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Copyright 2008 Ron Diorio
Courtesy of Peter Hay Halpert Fine Art
www.phhfineart.com/
Current Exhibition:
Hometown
Peter Hay Halpert Fine Art
September 4 - October 31
511 West 25th Street
Gallery 306
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September 30, 2008
The Uneven Progress of Creative People
Art is really a job for rugged individualists. Artists thrive when they learn to stand on their own two feet. They often find it easier to access their own inner creativity, build a unique style, and activate the latent ego-force that's necessary for growth. This doesn't prevent people from taking workshops, participating in group shows, or having a regular coffee (or something else) with creative friends.
September 28, 2008
Exhibiting in difficult economic times
I was down at the gallery yesterday and made an unscientific survey of 12 galleries on 25th Street - between 2-2:30pm on Saturday there were only 19 people that I counted in any of the galleries, 6 galleries had none and there was little street traffic.
Just read this:
From William Powhida
The reality is the art market is a lagging indicator. There won't be a spectacular crash, but how the auctions unfold this fall and sales in Miami should start to give us a picture of what the damage will be. As galleries start to close and artists lose representation, the oversaturated art market, which has produced a stunning amount of art about anything and everything, may start to develop some clarity. I wonder what will be left standing in the wake of the contraction. Whose work will still be deemed important by the critics when there is no money left to prop it up. I expect we will see a lot of discussion, debate, and movement to define what the last decade was really about. What will the story be? The umbrella of post-modernism is wearing thin.
Will critics matter again?
Yikes, glad I still have a day job.
Fraction Magazine
Fraction Magazine has a photo essay on zip 10013 by Donna Ferrato, New York's TriBeCa where my parent's lived for almost 25 years before it was overrun with celebrities, money and terror. Just wish you could link directly to the the portfolios.
I particularly like Bill Schwab's 22 Landscapes.
Also check out the Fraction Blog (now in my Google reader)
Stick'em up America
September 20, 2008
Photography, Spring 2008: Gregory Crewdson to Ron Diorio
From John Haber
Maybe art can no longer believe in Modernism's "make it new," but it can still make things strange. Several artists have returned to settings that Edward Hopper would recognize as his own and that Alfred Stieglitz might have photographed. Each has an abortive love affair with cities and towns, big and small.
Gregory Crewdson captures two years in the life of a small town. It could lie upstate, and yet to all appearances he might have invented it, and in fact Anne Hardy has invented hers. Sherry Karver and E. E. Smith turn to New York City itself, to see how individuals can elude today's surveillance cameras. Ron Diorio spans rural settings and city stoops, manipulating a painterly blur with digital precision. At least one, Karver, really is a painter. Each manipulates the light in order to see it, and each knows how the apparent clarity of vision can mask the strangeness of what it observes.
Read the whole article here
September 19, 2008
Art is an aspirational “trophy” product
Are these works worth these crazy prices?
It’s hard to say. Art isn’t like a stock or bond, with a calculable value. Each piece is simply worth what you can persuade someone else to pay for it. And that depends on fashion, the availability of cash, and how many people turn up at auction. Like a Gucci bag or a professional sports franchise, art is an aspirational “trophy” product—the super-rich compete fiercely for what they call “wall power” for their homes and offices. Many traditionalists, such as veteran New York art dealer Richard Feigen, would argue that works by the likes of Koons and Damien Hirst “have no place in the history of art.” He complains that their value is dictated by the “mafia” of the art world—dealers and curators who lead the gullible rich into paying absurd prices. Even so, contemporary art is often a profitable investment. Advertising mogul Charles Saatchi bought Hirst’s embalmed shark for $98,925 in 1991 and sold it in 2005 for more than $12 million. Still, it’s a risky business: A glance at the catalogues from 10 years ago shows that around half of the contemporary artists in them are no longer sold at top auctions.