Alan Schechner Gallery | Research News | Southampton Solent University
'New York City Art World Scum'
Alan Schechner art exhibition
Alan Schechner’s photography exhibition 'New York City Art World Scum' is running from 5 May 2011 at the Bargate Monument Gallery. In his new exhibition, Schechner turns his camera on the art dealers and looks at how we value art.
New York City Art World Scum
The Armory Show is America’s leading fine art fair and claims to show the most important art of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In March 2011, as a Southampton Solent University staff member, I waited with 30 excited Photography and Fine Art students to see the Armory show for the first time. Like them, I wore my camera around my neck looking forward to capture the best of the art on show.
Very quickly however I became aware that art as I understood it, an art of ideas, of aesthetic exploration, of political and personal engagement was nowhere to be seen. The artist’s voice had been silenced, artworks decontextualised , no information was provided other than price. The galleries were devoid of conversations discussing the roles and responsibilities of art in the world. Instead, all I could hear was the tap, tap, tapping of mobile phones, Ipads and calculators in the hands of black-suited art dealers.
So instead of taking photographs of the art, I turned my camera on the dealers.
The Armory show has sales of approximately $30,000,000* a year while the average American Fine Artist with 20+years of experience earns between $20-$55,000.**
You’ll see no prices on these works. All of my images are available for free download together with a scanned signature of my name from www.dottycommies.com/nycartworldscum| Feel free to use them as you wish.
Alan Schechner – May 2011
* www.artmarketmonitor.com|
**www.payscale.com/research|