Practice looking and enjoy art: notice what it gives you. Trust Your Eye.
Artist Trust and
Seattle Art Dealers Association teamed up to produce
Trust Your Eye: How to Acquire Art in Seattle at
Foster/White Gallery last night.
For art lovers, little perplexes more than the question, "What art should I commit to by purchasing?" In planning the
Trust Your Eye art tour and panel, and exploring a potential line-up of speakers, I had the opportunity to start deep conversations with people experienced on the subject of what collecting art means to them personally. They made distinctions ranging from "Do you mean collection or acquiring?" to "Do you mean being a collector or being a patron?" I found out that the subject engages people who are curious as much as those who have bought art with the unfettered passion that goes with purchasing a work the price of a car based on sheer confidence that "it belongs in my collection."
A tour of
Greg Kucera Gallery,
Catherine Person Gallery and
G. Gibson Gallery got participants looking, thinking and talking.
Rock Hushka, curator for
Tacoma Art Museum and moderator
extraordinaire for the panel, started with the astute inquiry: "What was your first purchase?" Everyone on the panel remembered.
David Martin, art historian and co-owner of
Martin Zambito Gallery, started with pieces that reflected his home: Niagara Falls. David also shared his delight in
Yvonne Twining Humber’s paintings, prior to her gaining recognition. Artist
Barbara Robertson spoke about trading with artist friends to have the presence and feeling of each work speaking to her in her own home. She sold her first work to a student at Walla Walla College during an early one-person show in her graduate student days. Lisa Harris, owner of
Lisa Harris Gallery at Pike Place Market, found personal expression in collecting art after a divorce. Herb Pruzan, co-collector with wife Lucy, remembered not being able to afford a
Mark Tobey or
Morris Graves when they started collecting at the beginning of their marriage 50 years ago, choosing instead a
Paul Horiuchi. In other words, they each trusted their eye.
A main point made by all was to persist in learning and looking. Each art work considered or acquired reflects some new discovery, some new realization, perhaps moving from an initial sentimental reason to buy to more educated and informed directives, or by becoming familiar with a particular artist's work. Visiting museums and galleries is an important means to look and learn as the curators and gallerists, akin to collectors, are using their discerning eye to group works and represent ideas through a singular exhibit. Herb Pruzan shared a visit from Wendy Halperin who, surveying the Pruzan collection, came up with a theme of humor and whimsy expressed through 40 of the works, with nary a cartoon involved. An exhibit at the
Northwest Museum of Art in La Connor soon followed entitled "No Joke."
A participant asked about watercolors: few may be present in the gallery exhibits. Panelists pointed out that you can ask a gallerist to see their stock. Wall space limits the numbers of art works on display at any given time, but gallerists have an entire inventory that can be shown based on an inquiry. Galleries and collectors both thrive on personal relationships created through aesthetic interests.
Barbara Robertson brought up how looking at art with friends helps develop the eye and distill the collector's instinct. Look at many works, she says, go for a nosh and argue after visiting an exhibit. It's good to understand and express all of the perspectives as you learn to trust your eye and form your aesthetic. Herb referenced the play,
Art by
Yasmina Reza (performed at
Seattle Rep in 2001 and available to read), wherein the purchase of a white painting by one enthusiast incites an argument and break (and vandalism) among a group of old buddies.
The daunting challenges of purchasing art were also examined. Some of the questions that were asked included what to do with all of the works that a collector accumulates, how to assess insurance coverage, and how to understand the monetary value of the works when you purchase them and over the course of decades. Again, panelists emphasized the importance of trusting gallerists to help navigate these critical questions.
Rock Huschka shared some perspective on choices he made in developing his upcoming exhibit,
A Concise History of Northwest Art. “How these artists found particular stylistic voices from their work here in the Pacific Northwest will be a key point of the exhibition.” The show runs October 3, 2009–May 23, 2010 at
Tacoma Art Museum. Go!
As a painter I heard Herb's cajole in his response to the artist's use of materials. Go all the way, know their limits; employ materials to the max: it shows in the finished work and it is what makes a work better.
"The secret about art is really a set of interlocking relationships." I don't know who said it, but the beauty of the phrase is that it was said about the gallerist-collector dynamic, and it is simultaneously the key to good art.
FOR FUN: Art Works on Art and Artists
Herb & Dorothy :: A film by Megumi Sasaki
You don’t have to be a Rockefeller to collect art.
I Sold Andy Warhol (Too Soon) :: A book by
Richard PolskyIn this instructive, irreverent and often uproarious memoir, Polsky explains the capricious functioning of the art market and the economic and cultural forces that have transformed it from the 1980s.
Alice Neel :: A film by Andrew NeelExploration of Neel’s struggles as an artist including interviews with family members, artists Marlene Dumas, Chuck Close and Alex Katz, art historians Rob Storr and Jeremy Lewison, and Neel's surviving friends.
Sheila Siden
Director of Development
sheila@artisttrust.orgwith assistance from Rock Hushka, Director of Curatorial Administration, Curator of Contemporary and Northwest Art,
Tacoma Art Museum.
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