“The cream always rises to the top.” Or does it?

I was very fortunate to be invited to a tour of some of the galleries exhibiting at Frieze London last year.  I got chatting to a senior art advisor and took the opportunity to ask him what he considered to be the determining factors in order to break into the commercial art market.  He replied, “the cream always rises to the top”.  That didn’t feel like a proper answer to me.  Especially when I had just seen a booth showcasing some resin snails stuck to the wall.  The booth was London's Seventeen Gallery which decided to infest their booth with 1,000 resin snails by Patrick Goddard.  These snails sold for £25,000.  So there is clearly money in making and selling art.  They were very lifelike I have to say but £25,000.  Really?

I used to be a divorce lawyer.  The route to being a solicitor is very clearly mapped out… you have to achieve certain grades at A-level to be accepted to study Law at university.  Then if you want any hope of securing a training contract you need to achieve a 2.1 or above in your degree.  Then do another year long course before you complete your two-year training at a law firm which will enable you to finally qualify as a solicitor… It’s all so clearly mapped out.  I did all that and qualified… at far too young an age because what you actually need to be robust enough to cope with being a divorce lawyer is a bucket load of life experience of which I had none at the age I qualified! 

My point is that with art there doesn’t seem to be such a road map.  Some self-taught artists are wildly successful.  Others that have gone to the best art schools are struggling to make a living.

So back to my original question… who really gets to decide what art is “good” and as such is of commercial value? 

This week I went to see a brilliant show at my local theatre, the wonderful Omnibus in Clapham.  The show was entitled “Indestructible” and the central character is

Catherine Shaw who spent the 90s shocking the art world with her provocative performance art.  Catherine had a different answer to my question….

She started with the necessary ingredients for a recipe to make a successful artist.  It went something like this…

A ton of Family money

25 ounces of association with a successful male artist

Add 15 ounces of willing to take clothes off

Add 30 ounces of early death or obscurity during lifetime

Add 10 pounds of never exhibited or appreciated until safely dead

15 teaspoons of controversy.  Universally hated. 

Not forgetting 10 million tons of actual talent

She went on to say “According to art world activists the Guerilla girls, in 2012 less than 4% of artworks in contemporary New York art museums were by women yet 76% of nudes were female.

In 2023 they looked at the museum of Hamburg and found that of the 400,000 works in the museum, 1.5 % were by women.

Why does this matter?  Not everyone goes to galleries.  You’ll often see a work and you won’t know the gender of the artist.  Art is art, right?  Art is culture and culture is how we discuss our experience, our view of the world; the way we see things. So if 50% of that view is missing then we are not seeing the full picture and the way things are stays the same.  Pretty much all of our culture is overwhelmingly made by middle class, mainly white men.  A handful of billionaire collectors, pretty much all male, control the art world.  They do this not just by buying the art but by sitting on the boards of major institutions, making large donations to those museums, lending their collections and influencing what is bought and displayed.  The point is that what we are told is “good and important” is decided upon by a small group of men, all talking to each other.”

I think the character Catherine makes a valid point, but I am also heartened that with this increased awareness things are changing for female artists.  I am a huge fan of Katy Hessel, art historian and author of The Story of Art without Men.  If you get a chance have a listen to her podcast in which she shines the spotlight on female artists, past and present.

Nicholas Wilton who runs the hugely popular Art 2 Life courses has another theory.  He advises artists to pay careful attention to what lights you up in life and to create artwork in accordance with that.  He advocates that in this way you will make strong, powerful art that will be desirable to others.  I like this theory the best.

What I do know is the transformative power of art.  How it can heal us by the very process of creating.  The joy that comes from creating something I find to be beautiful and the way my spirit is lifted when my art connects with someone else.

The top image was featured at the London Art Fair 2024. The bottom image is by Alma Singer