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Collect Call Despite the economic anguish, the appetite for virtuosic art is keen. At the Crafts Council’s Collect fair the fortunate dealers sold well, their success underlining the need for a national showcase for the fresh, the unusual, the radical and the ingenious. Angus Stewart proposes a national supershop to sell both arts and crafts. ‘As far as I am concerned I wish we could simply use the word ìartî’. So writes David Barrie in the Collect catalogue. Thus with the certainty of a Solomon, Barrie sweeps aside false distinctions, the class prejudices reflected in the various ways of cataloguing art. Out go the high, the middle and low. Now we can take pleasure in the daisy and the orchid, the ocean and the stream, the diamond and the paste. A disciple of Ruskin, Barrie puts aside the method, medium and subject, believing it is the insight and discernment of the maker that is of the essence. Having swiftly demolished prejudice and factions, it is easier to celebrate the commonplace delights that are too often undiscovered because they are without extravagance or pretension. Isn’t it necessary to recall the derivation of the word ‘art’? In the Oxford dictionary the first definition reads ‘skill as the result of knowledge and practice’. So it is clear that all art should combine ability, learning and habit. These are simple words and concepts. They remind us art is for all. As Francis Bacon said in 1962; ‘Use your eye. You don’t have to spend more that twenty pounds to buy a good painting.’ Bacon and Barrie are both cutting away pomposity and pretension. For art transcends the richest pocket and swollen pride. Collect, to its cost, is directed at the sophisticated, well-heeled collector. The Crafts Council’s Rosy Greenlees makes that clear. She poses the question ‘Why promote a fair of contemporary objects?’ And like too many administrators, she provides her own justification. ‘Because the patronage of collectors matters even more than ever.’ Tosh. The maker seeks appreciation, understanding and the means to keep working. Of course money is needed. However if a man or women or child has a sharp eye, a quick appreciation and an appetite to own and live with an artist’s work, this is an artist’s fulfilment. When the buyer negotiates an agreement on price, this is the artist’s second triumph. The Crafts Council invited the few to Collect – ‘to see the work of three hundred artists Ö represented by thirty seven international galleries’. I went expecting to find a cornucopia overflowing with visual delights. I was disappointed. There was a sprinkling of originality, but not a waterfall. Unfortunately in aesthetic terms the goods on offer were variations on previous themes and familiar techniques. Having said that, there were a generous number of works that would fit well into a middle-to-upper income home. The goods on offer recall the standard set by post-war Heals: goods unlikely to frighten the parents-in-law. Then as now the aspiration of the shopper is whetted by the packaging and presentation, rather as honey and marmalade are tarted up by Fortnum & Mason. The Crafts Council declares Collect is ‘the place to view and buy the best in international contemporary craft’. But only those who mistake ornamentation for originality, and fail to hunt in the byways and hidey-holes that are home to the innovators, are likely to swallow that claim. Discretion is a virtue, so it is said. However discretion is a vice when a trading post needs fame to make its fortune. Deciding to open a shop without a sign (Collect), fifty yards from the nearest road might appear foolhardy. If the site is within an internationally known art gallery, one well advertised by it founder’s name (Saatchi), the resolve could be judged harebrained. On the other hand, as the supermarket was to exist for a mere three days, such timidity might be thought wise. Did the Crafts Council resolve to back off, to deliberately retreat from the marketplace, intending to entice an Èlite so rich, so selective, so chichi and demanding that it could only respond to exquisite merchandise in hallowed and un-peopled halls? Probably not. And why did the Council advertise an event for three days and open one day (six trading hours) in advance to selected collectors? Do these administrators know how venal collectors are? For those who want to acquire are not ninnies, they fight to take possession of their choice. They are warriors and they will put up with fire and brimstone to satiate their lust. And it is as the buyers vie against each other that the retailer and the artist reap the greatest profit. In this case the retailer (the host shop/venue) is not a trader but an agent funded by the taxpayer, and so it drains the public purse. Isn’t it odd that half the beneficiaries are from abroad? One way and another the Crafts Council has several million pounds in its reticule each year and no harsh professional retailer to oversee its strategy. Collect, presented by the Crafts Council in the Saatchi Gallery, was so well publicised that an art market specialist who lived within five hundred yards was not alerted. And an avid Chelsea collector was unaware of the fair that was literally down his road! All in all the Crafts Council inhibited Collect by failing to turn the detriments inherent in the site to its advantage. A number of the galleries did well; at the end some were generously in funds. For others the returns were meagre. Bear this in mind, it is likely that a large chunk of the three hundred makers represented at Collect were poorly or meagrely sold, if at all? (Before the opening the exhibiting dealers were scathing about the organisational chaos that surrounded them. There had been earlier signs of unsteadiness. Disturbed by the Crafts Council’s apparent lack of disciplined planning, several galleries originally minded to participate, withdrew.) TO BE BRIEF the London Craft Fair was too short, too small, too little promoted. As a consequence there was too little excellent work, and far too little to establish the event as world class. We can’t accept that this is the best London can do. The attendance now seems stuck at a questionable ten thousand. Not an encouraging success. In contrast, the Weald of Kent Fair held at Penshurst Place earlier in May, drew seventeen thousand visitors in three days. As I left, I drove for four miles past the cars queuing to enter the park. As a country we spend a fortune on educating individuals in the arts. The majority of these graduates live near the breadline. If they are to earn a reasonable living in future they must have the means of selling. At the very least the country needs a permanent contemporary arts and crafts showcase in London – a shop selling stock and so making a significant profit for all. The Crafts Council is nowhere near that target. It has no demanding ambition; it is an outdated lady bountiful. Subsidising amateurs has no virtue. A sensible government would impose market discipline and demand a profit. Collect, the remnant of the Crafts Council’s attempt at trading is an absurdity. As the Council so patently lacks the talent and the will to sell, it is time for change. The Council should loosen its pernicious hold and enable an entrepreneur to take David Barrie’s insight and develop a trading reality. In a perfect world, arts and crafts would be on sale on a corner site on Oxford Circus, one the equivalent of Apple’s superstore or Top Shop. Notwithstanding Being too crafty Each visitor was offered an ungainly, multi-folded leaflet, one difficult to understand and infuriating to handle. The broadsheet included a floor plan and listed the exhibiting galleries but omitted the names of the individuals on the stands and the means of contacting them thereafter. Throughout, the Crafts Council chose to inflate some favored exhibits and minor events, presumably to persuade posterity that these modest happenings confirmed Collect’s overall significance. Fraternising with the competition | ||||
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