra measured take.
“There’s a risk that this new mannequin might work, however personally, I don’t consider anyone can signify an artist with out a house,” Ovitz mentioned. He added that the most effective sellers—like Barbara Gladstone, who died this previous June, and Tempo Gallery founder Arne Glimcher—“ate, lived, and breathed the artwork enterprise.”
Ovitz mentioned that an agent, particularly one in Los Angeles, is simply too faraway from the artwork world dialogue and the establishments to actually assist an artist’s profession. “I feel if anyone has a shot to vary the system, it may be a few of these new folks primarily based in New York.”