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Book Review of
How to Get Hung, by Molly Barnes.
Reviewed by Celia Sage.
Remember how when you were a kid you'd skim through a magazine, reading
the captions to the ilustrations first? I used to work my way through National
Geographic that way, but lately I've been reading a lot of captions in art
magazines. What I'm looking for is that line that says either, "collection
of the artist" (hmm -- not selling, eh?), or something like "from
the collection of Leon and Dorothy Bindertwine". If all the works featured
are captioned the latter, my next thought is "How do they do it??"
Obviously, I'm not the only one asking that question, as there seems to
be a booming business in books seminars and especially videos to help the
entrepreneurially challenged artists get their work into the loop and onto
the market. Each one promises: take this advice, consider these factors,
and you've at least got a fighting chance.
The prize for the most catchy title has got to go to a book I came across
recently: How to Get Hung by Molly Barnes, whom the blurb describes
as a "well-known New York and Los Angeles gallery owner and art critic".
It says she launched several careers, mingled with the likes of Rauschenberg
and de Kooning, and "discovered the photo-realism art movement"
(which begs the question, "where was it?").
She's hooked me right away: the very fact that I've never heard of either
her OR most of her proteges means I must need her advice -- badly. Besides,
I'm reassured by the subtitle: "A Practical Guide for Emerging Artists."
Emerging is a soothing term because it implies that no matter how many years
you've been slogging away in obscurity, you may be just about to pop onto
the scene.
The book's tone from start to finish reveals why Molly Barnes seems to have
such good luck with artists: she genuinely likes them and adopts a cheerful,
"you can do it" vein throughout. She also dispenses what sounds
like very practical, even hard-nosed advice. When I finished the book I
felt like I'd been given some inside information by a favorite teacher and
then patted on the head.
Some examples of the questions that Barnes addresses:
How do you know when your works are ready for showing?
Molly Barnes stresses that in choosing a body of work to be shown the artist
commit to a theme and work to it. "Follow your obsession," she
exhorts, and "be bloody-minded and objective" in eliminating anything
that doesn't complement that theme.
How do you get known in the art loop?
Barnes says: network, network, network. Every time you meet another artist
exchange studio visits, (I've met artists who refused to let me visit their
studio, but I guess that's another chapter), go to every opening you can
go to -- be seen. (Remember this is a practical guide.) Barnes tells
of one artist who "hung a large piece of butcher paper on the wall
in the hallway of her house, and every time she came home from an art event,
she wrote the names of the people she had met on the paper, and using red
and yellow lines, connected their names with others she had met previously
and with whom they had a relationship."
"Develop a story". Know how to talk about your work without having
to think about it. "Look, dress like an artist."
How to get noticed by gallery owners and potential art clients?
Barnes includes personal anecdotes such as the time she left a collection
of sketches in the guest bathroom of a potential client's house at the end
of along party. They were found in due course and a commission resulted.
Here's a cringe-making little bit of advice: on the dealer's first visit
to your studio, she advises, "Dress casually. ...If you are a woman,
wear something that shows off your figure."
What response can you reasonably expect to invitations?
Ten-to-one, she says, "If you want a hundred people at your show, send
a thousand invitations."
One thing about How to Get Hung that I appreciated most was that
it was written from the point of view of the art dealer who, while she has
a genuine affection and respect for her artists, recognizes the fact that
the public -- or the gallery owner -- doesn't wake up in the morning wondering
what Joe Artist is sculpting today.
Admittedly, a lot of the information and anecdotes are geared to life in
the artistic fast lanes of New York and LA -- as the old saying goes, "but
will it play in Peoria?" Well, according to Barnes, (who actually lists
moving to New York as one of the most important things you can do to launch
your art career), it just might if you are willing to adapt to her commercial
approach. This is realpolitik for artists. Molly Barnes gives a sympathetic
nod to the idea of uncompromising artistic vision and all that, but hey,
this is business.
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