Urban Art Association

 There is a hell of a lot of hype and marketing that goes on by some so called galleries and dealers who are nothing more than glorified sales men and will sell anything that makes them a good profit.

I always prefer artists who make the images using their hands rather than some sort of photo shop manipulation.

People can fall for the slick marketing and advertorials in the press hyping up an artist who makes record prices at auction and not being aware that the record prices can be false and that some dealers use agents to bid up the prices in auction rooms to make out that someone paid a record price.

 Some buy prints and art of the latest name to be trendy and in with the in crowd and others buy because they are advised that it's a good investment and the next big thing.

Dali churned out loads of ltd editions because it was an easy way of making money for him. He signed nearly everything put in front of him. Now today the Dali print market is a nightmare with some auction rooms refusing to sell some or selling for low prices because they don't know which are authentic and which are re prints from the plates which should have been destroyed but weren't.

I see nothing in Fairey, Koons or Brainwash that is any good but like Warhol who basically made Americanised versions of communist Russian propaganda posters. The art is not important, just the name.

Jan 26, 2014 21:39:54 GMT 1 dundun said:

Jan 26, 2014 19:49:21 GMT 1 @elviswarhol said:

 There is a hell of a lot of hype and marketing that goes on by some so called galleries and dealers who are nothing more than glorified sales men and will sell anything that makes them a good profit.

IMO it's already crossed the tipping point with artists like Retna pulling BS on his last release. This is only going to continue as quite a few artists are shunning galleries for direct to customer sales on websites. As soon as profit becomes the sole driver for a business, rather than focus on a good product, then the product suffers. Happened with Coke, Microbrewery beers than go into mass productions, and why it hasn't happened with a company like Apple because they value the experience of the customer(debate all you want Apple, but is still #1 on JD Power customer satisfaction...by a mile).

IMO this is having a major negative effect and why so many people are becoming jaded with this scene. It seems more and more you have to "know" someone, practice shady buying techniques, or have a huge bankroll just to be able to have the chance to purchase something. I know it's becoming an issue with me as I know I'll probably never be able to get another Banksy at cost. 

As vogue as it is to bash galleries right now, IMO they act as a buffer between artists greed and shady selling practices.  Debate all you want about how galleries have preferred customers, but that comes with hard work, creating a loyal customer base and working with artists who respect them. That's just part of the game and ALWAYS has been. People need to understand that galleries are a business too. I have issue with artists selling their work direct to public because there is no oversight. Retna won't suffer from what he pulled on his last release, but you can sure as hell bet if a gallery pulled questionable selling practices that they would be black listed by lots of people(ahem stik release at DG). So the artist/gallery/client relationship is absolutely necessary and will always be IMO. 

 I think people bash some of the big galleries who they suspect of manipulating the market and creating a hype etc.

It's what happened recently with Chinese artists and paintings etc.

Some big rich dealer buys some paintings from a Chinese artist whichhave a good value of around 30K and then starts putting them in the big sale rooms and Wonder of wonders one of the paintings sells for something like 6 million pounds.

  But thats another world and more to do with money than art.

I was amazed when auction houses like Philips or some others sell a string of lightbulbs for a million dollars etc.

Who the heck pays a million for a string of lightbulbs.

   Are these "players" milking the very wealthy ignorant buyers?

  Artists will always need good galleries because most artists cannot survive or have the time to market themselves or their art by themselves. Plus the galleries have the client list.

 I see nothing wrong with artists selling direct to buyers. Dali did it all the time but there again he mingled with the rich and famous.