Art Market Monitor

Global Coverage ~ Unique Analysis

Mapping a Career in the Art World

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Michael Reid is a featured speaker in a Christie’s Education course being held in Sydney Australia at Reid’s gallery next week. The subject is Mapping a Career in the Art World. Reid is a longtime Sydney gallerist also has an outpost in Berlin. He’s a frequent commentator on the art market. Here are his own notes on what it takes to have a career in the art world (slightly edited to make them globally relevant.)

Practical skills are the keys to being at the top of the arts pack.

A good education, with a major in fine arts, is simply expected. Everyone in the arts is well educated. So what?

Learn and be willing to do what others are reluctant to do.

  • Be able to read a balance sheet and to prepare budgets.
  • Master accounting software.
  • Become a champ at MailChimp or any other newsletter service.
  • Learn to use graphic-design programs such as Photoshop, GIMP, Illustrator, etc.
  • Learn to use software programs to manage collections and hire help.
  • Become proficient in the various methods of art shipping, both domestic and international.
  • Become familiar with commercial printing for postcards, flyers andcatalogues. Know your GSM (grams per square metre) from a galley proof.
  • Undertake a short, postgraduate course in Project Management. That’s essentially what a gallery does: it manages art projects.

Remember: Tunnel vision won’t help your career in the art world, and it’s bad for business.

Consider alternative art-world career paths.

  • PR / marketing
  • Fundraising
  • Art shipping
  • Designer / framer / printer / art insurer
  • Interior designer or interior architect
  • Conservator
  • Archivist
  • Valuer
  • Librarian

Not everyone in the industry has to be a curator or an auction-house specialist, or work in an art gallery. The art world is a big business. Try to gain experience within the industry and across a wide range of possible aligned art careers. This may mean working in advertising and then the arts; in interior design and then the arts; in architecture and then the arts; in graphic design and then the arts. See the pattern? Do something skillful and practical, and then take the knowledge you gain from it to the arts.

Remember: You can achieve victory by circling your intended prize. Do as Chairman Mao Zedong did in seizing control of China: take the countryside first, and then the encircled cities will fall.

Choose carefully who you work with
Be as selective about who you work with, as you are about the job you want to do. Create or seize opportunities to work with someone you can learn from.Continue Reading

Will Globe-Girdling Galleries Invade Australia?

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Nathan Taylor, Study for a Big Red Drink

Michael Reid owns art galleries in Australia and Germany. This piece is being published in the Australian Financial Review:

They are coming…….Australian collectors and gallerists be aware.  Within three years a major European and/or North American art gallery will open in Sydney. This inevitable international art market migration down under will fundamentally change the Australian art world.

This is not a hypothetical, sitting at my desk, typing away scenario. In recent times a clutch of significant international brands have opened stores in Australia, or are talking to Australian retailers in Australia, or looking at Australian real estate. Scotch & Soda, Marks & Spencer, Hamleys toy shop, H & M, Uniqlo, River Island, Banana Republic and Old Navy. Flushed with success from its Australian launch, Spanish fashion powerhouse Zara is already looking to sell homewares in its flagship stores, as well as investigating entirely stand alone retail sites.

Though our population may be modest, our economy ranks on some scales as high as 12th in the world. As a nation we have traditionally been enthusiastic early adaptors of change – witness the speed of our uptake of technology. When they come, we love them big time.

This global rampage down under will spread across all markets.  The Australian art market is no more immune to this global brand influx than Coles and Woolworths have been immune to the coming of Aldi or Costco. The Australian art market is not a special economic exclusion zone.

For an overseas art gallery there are no significant barriers to entry into the Australian art market. You can easily buy or rent retail space in Sydney. Australian import tax (10% GST) is reasonable – try 19% VAT import tax on the entry of art into Germany. This tax differentiation would mean that an overseas art gallery would be able to deduct, say, German VAT from the value of an artwork exported from Germany and add only 10% to the value on import of that artwork to Australia. The cost of artwork would at this point be 9% cheaper in Australia. Shipping costs would probably mean that the cost of art from a German artist would be the same in Australia as Germany – but hey that’s not too shabby when you consider the artwork has been transported half way around the globe.

The Australian dollar is historically strong, yet it is still significantly less than Sterling, the Euro and the US dollar, so the start up costs right now for an overseas art gallery coming to Australia are less than the start up costs would be for an Australian gallery opening up overseas. I thank my lucky stars that I established my art gallery in Berlin when the Australian dollar was more valuable than the US dollar and much better against the Euro. These things make a huge difference.

The Australian dollar is neither too cold nor too hot. It’s weak enough to make the start up and initial running costs for an Australian art gallery an attractive prospect to an overseas art gallery.  But the Australian dollar is also spookily on a long term high which makes the repatriation of profits back overseas not unattractive either.

Aside from the general world trend for major brands to move down under, the European and North American big brand art galleries have been increasingly exposed over the last few years to Australian art collectors through the art fair Art Basel Hong Kong (another European mega brand).

The bigger international galleries have seen a steady trickle of Australian collectors heading to Honkers for fun and spending. On the back of this annual overseas art galleries eye opener, sales representatives from White Cube and Sadie Coles –  both major London art galleries from – were in Sydney just last month talking to collectors and possible Australian art market collaborators about future “projects”. They’ve been here; they’re scoping.  And the international auction houses have specialists in Australia every other week.

And let me put the scale of these overseas art galleries into context. Deep breath. David Zwirner galleries in New York and London employ around sixty people and have a combined annual turnover that I would say is closer to a billion than half a billion Australian dollars. Larry Gagosian, who has twelve galleries internationally, (including – go figure – one in Greece) is personally believed to sell over $450 million Australian dollars worth of art each year, all by his little old self. He is the God of sales. Larry personally would easily outsell the entire turnover of the Australian art market. When the bigger European and/or North American art galleries come to Australia they will have public relations teams, production budgets and a reach only surpassed by the juggernauts of Christie’s  (US 5.9bn turnover 2013) & Sotheby’s (US 5.1bn turnover 2013).

And we will love them. The big art brands will directly appeal to those internationally travelled and focused, aspirational Australian collectors that will revel in being “the first on their block” to be duchessed by the foreigners (if they have not been already). In a heart beat they will transfer their spending away from the Australian galleries with which they are now all too familiar, into the arms of the more glamorous, bigger named art brands. They will be wooed with the resources and panache that only the mega galleries can afford. A former colleague who went back to London to work with one of the well known contemporary art galleries told me about a champagne reception (and it was the good stuff) for 1,000 collectors (yes a 1,000) followed by the top 220 collectors being whisked off by limousine to the Ivy restaurant. The logistics were astonishing and there was no change from $50,000 for the meal. The exhibition sold out and the gallery made their profit on after exhibition commission sales.

And all this will change the Australian art market.  As the buying habits of the domestic, aspirational, big white cube collecting crowd shift to overseas art galleries based in Australia, they will spend less in the Australian big white cube galleries and on the Australian artists that those galleries represent. The big threat here is to the very top end of the Australian art market. Put it another way, you were buying Brett Whiteley works on paper from an Australian art gallery and now all of a sudden a well known international art gallery offers up Damien Hirst works on paper. They are roughly the same price. You can resell your Whiteley in a dozen cities across Australia. Or you can resell your Hirst in a dozen cities in each of three dozen countries around the entire world. Snap.

The antidote to the overseas influx of art galleries and artists, and the top end art hit that the Australian art market will take? We need to get the best of Australian art out into the world market, so that the artists and the brands of the art galleries that represent them are as robust as they will need to be to compete on a global market. Just saying.

Michael Reid

art dealer

michaelreid.com.au

We’re All Photographers Now—So Collect It

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Max Dupain, The sunbaker, 1937

It is my belief that collectors should seriously consider focusing their acquisition – not entirely but with some significant prejudice – towards purchasing the very best of Australian and world photography. And soonish.

Why?

The world of technology and imagery has changed almost every aspect of our lives. Every child born in the world today is a potential photographer. Irrespective of geography or wealth, it is projected that within five years all will have access to a communication device that takes photographs and films. And when I say “all of us” I mean the nearly 7.4 billion projected “all of us” – from the first of the First World, to the new telecommunications boom market of sub-Saharan Africa.

That’s is the killer idea. We are now all photographers- almost every single person on the planet.

With billions of people, hourly taking images- there will be more photographs made in the next five years, than say in the last one hundred years. Digital photography’s chief selling points- the abilities to see the finished product instantly and to take countless pictures without incurring any additional charge- have turned out to be mixed blessings. With effort and cost excised from the equation, photos have become plentiful. And at the same time- as more and more pictures are taken on smartphones, “shared” on social media to all, then lost to the cacophony of the digital universe- meaningful images have become too scarce. However, those photographs that are very good, that are meaningful- those rare few amidst the hundreds and hundreds of thousands- will be greatly valued. Enormously valued for being what they are, much better than the mediocre rest.

We are all photographers. The more that is bad photography, makes those photographs that are important – sparkle.

Simple idea. Powerful idea. Because there will be a sea of photographs, those that float to the top will be truly appreciated for being the best. Collectors will, as they always done, pay a very significant premium for the best. And as all of us will be photographers, all of us will have an interest and basic knowledge of what is and what is not good. The Globe participating in photography. The Globe interested in photography. The Globe naturally inclined to collect photography- even more so than paintings, as the Globe does not paint it happy snaps away.

With all this in mind, collecting the best of Australian & international photography needs to be taken far more seriously. We need to isolate the key Australian images from the best photographers and acquire them- from $5,000 to $50,000 plus, plus per image. We need to do this before a slumbering market really wakes up.

With this notion of collecting the best of the best in mind, it is extremely important that you have an understanding of the term, key-image ….and to work hard at staying highly focused on acquiring key-images. A photographer’s key image is that work, which is widely, & dare I say popularly acknowledge to provide the viewer with a deeper understanding of the photographers entire body of work. The one or two images (at best), that unlocks our understanding of the artist; their technique and the very times in which the photograph was taken. In film, the it moment that defines the film and indeed makes people pay for the pleasure of viewing it is referred to (from the slang of the porn industry) as the money-shot. In photography it is the artists key-image.

To use a classic mid-century Australian example of what a key image is, one needs to go no further than Max Dupain’s 1937 Sunbaker silver gelatine photograph, (one of the early printed editions from the 1970s). This work is so visually all pervasive and powerful that I do not need to illustrate it here. Dupain’s beachers are Australia. He was highly influential in redefining how we Australians see ourselves. With the help of Dupain (and others), we moved our national identity during the mid-twentieth century from the wind-dried Drysdalian stockman of the wide brown land, to a people of the coastal fringe at play.

In contemporary photography, which should be the focus of now collecting, the key image is often just as obvious and dramatic. Find them and ruthlessly hunt them down. I do. Sure, my proposition to collect contemporary photography now has deep roots in big picture macro socio-economic trends. But, on a micro-level, I have been putting my actions where my thoughts have been for quite sometime.  And why wouldn’t I, after all I am not an academic observer, nor a mere at distance commentator on the art market (done all that & was over it). I am an art dealer and that entire term is in reality one very big verb, or doing phrase. I think, I do. Over the last few years I have been reorientation the galleries artists with an emphasis towards photography- Deborah Paauwee, Marian Drew, Joseph McGlennon, Catherine Nelson, Christian Thompson (whom I represent in Europe).

I am not dealing exclusively in photography by any means because there are, of course, other significant Australian contemporary art trends occurring simultaneously. One that springs to mind is Aboriginal art from the cities. In regard to that trend – another discussion entirely – I am working with Julie Dowling, Chris Pease, Danie Mellor, Christian Thompson and others. Works by Julie and Danie are already touring internationally in the Artbank curated exhibition, Message Stick: Indigenous Identity in Urban Australia that will reach Vietnam in May 2013. Following this little outing the works will be touring through NSW, QLD and VIC in 2014-2015 as a partnership project with Museums and Galleries New South Wales.  You see, I have been covering my collecting art bases and am strong in both fields.

I am ahead of the collecting curve and I am suggesting that you should be too.  Unsurprisingly, the first two exhibitions in my new space in Berlin for 2013 are both photographers. Catherine Nelson will exhibit simultaneously in Sydney and Berlin in April; Joseph McGlennon will follow suit in June.

Please consider & then do.

Michael Reid
Art dealer

Michaelreid.com.au

 

Australian Ramping: How Prevalent?

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One of the distinct features of the art market, one that separates it from other market-based businesses, is the attitude that those deeply invested in the industry have toward their own industry. As this comment from Australia’s Michael Reid shows, no one could be more jaundiced in their views of the way the art market works than an art dealer.

Many, many years ago now, I had the dubious distinction of bringing the term “ramping” into the Australian arts industry lexicon. It was a word that I pulled somewhat out of the hat, live on radio, to encapsulate the then-growing phenomenon that saw entrepreneurial art galleries manipulating a painting’s value via the art auction market.

Times they have not a-changed. Ramping the value of contemporary artists’ work through the auction system – that is, the practise of a gallery consigning and then publicly buying back an artist’s painting for a new auction benchmark – still takes place. Let me tell you just one way this is done.Continue Reading

Australian Art's Top 50 Influentials

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The twin notions of “importance” and “influence” are similar yet distinct.   To be important, to be of note and significance in your chosen professional field, indicates that you are a person of consequence and that your opinions and actions are to be considered. In the art world being important might mean that you sell a lot of art or give a lot of money to art institutions. You might own many paintings or manage a big art concern. There are many, many important people in the Australian art world.

However, to be influential is one step up.  To be influential is to take your personal standing and direct it towards shaping the arts landscape. Influential people are important but, more significantly, they exercise power to make change. Influence can result from an individual’s own efforts or can come as a consequence of their job.  But it is a fickle friend. More often than not when the job’s over, so too is a person’s influence and sometimes even their professional importance – an all too real crisis for many in the art world.

The 50 Most Influential People in the Australian Visual Arts in 2011 is based on the here and now. There have been substantial changes since it was originally published in 2009.  Many once highly influential and active people (such as the Sydney artist Margaret Olley who cast a long shadow over much of the Australian art world for many decades) are no longer really part of today’s art scene to the degree that they once were. However, given the mercurial nature of power, those not on the list this year may well be on the list next year and vice versa. Continue Reading

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