Musings on the Ukrainian art business
I would like to start with something beautiful and unforgettable. Italy, for example. Who has failed to marvel, even if from afar, at the luxury of its cathedrals, museums, palaces, the magic beauty of its frescoes, paintings, statues? Another, less evident yet relevant consideration (considering what I am about to discuss) is where all this splendor comes from.
The explanation is overlooked by all encyclopedias and guidebooks. It all comes from business. The famous Renaissance masterpieces were once commissioned by the then most prosperous customers: the Church and aristocratic oligarchs. It is something else that the commissions were fulfilled by such Renaissance giants as Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Titian. But the essence remains the same. Italy was fortunate to produce so many geniuses and the prosperous Italians wanted to make their lives beautiful and immortalize themselves. The latter were intelligent enough to leave it to the former. The result was the appearance of the land of dreams, without which it is impossible to imagine human civilization.
But what does this digression into history have to do with our current unattractive realities?
A great deal. Take any country other than Italy. What happened once in the Mediterranean became an ideal type of national culture and relations between the arts and the powers that be. In other words, once a sufficient number of prosperous people appears in a given country, they begin to invest in the arts, with the aid of totally different people than they are: men of the arts. This is how a new cultural strata appears. Interestingly, not only the authors of masterpieces become immortal, but also those who pay them for their undying creations, collecting their paintings or figuring in their portraits. History knows countless such examples.
Of course, we live in a pragmatic, capitalist age. Still, terminology changes, but not the essence. Our local postimperialist renascence will take place in full measure after being adequately reflected in art. Only then will our economic (political, social) endeavors have the meaning they require. To control the future, one must first comprehend the present. Here we offer an attempt at such understanding.
A bird’s eye view of the Ukrainian art market reveals not an elegant park landscape a la Watteau but something akin to sheer chaos. Characteristically, it teems with all kinds of traps, illusory objects and values — on this later. Let us now pay attention to the key players in our Wheel of Fortune game. There are three: an artist, his customer (a.k.a. buyer and collector), and the intermediary (a.k.a. art gallery owner, interior designer, art consultant). All three have totally different tasks and objectives. Their relationships are appropriately complex, and their opportunities are unequal.
The place occupied by the artist is perfectly clear. He paints a picture and wants to sell it. More often than not, however, his jurisdiction is reduced to the boundaries of his studio; he is no promoter of his own works, and this takes someone else’s talent. Artists seldom receive commissions these days, except when someone wants something for a new home interior, but this could make a painter into an interior designer — not for an artist, although interior decorating pays well. In any case, new paintings are most often displayed at exhibits. A good artist expects good money for his works, so he can have good living and working conditions. To do so, the artist must find a buyer.
A buyer is a remarkably choosy individual. He seems always a possibility rather than reality; he is always anxiously awaited, even without much hope of seeing him appear in the end. The distance between the artist and the buyer is not considerable but immeasurable — and not because of the difference in their respective incomes. The most formidable customer is one with money as well as education and flawless taste; an expert who knows that it is best to invest in a good work of art. With time it will become more valuable. Hence the shortcoming inherent in art collectors, which can be described as the van Gogh complex: buying a good thing cheap and then having a treasure. Do I have to tell you how that artist feels then? Perhaps the only consolation is that a work of art is owned by someone who can truly appreciate it.
It is also true that such expert collectors are not many; everybody knows them. The more widespread type of buyer does not know what he is really after. His motivation is vague and preferences inarticulate. Alas, the sole reason is that buyer’s lack of knowledge about the subject. His motto is Make Something Nice. His response to contemporary art is, “Why, I could have done that myself!” He fails to understand the artist’s explanations and cannot tell between graffiti and a masterpiece. He needs a guide to the world of the Muses, just as an artist needs a bearer of a flag of truce to make a deal with the world of big but untutored business. It is here that the third player steps in at the top of this strange triangle: the middleman or gallery owner.
His performance is controversial and rich in surprises, sometimes quite unpleasant. An art gallery cannot be profitable as such. Rent, municipal payments and red tape devour the lion’s share of hypothetical revenues. This means that the gallery owner must moonlight and above all develop a passion for his basic and most troublesome line of business. Here emerges the problem of all those illusory values. Quite often art galleries serve as a cover for illicit transactions or become degraded into selling curiosities and kitsch. By this time they can hardly be described as art galleries, more as art salons or curiosity shops, although they try to keep up a dignified front. Ill-informed buyers are drawn mostly to such places, wasting money on all kinds of trash. Genuine art galleries, staffed with expert consultants and where the owner assumes full responsibility for the value and authenticity of every item on display, can be counted on one’s fingers. There are a couple in Kharkiv, one in Lviv, four in Kyiv, and practically none in Odesa.
Both the artist and buyer are very much dependent on that middleman. Among other things, the gallery owner creates such a subtle thing as the price for the work of art. It is also the price of the author’s name. Behind that name is the prestige of all those international biennales previously exhibiting the author, his name appearing in prestigious art editions, rubbing elbows with other celebrities, and the presence of his works in the collections of internationally renowned patrons of the arts. In a word, many factors are involved, and they are all meticulously considered when making a real contract. Naturally, fraudulent practices often occur. There are countless fake names. They will even show you photos of some paintings in the private collections of some pop stars, auction sale reports, clippings with press followings in the West. All this is meaningless. The president of a superpower or a superstar is nothing compared to an inconspicuous collector, say, in Paris; also, you can sell practically anything at an auction, at any price, yet the true value of what you sell will be the exact opposite of the price you get in the end.
In general, there are no formal valuation criteria — and nor could there be. This is the hazard and simultaneously the greatest attraction of the art business, for the whole thing contains too many irrational components; a host of things have to be taken at face value. None of the galleries legally seals its relationships with artists properly. Here the only guarantee is talent. A gifted artist might wreck schedules, have tantrums, or haggle over his sale interest. They will put up with all this as long as his finished product is good. An expert knows a future genius — as property worth investing in — relying on nothing else but intuition. As a rule, independent experts agree on good quality.
Therefore, what we have is a strange situation. Everything seems to be there — yet in reality nothing is. There are countless fake art galleries displaying legions of sham artists against a handful of genuine those doing business with several dozen (confirmed by a number of sources) topnotch authors. Side by side are the complete cultural ignorance of the potential buyers and a very close and small circle of collectors, constant declarations of the need for a purposeful cultural policy and its permanent absence (along with a number of ineffective laws dealing with relationships between the arts and the economy). Still, works of art are bought and sold, albeit on a very small scale, and large sums change hands. Accordingly, artists are not becoming extinct, even if they do balance on the verge of survival. Running an art gallery remains one of the most prestigious occupations, even if obviously unprofitable.
Ukraine is a land of paradoxes...
There is a way out. It is obvious, albeit hard to accomplish. The art market must be accessed by corporate buyers, to which the Kulturtraggers will respond with corporate solidarity. A well-selected stylish display of contemporary art forms the image of any medium or big business, bank, etc. A social lobby for the artist’s interests is what allows corporations to get their bearings. It is practiced all over the world, and Ukraine must not be an exception. The appearance of such powerful players will give an immediate impetus to the situation. Having works of contemporary art will become a matter of prestige, as will discussing and writing about contemporary art, meaning that experts in the field will have a chance to be heard. In that case the ratings of artists — and the prices of their works — will actually correspond to the degree of their talent. Illusory values will cease to prevail, even if in terms of quantity.
Such is the desired but, unfortunately, not the only scenario: a financial-cultural symphony, with the arts becoming a full-fledged segment of the economy. What we have today is but the ruins after the battle.
