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Dear Uncle Jackdaw, The art world is now my reality and as an insider I have become blind to its absurdities. But, my early, ignorant ideals remain as a fuzzy justification of why I wanted to be part of the art club: discover the next generation of YBAs, introduce them at my openings to weighty cultured ìPeopleî and then waltz out of the gallery at 2am into some Parisian dream world, a Montmartre-style cafÈ for Rive Gauche discussions about art, the meaning of life and the universe punctuated by Gauloises and Absinthe. You snicker. Maybe I should move to France, or maybe artiness is not a career. The thing is that the art world isn’t arty. Business experience is central to being a successful art dealer, academia crucial to being employed by a museum and being a well-connected countess your ticket to working for a big auction house. MBAs are preferable qualifications in the art dealing world to knowledge of art which can be learnt on the job (they’ve got a point, history of art degrees are limiting, no professors took us to galleries or showed us any art ìin the fleshî throughout my entire BA). Art dealing isn’t about the art but product turnover using the basest of sales techniques. The pitch is simply about getting the client to say yes to every question you ask. Isn’t the modelling exquisite? Wouldn’t it look divine next to your Van Dyck? These questions are applicable whether you’re selling iPhones or a Rubens. It is as simple as convincing the other person that they love the object too, irrespective of what it is. Are art dealers even interested in art? It was comic to watch these art buffs at the Tate Rothko opening. Their backs to the paintings, they were frantically networking as if this was their only chance, like Freshers in a university bar urgently trying to make lifelong friends within a few hours of leaving home. Admittedly, few of the dealers will ever sell Rothko but it was frustrating to watch them swig champagne, plagiarise Godfrey Barker, lie about their successes in spite of the economy and boom ironically that they will return to look at the show on one of those ìquieterî days at the Tate. Art dealing is a see-saw existence between isolation in the office and interaction at parties. As the office camel my day is spent pretending to be Hercules lugging sculpture here and there, slicing my hands on picture wire whilst carrying precarious, oversized canvases or, if I’m lucky, spending quality time plinth painting. In the evening Hi-vis from the art fair loading bay is swapped for high heels and a little black dress ready to flatter any snob or toff who will listen. When the see-saw hits the mud in this unarty world, lack of art is a large part of my job. The last few weeks have been overshadowed by a series of thefts from our storage space revealed by the 2008 stocktake; people have started to double take when they see you. Anyone could be culpable for the missing art; no one wants to blame the company-wide disorganisation that caused it. Fakes are another daily no-art situation. Does a signed Picasso print mean it’s a fake? Since when did Caravaggio draw pencil outlines? The amount of matey transactions and ambiguous regulations throughout the art world, the nuanced descriptions and opaque provenances of works lent and swapped suggest you should be distrustful of whatever comes out of the well-meaning dealer’s mouth. It’s never their fault. Carrying out the same routine of VAT, insurance and stocktakes they do at Cost Cutter, with a bit of no-art on the side, leads to existentialist questions about one’s vocation in life. And yet my contemporaries seem oblivious that being paid £7,000 per annum to avoid ìselling-outî in careers as lawyers or accountants; that as graduates taking on a role that a 14-year-old could do just as well is exploitation and a waste. Are these gallery assistants blind? Apparently front of house at Sotheby’s is more fulfilling than the reception at BP but both are essentially smiling at oil barons. And what then? A few promotions and you are deputy director? This isn’t the seventies, social mobility is pretty last century. You need to be well connected in the art world and have A levels that few local comprehensives let you get before you are even considered for interview from the sheaves of applications by unwitting graduates for each dogsbody’s post. And even my ìappropriate well qualifiedî friends don’t have MBAs or the capital to start buying art to deal. They are not going anywhere in this unarty world. Tell Auntie Jackdaw that Christmas Day was legendary. Love Snipe | |||||||
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