{"id":1960,"date":"2018-02-10T18:40:50","date_gmt":"2018-02-10T18:40:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/?p=1960"},"modified":"2021-01-13T14:56:06","modified_gmt":"2021-01-13T14:56:06","slug":"laura-gascoigne-the-blag-trade-january-2019","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/?p=1960","title":{"rendered":"Laura Gascoigne: The Blag Trade – January 2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Laura Gascoigne
January\/February 2019<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It had to happen: The Apprentice has been let loose on the art market. For episode 8 of the latest series, contestants were corralled in the Centre Hall of Glasgow\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Kelvingrove Art Gallery to be informed by Alan Sugar from a Big Brother screen: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The global art market is worth a massive \u00c2\u00a347 billion\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, and told to get a slice of the action. Their task was to choose the work of one of three Glasgow-based artists \u00e2\u20ac\u201c the line drawings of Sophie Morgan, the surreal animal sculptures of Solveig Einarsdottir or the semi-abstract canvases of Eleanor Carlingford \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and flog them to a) corporate clients and b) the general public.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two team members nominated themselves project managers, Jasmine of Team Typhoon on the grounds that she loves art and visits galleries and Jackie of Team Collaborative because she minored in Fine Art and her dream job is to be an art dealer. This did not, however, prepare her for the brief presented by the first corporate client, a maker of luxury sound systems, to find a piece that reflected \u00e2\u20ac\u0153three key pillars: innovation, provenance and experience\u00e2\u20ac\u009d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153What would your interpretation of that be?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Daniel, appointed Team Collaborative\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s art dealer, asked his colleagues. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Innovation, that was obviously, like, something innovative, out there,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d hazarded Camilla, a member of the sub-team in charge of merchandising. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Do you know what provenance means?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d interposed Jackie. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153 I think it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s like, so, provenance, provoke?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, suggested Camilla. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I thought provenance was in relation to the province you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re from,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d offered her sub-team-mate Sarah Ann. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Okay, so nobody knows,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d concluded Jackie.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They were more successful at flogging art to the public, though Jackie was marked down for jumping the gun and selling Einarsdottir\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s welcome mat spelling HOME SWEET HOME in Gummy Bears to a punter off the street while her corporate clients were away making up their minds. Innovation, tick. Provenance, query. Experience, nil. But she did better than Jasmine, who achieved the extraordinary feat of being fired by Lord Sugar for being too corporate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The interesting thing about this experiment in salesmanship is that the contestants who claimed some knowledge of art fared worse. Team Typhoon\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s art dealer Tom, who came from a family of artists, opened negotiations with Carlingford: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re looking at 40-50% commission\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and earned the riposte: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Which half of the painting did you paint?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d But Daniel, who confessed: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153My and Jackie\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s selling styles differ in the sense that she knows what she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s talking about and I haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t a fucking clue,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d was a revelation even to himself. He breezed into Carlingford\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s studio and verbalised thus: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153My eye was initially drawn to this one here. It almost seems quite dark and sinister from one perspective but then, when you keep looking at it, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s got this brightness that emits from the centre of the picture. Could I ask what your personal take on this one is?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I could only reiterate what you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve just said,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d the artist beamed. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Top blagging\u00e2\u20ac\u009d was the verdict of The Sun\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s reviewer. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153A load of Jackson Pollocks,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d was Lord Sugar\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s. Whatever, it worked. Daniel had an instinctive grasp of the business: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a fine line between interpretation and blagging, a fine line that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m probably treading very dangerously at this moment, but that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s art for you.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The programme aired the week after the cinema release of Nathaniel Kahn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s art market documentary, The Price of Everything. Shift location to New York and Chicago and tack a few zeros onto the sums involved, and the film is a high-end carbon diamond copy of Glasgow Art Apprentice. The artists, this time, include Jeff Koons, George Condo and Larry Poons; the dealers\/auctioneers Jeffrey Deitch, Dennis Yares and Amy Cappellazzo, and the collectors the nonagenarian Stefan Edlis, a gift to any documentary filmmaker. Pearls of wisecracking wisdom fall from Edlis\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s lips like Mel Brooks one-liners: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153To be an effective collector, deep down you have to be shallow\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re lemmings\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 In the art world there are a lot of followers and few leaders, which is OK if you follow the right leaders,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d are just two of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Edlis and the octogenarian Poons are the stars of the show. Having committed the crime of abandoning the style that made him famous in the 1960s, Poons went to ground in upstate New York, where we catch him shuffling through snow to his studio barn to daub canvases twice his height with delirious colour. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153A lot of people thought I was dead for a long time,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he freely acknowledges, but in a Koons v Poons contest he wins hands down through sheer conviction. He demolishes the idea that the best artist is the most expensive with the simple question: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153How could it be true?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a poignancy to his childish delight at being brought back from the dead by Yares for a show on Fifth Avenue. Dwarfed by his multicoloured canvases, he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s like a kid in a sweet shop, but art critic Barbara Rose casts a damper on the proceedings with her explanation of the renewed interest in his work: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153They do a calculation \u00e2\u20ac\u201c it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s sick \u00e2\u20ac\u201c which is the most undervalued painter.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For a masterclass in sick calculations apply to Amy Cappellazzo, Sotheby\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Chairman of Global Fine Arts. Asked how you value priceless art, she responds pragmatically: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153You say something is priceless and then you sort of work backwards.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a wonderfully bitchy exchange between her and Edlis about Koons\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s sculptures being seen in lobbies. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s going to hurt him,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d predicts Cappellazzo. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153You never get out of the lobby once you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re in there\u00e2\u20ac\u009d. Koons himself comes across as the charlatan you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d expect, standing in a factory full of assistants knocking off copies of old masters for his Gazing Ball Paintings. He talks more reflective balls than our own dear Antony Gormley, insisting in his silky-soft snake oil salesman voice that all these images painted by other people \u00e2\u20ac\u0153are created through systems. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m responsible for every one.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d As blagging goes it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not a patch on Daniel\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s, but it works on Americans. Deitch\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s description of Koons as the archetypal American salesman is intercut with footage from The Wolf of Wall Street. Interestingly, Daniel also compares himself to Jordan Belfort.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The unholy marriage between art and money is not new; as curator Paul Schimmel observes in Kahn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s film: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no golden age without gold\u00e2\u20ac\u009d. This much was obvious even to Gulley Jimson, who offers this cogent analysis of the relationship between artist and patron in The Horse\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Mouth: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s all in the game. Hickson is a business man. And I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m a painting man. He makes money for fun and needs art to keep him alive. I paint pictures for fun, and need money to keep me alive.  He wants to boost the pictures and get fun out of them, and I want to get some money and paint new pictures.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kahn hopes his film will encourage audiences \u00e2\u20ac\u0153to open their eyes to seeing art again on their own terms\u00e2\u20ac\u009d. Not everyone, though, is capable of seeing. Cappellazzo distinguishes between \u00e2\u20ac\u0153three kinds of people in the world: those who see, those who see when they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re shown, and those who will never see\u00e2\u20ac\u009d. If you can see, and you can blag, you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve got it made. Daniel, my lad, you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re wasted on The Apprentice. In a \u00c2\u00a347 billion global art market, what sounds like Jackson Pollocks to Lord Sugar is gold dust.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Laura Gascoigne January\/February 2019 It had to happen: The Apprentice has been let loose on the art market. For episode 8 of the latest series, contestants were corralled in the Centre Hall of Glasgow\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Kelvingrove Art Gallery to be informed by Alan Sugar from a Big Brother screen: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The global art market is worth a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[742,75],"class_list":["post-1960","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","tag-comment","tag-laura-gascoigne"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1960","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1960"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1960\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1961,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1960\/revisions\/1961"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}