An introduction to the key figures of the drawing. And so you need to develop and market your works of art, your best works. Maybe you require to grow a full-time writer, or perhaps you don’t aspire to that much, and you want to pay for your hobby to cover the costs of buying brushes, paints, canvases, and pencils. But when you think about the art market, it appears to you as something exclusive and reserved for a few. This article will explain the history of the modern art market and the key figures to know to understand how it works.
Find out how the art market works
As we saw some time ago, it is possible to promote one’s works of art even outside the traditional channels, without necessarily contacting the public in the third millennium. A well-designed website, well-managed cultural tools pages, and you can have a reasonable likelihood of doing your business right under the nose of some potential client. Of course, it is not easy. For this reason, we have also decided to package a unique guide to social media marketing for artists to move in the right way on Facebook, on Instagram, on Pinterest, and on specialized platforms for artists.
However, there is no doubt that despite the tools made available to us by the web, it would undoubtedly be better to combine the online promotion of one’s works with some attempts on the side of the classical art market. But what are we talking about when these words are used? In short, what is the art market, and what are the key figures that make it up – and with whom an artist should interface?
How the modern art market was born
It is still a bit early to have the precise figures on the art market of 2019. However, looking at the surveys released last year, we know that the global market’s value in 2018 was 67.4 billion dollars. It is a studio by Claire McAndrew, founder of Arts Economics, created for Art Basel & UBS). In short, the art market is a huge thing. But how was such a ‘monster’ formed? Well, the art warehouse is undoubtedly an utterly new creature of landscape drawing.
First, there was the Academy
In fact, until the second half of the nineteenth century, the public did not make good and bad weather in the art world, which was practically not contemplated. The Academy alone counted, which could lead an artist to success or, more commonly, leave him limited outside its walls. It was precisely the extreme rigidity of this system that pushed designers to look for a different way to live in art, and therefore another way for artistic consecration. If before a creative work had to be appreciated by the Academy to reach the ‘market,’ in the modern age, this step becomes useless.
The revolution of the Salon
We can make the birth of the modern art market coincide with the first edition of the Salon des Refuses, which was held in 1863, to welcome the artists rejected by the Academy and, therefore, by the official Salon. It was none different than Napoleon III who promoted this special event, and it was there, on the occasion of the first edition, that Edouard Manet presented. The work, the portrait of a breakfast on the grass with oil painters, had been rejected by the Academy but met with the general appreciation of those looking for something new.
And it was around Manet that the group of Impressionists was born, who in 1874 organized the first exhibition, dedicated precisely to this new artistic current. The show, provocative and intensely modern, with works capable of upsetting the criticism of the time, made people talk about itself: from there to 1880, the Impressionists organized 8 exhibitions, which constituted the initial nucleus of a network that, expanding well beyond the French borders, determined the cultural – and economic – success of Impressionism.
A unique collaboration among artists
This benefit was possible thanks to the purpose and talents of the artists, of course, but also thanks to the support and participation of collectors with avant-garde interests, innovative critics, and merchants, first of all, Paul Durand Ruel, seen by many as the true inventor of the new ‘economic’ side of art. In short, the modern art market was born when the Academy forcibly took a step backward. But who are the key figures of this world today?
The key figures of the art market
Who is the art market formed by? On the one round, there is the professional. But, on the other deal, there is the public, among which potential buyers nestle. Between these two poles, other figures become mediators in one way or another: before taking the first step into the art market, it is, therefore, reasonable to know precisely the roles of each one and the differences between a figure and the other.
The art critic
Creative works have ever been the topic of value ranges. But the public is not always able to follow the story offered by the artist. So here begins the significant and started development of the art critic. Its function is to help understand valuable works, and it can be seen as the honest central mediator between artist and audience.
Indispensable for new currents, the critic is helpful even when dealing with apparently ‘easy’ works, which hide symbols, anecdotes, or technical virtuosities that the public – and therefore the potential buyer – could not grasp. Consequently, it follows that the art critic, even before being feared, must be seen as a hypothetical ally of the artist: getting in touch with an art critic with a similar sensitivity can be a good springboard for an artist who wishes to promote his work.
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