Art on Paper

"We're not interested in art at the upper echelons of the market."

Q: Your Triple Candie project, strikes me as a refreshing change from the art world's traditional "high foofie" approach, more concerned with personality cults, speculation and snobbery than with taking the joys and benefits of art to a wider and deeper public. Do you intend to carry this fresh point of view into Art on Paper?

P: Well, we run the two as totally separate enterprises, to maintain the integrity of each. Triple Candie is a not-for-profit, run with a team of volunteers, that focuses primarily on three-dimensional work. Art on Paper is for-profit, with a staff, devoted primarily to two-dimensional work. They do, however, share a certain spirit.

S: And we're not interested in art at the upper echelons of the market. At that point, art ceases to be a vital thing and becomes an asset instead. We're much more interested in art that can break down barriers-social, racial, economic-and that has a democratic or egalitarian spirit. The types of art we focus on through Art on Paper--printmaking, photography, drawing, artists' books, and ephemera--are all categories of art-making that have that potential.

P: And most of the exhibitions we present at Triple Candie are ephemeral, temporary, and are constructed out of common everyday materials. Although installing many of those shows is labor-intensive, when the show is done, we often throw the art away. With the artists' permission, of course.

"... fangs and bangs..."

Q: "Who reads this, anyway?" is a question which haunts all publications and dominates many editorial lunches. What do you think the profile of a typical Art on Paper reader looks like?

P: They have fangs and bangs and long black hairs growing from their ears. OK, actually many are collectors or artists. There are lots of teachers and professors who subscribe. And we know that most prints or drawings curators in the United States read the magazine regularly. In the last three months, our readership has increased. Borders, one of the two major book chains in the United States, is promoting Art on Paper as part of its "Borders' Recommends" program. That has resulted in a big boost in our print order. Our newsstand circulation is the highest its ever been in the history of the magazine.

Q: A question for Shelly: What's a painter girl like you doing in "marketing and finance?" How did that happen? Aren't art and business mutually exclusive? How does one go about building the subscription and advertiser base of an art magazine? How are you getting on?

S: I have always had creative interests along with a strange and undeniable fear of and ironic lack of interest in money. I think it all started when I heard about my father's uncle, who lived in the next town over, and who buried all of his money in his back yard because he didn't trust the bank. I somehow related to this as child and still do today. When that relative died, apparently most his money was still underground because he could never find it once he hid it, kind of like a squirrel with it nuts.

The good thing about a squirrel's absent-mindedness, however, is that those lost nuts turn into oak trees. Anyway, at an early age I saw my father as obsessed with money, and it embarrassed me, and made me reject it. As an adult, I have always led a very simple life with very few material things, and because of that I don't get emotionally consumed by money.

Q: A question for Peter: How did you get involved with the Jacob Lawrence projects? You seem to have devoted a great deal of time and effort to them (three books!) What has all that expenditure brought you in return?

P: It helped me to understand how art can, in fact, play an historically important role in society. Lawrence was an incredible artist who realized that he could make a big statement with modest means. In the late 1930s and early 1940s, he created five painting cycles, four of which were on the lives of great abolitionists-Toussaint L'Ouverture, Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, and John Brown-and one on the great Migration of African Americans from the rural South to the urban North. He painted them all while he was in his late teens and early twenties. Imagine being a twenty-year old black artist in 1940 and painting a single artwork composed of sixty small paintings that required hundreds of wall-feet for their installation.

Q: Do you have a personal preference for one on-paper medium over the others? Would you like to confess it here?

P: Printmaking. Worldwide.

S: Personally, I like the underdog of the group: ephemera. It is cool and weird, and no one really seems to care about it. When we were in Basel, last year for the art fair, there was a panel discussion on ephemera, with one curator, a collector and an artist, and they were so passionate about these little scraps of nothing, that they converted me.

"... what really mattered was how much art I was looking at every day..."

Q: Shelly, I note that you have worked as a curator. This is a figure which has always fascinated me. I never met a kid who wanted to be a curator when she grew up. How do you get there? What does one study? Are there choices in this respect, or does it have to be art/art history? What is the career path? How does one find it? What are the problems? What are the rewards?

S: There is no one way to get there, although early on I thought I had to follow a particular course. My masters in art history helped, but what really mattered the most was how much art I was looking at every day, and how well I could articulate what I saw. Artists love to go on and on about their work, and back then, when starting out, I actually listened to everything they said.

"Most art magazines alienate their readers..."

Q: I thought the "What are You Looking At" feature which you ran early on in your editorship, Peter, was an interesting educational initiative in the magazine, asking ten art professionals to comment briefly on works of "new art." How important do you consider Art on Paper's didactic role?

P: I think the best way to teach people is to stimulate their curiosity about the world around them. If we're doing our job, the magazine will do that. It will make printmaking interesting to people who are reading it because they are interested in drawing. It will make artists' books interesting to readers who are photographers. Most art magazines alienate their readers. I hope we can do better.

Q: And while we're on the subject of "new art," do you think that the recent renaissance of representive (old) art we're seeing in the Eastern countries is going to establish new criteria for quality in art? Are young artists going to have to learn to draw?

P: Artists need to be able to communicate their ideas efficiently and effectively and drawing is one way to do that. To be a good artist, I don't think it's mandatory to know how to draw. It very much depends upon what type of art you make.

S: I don't agree, artists need to learn the fundamentals of how to draw a nude reclining before they can move on. Although this is perhaps an old fashioned way to think, art is still 50% visual appeal. And when things aren't made, painted, drawn right, it distracts from one's appreciation of it.

"Journalists aren't the main problem. Art IS a new asset class."

Q: We find that art coverage in the generalist press is pretty much limited to outlandish auction prices. You know, "A piece of paper sold for $11 million dollars…" Shouldn't somebody run a short course for journalists, a sort of "remedial-reading course" in art?

S: Yes, good idea. But journalists aren't the main problem. Art IS a new asset class. And most people in the art world are so seduced by the market that they can't think straight.

P: I don't think this is a reversible trend. It is not just about the current boom of the art market. The root causes of the problem are fundamental to American culture, capitalism, and the American dream.

Q: As art-on-paper specialists, how serious do you consider the poster / reproductions / giclee people referring to their copyware as "art prints?" Is this fraud or merely marketing? What's to be done about it? Or do we just reaffirm our admiration for P.T. Barnum's: "There's a sucker born every minute."?

S: Yes.