Galleries and the market

The gallery is still an essential element
and a cornerstone of the market

First of all, the word “market” is not a bad word. Like it or not, the market is what makes art. If there were no buyers and no collectors, artists would be working at 9 to 5 jobs, setting their colours and brushes aside for weekends. Is that too drastic or too cynical a view? Not really. The myth of the unrecognized artist is, in fact, just a myth.
Unappreciated artists that are discovered to be geniuses after their deaths are so rare that the number can be counted on one hand. Yes, there is the case of Vincent Van Gogh whom everyone is familiar with. But it’s not easy to think of many others. Caravaggio was eagerly collected in his lifetime. Michelangelo was commissioned to paint the Sistine Chapel when he was 33. Turner was rich and famous for his more materialistic works and portraits while he was keeping his wonderful and strikingly innovative watercolours for himself, but he had success and a very comfortable life.
Good artists are therefore, in most cases, widely recognized while they are still living and producing. And to be able to live relatively well and to produce good art they need the market.
If the market rejects some artists, it is most likely because their works are not good enough, (although they will appeal to the ghost of Vincent Van Gogh and pretend they will have a similar fate).
To be able to function properly, the market needs a few elements apart from, obviously, the artists who create the works. The market needs galleries, collectors, museum directors, curators and the media. The gallery is still an essential element and is a cornerstone for the market. A vast concentration of galleries are likely to produce a better environment and no city which aspires to a place in the international arena of contemporary art can make it if there is no competition. If there is not a certain number of gallery directors and managers who keep checking on the productions of their artists (artists themselves are generally the worst judges of their own works, pretending that their latest productions are always the best), promoting emerging artists, and striving to find new talents from Fine Arts academies then there will not be any progress.
Galleries should have their own team of artists. There are hundreds of galleries in the world that deal only with the secondary market (which means works of art are not coming directly from the artists’ studios but from re-sales of the works) and therefore do not represent specific artists. But these hundreds and thousands of galleries do not really count. The market is created and run by those galleries who represent artists and promote them, who have access to their studios and who can even prevent the artists from selling works which are not of an adequate level of quality.
Galleries in Dhaka should make choices and select those artists whom they consider valid and leave the rest. They should strike deals with artists and have exclusivity agreements so that those who view works of art at exhibitions around Dhaka don’t find works by the same artist in 4 or 5 out of the galleries that are active in the city. By doing so, galleries will be able to go abroad to international fairs close to Dhaka (New Delhi), a little bit more distant in Asia (Hong Kong) or in Europe and the United States, promoting a specific group of artists and not group exhibitions that may change from season to season.
Since, this is an expensive task for galleries to undertake, percentages to artists (which in Bangladesh are much higher than in other parts of the world) should be reviewed. The artists should renounce a little bit of profit but should strive for more attention and help to elevate their own reputations in the international art market. A step in this direction from those galleries which are more active in Dhaka is essential. There are, of course, other factors which are similarly important, like the irreplaceable role of collectors. But of their task we shall talk another time.

The gallery is still an essential elementand a cornerstone of the market First of all, the word “market” is not a bad word. Like it or not, the market is what makes art. If there were no buyers and no collectors, artists would be working at 9 to 5 jobs, setting their colours and brushes…