So I have been forcing myself to go to galleries and look at art seeing as i am a professional art critic, but I had been giving my eyeballs a break for a while and, frankly, the shit out there is weak.
Now the economy is getting wigged out. I have been planning to open an art gallery for some time, but the conditions must be absolutely perfect. I have ran galleries downtown, and that is not going to cut it anymore. Everyone comes once, they buy a little something and they never come again. I could get my rent and construction subsidized by the City of LA (and you could too if you look around) if I opened a gallery in Chinatown, but – I go to these places on Saturdays not really to look at art but to look at people and it is underwhelming – the art world has never been bigger and yet the foot traffic seems to absolutely dry up.
So while I look at for-lease signs, I come back a week later and there are other for-lease signs. Some of the gallery neighborhoods here in SoCal saw some greedy people hold their buildings out for more money and now… well now there is nobody moving in or calling. I haven’t really been out of touch with things – I was filmed as the critical voice for two television documentaries about big name artists. Those debuting in a few months will give me a big boost – ego-wise I guess, they don’t exactly make a guy rich.
So if you mention that the economy is going bad, you get the same reaction from people in galleries: Oh yeah, bad for everyone but me. But I listen to them when they are on the phone, I look at the papers on the desks – things sound and look nasty out there. Collection agencies, galleries begging other people to share booths at art fairs … and yet there are sales, red dots, Bentleys at the front doors … someone pointed out that just as many people were invested in oil as real estate … I don’t know if that is true, but someone is still buying art.
And as of today someone was looking at it again.