Part 2

If you haven’t read the first installment of this post you’ll want to do so now by either clicking here or scrolling down when viewing all posts.

In the first part of this two-part essay we cogitated on the basic economics of artistic production, in particular, how the laws of supply and demand relate to price. In doing so we concluded that there are several built-in dilemmas in the current marketplace. First, the more successful an artist becomes, the fewer people or institutions can afford his/her work; and second, the less an artist can sell his/her artwork, the more difficult it is for either artist or gallerist to remain in business (no great revelation there). Both of these conditions relate directly to the fact that the art in question is largely executed by the artist’s own hand one piece at a time. Moreover, we pointed out that today’s marketplace seems more and more bifurcated in its extremes: super-high price points at the upper end (galleries), super-low prices at the other end (internet). The middle segment of the market is only scarcely populated in terms of the artwork or venues to sell it.

We think this situation is unfortunate because the middle of the market is a place of great promise for artists. As first Daniel Bell and later Richard Florida have pointed out, there has arisen over the past several decades a demographic variously known as the professional, creative, managerial and/or technological class. These terms pretty well describe the profile of this population segment in terms of their occupations. They are on the whole trained professionals adept at creative problem-solving, managing complex business relationships and utilizing technology. Many have sophisticated tastes, are design savvy and have an interest in the arts not only as spectators but as participants. (Hence the recent popularity of interactive art in which non-artists physically engage with the artwork rather than merely watch or hear it passively.) And, while not uniformly wealthy, many have discretionary income to spend on things like art.

Of course, there is certainly no shortage of mid-career and reasonably established artists who would be happy to sell these people their work. But now another problem of the market comes into play. Galleries are almost entirely mom-and-pop affairs, meaning they are generally run by their proprietors as a single shop. There are good reasons for this, beginning with the fact that the artist-gallerist relationship is an intensely personal and individualistic one. In addition, the ‘stock’ in which the gallerist deals is by its nature unique and its supply not always controllable, thus greatly reducing the feasibility of trying to franchise or replicate the business across multiple locations. On top of all this the economics of the traditional gallery are such that they require a pretty high population density to reach a threshold of viability, which is why they are overwhelmingly situated in only the largest urban centers.

So, not only do all the people in this middle market who don’t live in this handful of cities have a large hurdle to clear in trying to gain access to them geographically, even if they do transport themselves to where the galleries are they may very well be priced out of range anyway. Not to mention that visiting the many galleries in places like New York City is largely a hit-and-miss game for anyone who doesn’t spend hours culling through the galaxy of art spaces to discern the ones worth exploring. Sure, part of the fun for folks like us is the process of discovery, but that level of investment may not be possible or appropriate for others.

It should be increasingly evident (if it wasn’t already) that the current gallery system and the predominant means of artistic production are inter-connected. Change one and you’ll need to change or augment the other. Which is precisely what we at A.R.T. propose to do (if that wasn’t obvious already). The goal of this initiative is straightforward: to make compelling contemporary art more accessible to more people. And, we believe, to make contemporary art more closely aligned with the fluid, collaborative nature of 21st century culture than traditionally conceived art.

We start by addressing the means of production. In place of traditional hand-crafted art we propose instead that artists utilize the techniques of the New Industrialism to fabricate their work. As introduced in part 1, the term New Industrialism summarizes the novel ways that we can now manufacture things when we marry the computer to the machine. It also references the new ways we create and distribute objects of design. In the former category we can include digital fabrication, mass customization and on-demand production; in the latter are crowdsourcing, open innovation and ecommerce.

For the artist it means that there are two end products rather the one: the digital file from which the physical piece will be produced, and the final assembled artwork. The beauty of this approach is that once the file has been created it can be used to generate an unlimited number of physical pieces – none of which requires the personal intervention of the artist, who is then free to utilize the time to create more art. Since the supply of a given work of art is theoretically unlimited, the speculative pricing method utilized in the traditional gallery system is no longer applicable. Instead, the work can be priced as a function of the cost to manufacture plus overhead and profit, which will invariably lower the cost of art in general. That is actually a potential boon to the vast majority of artists. Rather than receive a one-time commission, the artist instead derives income based on a licensing agreement in which he/she earns a percentage of total sales. If the artist does good work that’s accepted by collectors, it’s the gift that keeps on giving. Put it another way, the Scarcity Principle has given way to the Abundance Principle.

It should be remarked that all the work in our ModulA.R.T. portfolio is designed, constructed and distributed using the methodologies of the New Industrialism.

Now, some may argue that art that isn’t made by the hand of the artist is intrinsically invalid. To which we would respond that we must then invalidate almost all of Sol LeWitt’s portfolio, since he ‘outsourced’ to others much of his physical production, as have other prominent artists all along the historical spectrum. We would also point out that for the last 150 years neither architects nor composers have fabricated or performed their own work either. Seen in this light, having visual artists shift to the same production paradigm as these other creatives does not seem out of line.

Another objection that can be made is that reproducing art in unlimited supply reduces it to a commodity. We’re not entirely sure that is an issue, for reasons too lengthy to go into here. But one of the ways we at A.R.T. try to address this potential problem is by creating a portfolio that is modular. The creative dimension necessary to art is therefore satisfied by the imaginative arrangement of the modules rather than the uniqueness of the individual, static object. Being modular also dovetails with what we asserted above about contemporary audiences wanting to be more interactive in their experience of art, in contrast to the top-down and passive approach associated with traditional gallery pieces.

Speaking of the gallery, with all these proposed changes in the way the artist works it’s inevitable that an alternative economic model will have to be adopted for the distribution of the art of the New Industrialism. That model is no more or less than the conventional retail operation, in which objects are sold for a price over and above that of the wholesale cost. Not only does this make sense in terms of how the art is made, but it also means that the venue for selling this type of art can be either a one-off boutique or a multi-store operation. Nor are large cities the only environment in which such a venue could survive; now mid-sized cities, university towns and other concentrations of the professional and creative classes become viable contexts as well.

Let’s conclude by stating unequivocally that we make no value judgments about art that is traditionally conceived and created, nor are we advocating or predicting the disappearance of the gallery system. Both serve a purpose and a market that values the hand-crafted item, and will no doubt be with us for a long time. Instead, we are proposing to add a third option to the current constellation of distribution points as well as to change our perceptions of what contemporary art can be, how it can be made and how it’s valued. After all, if contemporary art is to be contemporary, then shouldn’t it be open to to the ideas that make contemporary culture contemporary?

References
Michael Whitelaw, “Networked Production: On Making with Bits and Atoms”