Galleries
Gallery owners do their sums. They have a notion
of how an artist might sell, and what types of work
will do best, but the acid test is always the exhibition,
and what can be achieved in private deals afterwards.
They go cautiously. Prospects look distinctly brighter
with a CV that lists an education at recognized
art colleges followed by significant exhibitions
and commissions — not only because it backs
their own judgment, but because this information
is what prospective purchasers will look for in
the catalogue. You may walk into a major gallery
without an appointment, clutching some homemade
slides of your work, and a battered folder of drawings,
but it is most unlikely you'll get beyond the charming
girl at the desk. Nor should you. Galleries are
professional institutions, and expect a courteous
letter of inquiry with a brief record of accomplishment.
Unless well known already, your first appearance
in a gallery may well be limited to a few paintings
at a mixed exhibition. If they don't sell, you may
be given a second chance, but probably not a third.
Even then, it's going to be long pull for the gallery
to turn you into a star performer, and that heavy
investment may be protected by an exclusivity clause.
You have to sell through them. Even when the buyer
comes through some other source, a recommendation
from a friend of a friend, the gallery will expect
its commission. You'd be advised to keep accurate
accounts. Representation by a good gallery is not
easily achieved, but can be lost overnight by a
little stupidity that breaks the bond of trust.
Galleries do more than sell your paintings. They
help you produce the sort of work that does sell
and will develop your talents further. Your success
is their success, and that vested interest comes
with an objectivity and knowledge that can only
be acquired by being in the art market. Your work
has to be presented as a desirable commodity, and
one whose value will only appreciate in time. Hence
their preference for younger artists, and their
selection of a limited range in your output. Image
is vital, and they will be writing the catalogue
with an eye to the copy appearing in newspapers
and art magazines.
If that sounds less than honest, you're still looking
at things from the artist's perspective. Exhibitions
are not the profession's stamp of approval, a sign
that you have arrived, but only part of a recognized
selling process. And the other work, which you think
is good, but the gallery won't touch? Go carefully.
The gallery may allow allow you to market the work
through some other source, perhaps the Internet,
or another gallery, but they will want first refusal,
and be very unhappy with anything that damages the
image that they have so carefully constructed. Talk
matters through. You may be able to develop a new
line of work altogether, with the promise of a one
man show later, when the ideas have come to fruition
and there is a decent body of work to chose from.
Local Shows
Representation at a London or New York gallery
is the dream of many artists, but one rarely achieved,
and perhaps never in one step. Most artists start
by exhibiting locally, with colleagues in the local
painting club or at the art college's annual show.
And those exhibitions are not simply one step on
the long journey to recognition, something for the
eventual CV, but serve two vital purposes. In the
first place they get your pieces hung with other
work, which is essential if you're to see them objectively
and learn from the experience. And in the second
place, they extend your contacts with fellow artists.
Networking is essential, and it is through being
part of a community that opportunities arise. A
show needs a few more exhibits? Your colleagues
will let you know. The local newspaper wants a piece
on local painters? Your friends will put your name
forward. Once established, you may find yourself
too busy for these concerns, but the beginning artist
would be well advised to participate, even if privately
critical of standards. Views change, and many good
artists look back on early shows, when they were
so convinced of their superior talents, to realize
that it was only in fact through the kindness of
more experienced colleagues that they were included
at all.
Internet
The Internet has greatly extended the artist's
ability to put his work before the public, and to
do so more cheaply. The search engines will show
the immense range of work that is now offered, some
rather amateurish but other work that has flair
and conviction. The leading 'bricks and mortar'
galleries in particular show excellent work in a
very professional manner. Some pros and cons:
Selling through an Internet Gallery
By selling through an Internet gallery you are
still part of the gallery system, though one with
more flexible requirements. Web hosting space is
cheap, and commissions tend therefore to be lower.
Much depends on what the gallery will do. Some will
handle everything. You provide slides of your paintings,
which are then reformatted for inclusion on the
website. The gallery contacts you when a sale is
made, and you ship the actual painting to them.
Everything else — insurance, invoicing, handling
payment and shipping to the customer — is done
for you. At the other extreme lie galleries that
simply provide you web space, where your work will
appear with other paintings, and gain credence to
the extent that the gallery is well visited and
well presented. There is no easy answer, but it's
worth remembering to:
1. Do your homework, short-listing galleries that
represent work of your type and quality.
2. Check and compare the services, terms and commissions.
The Internet is a competitive place, and you generally
get what you pay for, so be wary of a gallery with
terms greatly out of line with others.
3. Ensure that the website looks professional,
and that its selling mechanism works seamlessly.
4. Email the gallery, and go elsewhere if you do
not receive a prompt and candid reply to these questions:
how long have they been in business?
how many unique visitors does the site receive
each month?
how many artists and paintings do they feature?
what is the professional standing of their 'best'
artists?
how many paintings do they sell, on average,
each month?
Selling through your Own Website
If you plan to avoid the gallery's commission by
selling direct to the public, these are the steps
you'll go through:
1. Build the site, which must look professional.
You can employ a web design company, or purchase
the software and create the site yourself. Though
there's hardly an excuse these days, given cheap
and simple-to-use programs, plus pre-designed templates,
the great majority of homegrown sites still don't
inspire much confidence.
2. Purchase your own domain
3. Find a web hosting company that provides a cheap
and reliable service with proper security, and the
web statistics for you to tweak the design in response
to customer behavior.
4. Market the site effectively, i.e.:
build the site about a distinctive theme
design individual pages to be friendly to the
search engines
provide valuable content that will keep visitors
returning
craft text around popular keywords that face
little competition from other sites
submit to the search engines/directories in an
approved manner
pay to be listed in Yahoo, Looksmart and the
pay-per-click search engines/directories
5. Add some ecommerce payment mechanism if you
are taking orders directly over the Internet. Otherwise
you'll need a wallet system like PayPal, possibly
with an escrow service.
A tall order? It is. You might do better to start
with an online gallery, and progress as results
indicate. Otherwise, consider online auctions.
Using Online Auctions
A third approach is through the online auction
sites, of the which the best, and the best known,
is probably eBay. You need to:
1. Register with the online auction company,
e.g. eBay.
2. Register with Paypal.
3. Register with Auctionwatch.
4. Photograph your work and upload the images
in optimally-sized jpeg form.
5. Enter the details of your work at eBay and
Auctionwatch. Include title, keywords, starting
bid and reserve price.
That's it! The reference below adds some advice.
The
first point to make is that art and commerce are
not easy bedfellows. Artists strain every emotional
sinew to ensure that each work is the very best
they can achieve, but commerce works quite differently.
It may very well be, as George Bernard Shaw remarked,
that the true artist will let his wife starve, his
children go barefoot, his mother drudge for his
living at seventy, sooner than work at anything
but his art, but galleries that adopted so egocentric
a view would be bankrupt in a year, if they ever
got started.
