To Be or Not To Be an Art Monster?
How 'The Work' by Bri Lee made me reflect on my father's career
News & Reviews Magazine
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The piece you’re reading now is by Samantha Rosenfeld. Samantha is a public librarian living in Perth, Western Australia with her daughter and two cats. She is passionate about books and reading and thinks you should visit your local library if you haven’t in a while.
When my father retired after running an art gallery for 35 years, his wealthiest friend and customer threw him a party at his mansion. Artists, friends, family, and art industry insiders mingled around piles of oysters and staff serving champagne. There were speeches, and dozens of artists had sent video messages to voice their appreciation of my father’s work in giving them a space to show and sell their art, allowing them to pursue their passion as a career. It was glitzy, it was glamorous, it was filled with love, and it was expensive. The memory of that party provided a point of both connection and contrast with Bri Lee’s novel, The Work, much of which is set in the world of the New York art scene. One of the book’s two main characters, Lally, is an ambitious art dealer who hosts and attends parties with millionaire taste-makers, famous artists, museum curators, and influential critics.
Since I grew up going to art gallery openings every month, where I learned how to look at art and arrange a cheese platter at a very early age, I love reading novels set in that world. This novel focuses in on the ethics and the business of running a gallery, which led me to reflect on my father’s career. One of the biggest differences between Lally’s position and my father’s is illustrated by the fact that the lavish party for my father could never have been self-funded. While Lally owns Manhattan real estate full of carefully curated mid-century furniture, my family remained in our modest, middle-class home in the suburbs of Philadelphia for my entire childhood.
One of the central themes of The Work (there are several) is the struggle to balance ambition with integrity. In the aftermath of a personal crisis, Lally reflects:
‘At some point in time, her love of art had morphed into a love of her gallery, which had morphed into a love of seeing her gallery succeed, which had morphed into a love of being seen to be successful.’
This would be an easy trap to fall into in New York, a place that has long congratulated itself as the centre of the world, where artists flock in order to be seen—and to be seen to be seen—but only if they can afford the living costs. Lally feels it is her mission to platform young artists from underrepresented groups, but the financial imperatives of pursuing that goal in such a high-stakes environment lead her to poor decision-making and greed, in a cycle of ‘more, more, more’ that leaves her feeling hollow, and her goals and ideals compromised.
My father ran a gallery in a different time and place. Just 160 kilometres to the south, in the city of Philadelphia, there is a thriving fine arts scene (referred to as ‘second-tier’) that caters to those wealthy enough to show their good taste with the paintings in their homes, rather than the oligarchs looking to include art as part of an investment portfolio who buy from New York (‘first-tier’, of course). The kind of people who might have a holiday home in Florida, but not the Maldives. He sold enough art to keep us in middle class stability, and to allow the artists to keep making their art.
But most of his artists had financial backing in the form of a spouse or inheritance, and if they didn’t, they often also did more commercial work, such as illustrations. It certainly wasn’t some utopia where the most talented rose to the top regardless of circumstances. It was often wealthy people buying the art of slightly-less-wealthy people to hang in their houses.
For both Lally and my father there is an explicitly political dimension to this work. Lally—a millennial steeped in the identity politics of her time—has a strategy of alternating established artists who will reliably bring income, with up and comers from diverse and marginalised backgrounds, in order to raise their profiles. My father—a straight white man of the twentieth century—probably never considered this approach, although the artists he represented were quite diverse. He believed that making and sponsoring art for art’s sake was a political act, in defiance of America’s capitalist consumerism. The money side of things was distasteful—a necessary evil. This position is only possible when the art being sold is destined to be displayed and enjoyed, and not locked in a vault while its value appreciates—and as long as the artists have enough of a safety net that they don’t either starve or give it all up in favour of economic stability. Lally’s aim is to rise to the top of the art world, and to take the best outsider artists with her. Success for my father was remaining open through multiple recessions, when so many other art galleries closed their doors.
The artists who spoke at my father’s retirement party acknowledged his role in making their artistic lives possible, and many also acknowledged the other guest-of-honour who made my father’s work possible—that was, of course, my mother. She was present the whole time, keeping the house, raising my sister and me, catering and attending the monthly show openings.
How could any of it happen without a wife? (I use the term ‘wife’ in the sense popularised by Annabel Crabb in The Wife Drought, meaning the partner doing the lion’s share of work at home while the other partner is in full time paid employment.) This becomes a live question for Lally, who doesn’t want to recognise her own vulnerability, or her need for partnership and intimacy. She struggles with the idea that having a family, or even just a partner, will take away focus from her work. She asks herself:
‘Would a family of her own be an enrichment or a duty?... Would these things become the new vision from which art would have to steal hours?... Would it be possible, ever, to be a good person in life as well as a great person in art? Both seemed to require every ounce of her energy at all times.’
I very much doubt that either of my parents grappled with these questions before they married and took up the mantle of traditional gender roles in the 1970s.
I didn’t go to my parents’ retirement party, because almost 20 years ago, at a recklessly young age, I fell in love and followed a man to the other side of the world, just as the characters in the novel contemplate doing. Over time I ended up becoming a conventional wife, despite my feminist credentials. The combination of my husband’s all-encompassing career goals, my lack of clear vision for my future, and the ease of surrendering to societal expectations, led to a shamefully traditional labour split. I found myself—like so many other women—keeping house, taking care of our child, and squeezing my own life into the little spaces left after doing everything I could to support my husband. Inequality is not conducive to love, and so it ended.
The ending of The Work left me wondering if Lally could ever find satisfaction in a life not devoted entirely to her work. Is it ever possible ‘to be a good person in life as well as a great person in art?’ Watching the video messages from my parents’ retirement party, it seems worthwhile to be a good person, even if it means only being second-tier in the world of art.
What a wonderful piece Samantha, I loved it!
This is a great article. Thank you for examining the hidden structure that supports the art world. When I give talks to emerging artists I always emphasise the essential fact that to be a successful artist (particularly a woman because...patriarchy) you need to surround yourself with people who build you up and support your artwork in practical ways. This support is manifested in the myriad, thankless, often unnoticed tasks of running a house, buying groceries, helping children with school assignments, cleaning boring things again and again. I have seen many promising artists give up their craft, unable to find creative energy beneath the overwhelming wave of running other's lives. And, I have observed many successful artists who are, in fact a partnership with one partner supporting the art through being the accountant, publicist, social manager and agent for the working artist. Having a "Wife" is an unacknowledged piece of many artist's success.