Franklin Sirmans

Finding some form of mentorship when it comes to the business of art can be a difficult proposition for artists. Although the system of scouting has dynamically changed among dealers, young artists in particular are still forced to aggressively position themselves in the market. A group of MFA programs such as CalArts, UCLA, and Art Center in Los Angeles, and Yale, Columbia, and SVA on the East Coast occasionally host swarms of dealers like music industry A&R folks at a listening party, but this is the exception rather than the rule. There are alternative institutions in New York City such as Art in General, Exit Art, and White Columns that have traditionally created group exhibitions as coming out parties for the next art stars. Yet, today the commercial galleries seem to be the trendmakers, more willing than ever to gamble on an artist with the right pedigree who might be able to cut a hefty chunk of that Chelsea rent. Pedigree is often the operative word. If an artist has attended one of those aforementioned "right" schools, pays attention to the responsibilities of socializing with the "right" curators and critics, and has established at least a few collectors interested in her or his work, chances are the gallery won’t see the exhibition as such a risky endeavor. Then again, don’t worry, the business of art has not become so clearly defined. Success in art is inherently not connected to the most units sold. See Leroy Neiman or Peter Max in this regard. No, artists still need mentors. While traditionally assisting an accomplished artist in the studio is an invaluable and insightful path to recognition, institutional support groups have also become effective means for artists to navigate the trail that lays ahead for making it as an artist.

In 1980, Carmen Vega-Rivera, Curator of the Satellite Gallery Program at the Bronx Museum of the Arts, thought about the idea of mentorship for young aspiring artists, clearly viewing the traditional system of exhibitions as insufficient. She contacted her friend Joan Snitzer who worked at the Cultural Council Foundation researching job development strategies for artists. Together they came up with topics relevant to the artists they had spent time with, such as criticism, conservation, grants, taxes, and financial and legal matters. Soon after, the Bronx Museum of the Art’s program Artist in the Marketplace was created. New York Times critic Holland Cotter has referred to the program as a "total-immersion boot camp for artists, (where) they are drilled [and] briefed on the Byzantine protocols of the art world." Eighteen artists were selected for the 12-week seminar, a balance of instruction from critics, curators, dealers, artists, and art administrators from public programs. Under the curatorial direction of the museum, the program added a second semester a few years later, which doubled the number of participants to 36. Unlike the Whitney Museum’s Independent Study Program, which was created ten years earlier, the concentration is on the nuts and bolts of the art business. While the Whitney emphasizes the dissection of often long-winded theory, Artist in the Marketplace places value on the ability to write grant applications in simple and direct language, only taking artists who have more or less successfully created good art. Twenty years since Vega-Rivera and Snitzer’s conversation, the original goal remains intact: empowering artists to take charge of their own careers. The program now hosts two sessions a year for 36 artists culled from more than 400 applications annually.

Not surprisingly, some really good artists have gone through the program. For its twentieth anniversary, museum curators Marysol Nieves and Lydia Yee have organized Good Business Is the Best Art: Twenty Years of the Artist in the Marketplace Program. Taking one of Andy Warhol’s many insightful tenets, Good Business articulates the approach of the Program to bring focus around a sprawling group exhibition with little aesthetic similarity. The business-like approach of Warhol certainly has a resonance with today’s increasingly fractious art scene, where marketing plays an increasingly greater role in the success, or lack thereof, of today’s visual artists. For the curators to invoke such a thought is a courageous step, a step in the right direction, away from the dogged theoretical misnomers that title so many art exhibitions these days. Warhol, proprietor of The Factory, created films, paintings, and photographs (Polaroids) in mass-production that questioned the whole high and mighty endeavor of determining what is good art or bad art. Although the focus may have been squarely on the marketing of the product, he also created thought-provoking work.

Good Business Is the Best Art features paintings, sculpture, video, and photography in equal doses. Displaying an artist’s career trajectory with very specific works and wall labels giving the works’ provenance, the exhibition also includes videotaped interviews with critics, curators, and dealers who were pivotal along the way. This curatorial license is right on point and turns what could be a pleasant, though bland, survey exhibition into something special.

The curators have chosen from a point in the artist’s career specific pieces that represent a breakthrough of sorts: artistic and/or commercial. The exhibition starts off with works by two celebrated artists, Glenn Ligon (AIM, 1983-84) and Byron Kim (AIM, 1989-90), facing each other. The two artists have collaborated in the past, and their minimal paintings work perfectly in unison. Ligon is represented by three paintings including, Untitled (I do not always feel colored) (1990), undoubtedly an important work in this artist’s career. It is a signature Ligon piece with the black stenciled words of the title, a mantra, repeated on a white canvas until it drowns out in a mute mass of black paint at the bottom. The painting was first shown in a small show titled How It Feels to Be Colored Me, curated by Paul Ramirez-Jonas at BACA Downtown, a theater and exhibition space in Brooklyn, where it was seen by George C. Wolfe, Artistic Director of the Joseph Papp Public Theater. The curators Thelma Golden and Robert Storr also saw the show, and Golden has since worked extensively with Ligon and appears in a taped interview included in the current AIM exhibition. The painting was subsequently selected for the 1991 Whitney Biennial, and then purchased by The Bohen Foundation from Max Protetch Gallery with the intention of donating it to the Whitney. Ligon’s career has soared since then. Kim is also represented by a singularly important work. Synechdoche (1991-1992), a large series of monochrome panels based on the skin color of friends, premiered at the AC Project Room in 1992 in a two-person exhibition with Kiki Smith. Protetch bought a group of the panels and then became Kim’s dealer. A significant number of the panels were included in the 1993 Whitney Biennial. Protetch sold some of the panels but has kept 100 for his own collection. While it’s easy to pinpoint the artistic breakthrough and subsequent commercial success of artists like Ligon and Kim, other artists in the show make for interesting connections and point to the insight that comes with selecting young artists every year for a program. In this sense, there are many pleasant surprises.

Like Kim and Ligon, Cathleen Lewis’ work often examines the minutiae of racial perspectives. Signifiers (1999) occupies an entire corner with a web of hair. As the title suggests, Lewis’ poetic installation of thickly woven hair triggers questions on the signifyin’ sense attributed to black hair. The painter Fabian Marcaccio (AIM, 1987-88) is represented by one of his best works, The Altered Genetics of Painting #5 (1993). The abstract work sprawls across a wall from hung painted canvas to wall drawing and back to canvas. While his more recent work is heavily influenced by new technology, from Frank Stella to the present, Marcaccio is one of the best abstract painters of the last decade. Rina Banerjee, whose work came to prominence very recently with her inclusion in the 2000 Whitney Biennial, was in the program in 1995-96. She’s represented in Good Business Is the Best Art by Postcolonial-Spider-Broom Woman (1997/2000). Although still little known on the international art scene, Banerjee’s sprawling wall sculptures were seen by the curator Jane Farver (co-curator, 2000 Biennial), who included her work in the survey exhibition Out of India: Contemporary Art of the South Asian Diaspora at the Queens Museum. Farver, now at the MIT List Visual Arts Center in Cambridge, also appears in a video interview.

A CD-ROM accompanies the show. Featuring video interviews with the artists, curators (Bill Arning, Holly Block, Jane Farver, Thelma Golden), dealers (John Lee, Jack Shainman, Peter Surace), and various other notable personalities (Simon Watson, Werner Kramarsky), the CD-ROM is the perfect supplement. It presents the artists and their work in a dynamic form of documentation that will surely be made a part of more of these kinds of exhibitions in the future. Like the show, the CD-ROM is valuable for several reasons. Chief among these is a stance that seeks to illuminate for its audience the often mythical goings-on of the contemporary art industry.

For more information on The Bronx Museum of the Arts’ Artist in the Marketplace Program, contact The Bronx Museum of the Arts, 1040 Grand Concourse, Bronx, NY 10456-3999; phone (718) 681-6000; or fax (718) 681-6181.

Franklin Sirmans is a Harlem-based freelance writer and curator. He was the US Editor for Flash Art Magazine. This essay is an expanded version of a review that originally appeared in the June 29-July 6, 2000 issue of Time Out New York.