Canyon Avenue

As part of a spate of rather vapid and self-congratulatory 400th anniversary articles about the City Different, the Summer 2009 issue of Art & Antiques called Canyon Road “Santa Fe’s equivalent of Madison Avenue.” In the context of the article, this means Canyon Road is still THE destination for art.

The other point this article makes is that Santa Fe is a unique art destination because of its ability to blend periods and cultures, the old and the new, the traditional and the exploratory. Different cultures bounce off each other and spread in unexpected directions. According to art dealer William Siegal, “the whole premise [of Santa Fe’s success as an art market] is that great art, whether new or old, informs the other.” I read in this a broader idea, that artistic influence in Santa Fe is atemporal as well as cross-cultural. Contemporary painters are still influenced by the motifs on early Pueblo pottery. Pottery and jewelry design takes cues from the land and ancient architecture. That, to me, more than the quaint allure, is what makes this a unique art destination. That is why certain artists (and those of us who work with and collect the art) are drawn here over New York or L.A.
~Heather

if you could bottle success, what would it smell like?

my apologies for not posting this sooner. this time of year wreeks havoc on my sinuses and i have been sick for over two weeks. i'm still a little foggy...but i think i might finally make sense.

i always thought that being a successful artist meant that you showed in museums in big cities. these gods of art actually make money from their work and travel the world! they are in magazines like Art in America and ArtNews. they have elaborate websites and if are too busy to show up to their own openings. galleries come crawling to them hoping to show even the smallest morsel of their work...all for the name, all because they are so great! but are they really that great? or did they tell us they were?

now i realize....it's all self-made. it's the image you project and it takes a lot of work. YOU make your own website. YOU seek out your own galleries. YOU pay for advertising in magazines. YOU figure out what will be popular and marketable and how you will fill a void in the art world. it's all about marketing and being a good business person. yes, some people do it the 'natural' way and are 'discovered'...but they are usually discovered by someone who is a good marketer or business person. georgio o'keefe being a great example. would she have been THE georgia o'keefe had alfred stieglitz not pimped her out. (i believe 'pimpin' is now a verb)

in short, being a successful artist takes work. you have to make yourself be seen, advertise your own work, enter into competitions, research where you have the best chance to be accepted and considered. i look at the other successful artists my age and am jealous, they started early and they made smart decisions. but after talking to a majority of the artists in santa fe, it takes time, patience and determination.

~sara

The Other Side of the Tracks

After reading an article in the July/August issue of art ltd. magazine, I started thinking more about the locus of artistic influence right now in Santa Fe. The article, titled “Santa Fe: The Good, the Bad, and the Undefined” brings up a lot of the same issues we’ve been thinking about in starting this blog. Along with cutting-edge local projects such as SITE Santa Fe and ART Santa Fe, the author talks about the Railyard District itself as a prime location for emerging artistic trends and galleries with refreshing new approaches and an inviting atmosphere for emerging artists. She points out that “Santa Fe is flourishing as Mecca for the arts, and—despite the ups and downs—is coming into its own as an internationally recognized destination for contemporary art.”

So with these hot new galleries across town has Canyon Road been relegated to a provincial backwater? There was not a single mention of Canyon Road in the entire 5-page article. That’s interesting.

~Heather

Cult of Personality

I recently wrote a couple of book reviews for Moonshine Arts that got me thinking about this topic – one a look at the bizarre character of Salvador Dali called Dali and I: The Surreal Story by Stan Lauryssens and the other a modern take on the Vasari biographical standby The Lives of the Artists by Calvin Tompkins.

So much of the success one finds in any field is the ability to exude a gestalt persona that radiates beyond actual characteristics. This is perhaps more true in the commodified and fetishized arena of art. Tompkins spent a good deal of time with several of the artists that most squarely fall within this category (i.e. more rock star than artist) – Julian Schnabel, Damien Hirst, Jeff Koons, etc. I must admit that Jeff Koons is one of my least favorite artists, and he has built his career on the cult of personality. His work strikes me as derivative, mechanically-produced, and fetishized to a ridiculous degree. The value of his creative vision is in no way reflected in the inflated monetary value of his work. And he comes off as a total jerk, seemingly on purpose, as a way to enhance his holier-than-thou kitsch value.

My thoughts on this subject meandered over to “success” in general (in this sense defined as oneself as societally valued commodity), professionally, academically, and socially. Schmoozing seems more effective than the genuine expression of abilities. The golden attributes of humility and sincerity are devalued in a media/Hollywood-engorged society that inflates the worth of commodities – including the commodity of personality – to an unnatural degree based on how they momentarily sparkle in the light.

Nowhere is this more apparent than at a private (i.e. invitations only sent out to our clients who buy thousands of dollars of inventory) gallery opening. This phenomenon plays out again and again in the conversations that are thinly veiled exhibitions of wealth and power, in the symbolic jewels and baubles. I’m not a great schmoozer, and I’m not convinced that it’s a skill I wish to develop. There are only so many cheeks I can kiss (face cheeks and otherwise…) and hands I can shake before my mind shuts down. I prefer meaningful and thoughtful conversations to vapid gloating and ego-stroking. And when they all drink the Kool-Aid in the cult of personality, I’ll still be around to tell the tale.



~ Heather