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Bangkok may become arts capital of Asia


MrX

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i stand corrected. i have a few friends who are under contract with galleries and they do take 50%, but i have not enough insides about the business.

i only wonder how a gallery can work on only 20% and still do the necessary legwork and promotion for an artist.

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Hi Fly,

 

the segment of the art market I know, i. e. galleries who work national and international take 50% for contemporay art well. Usually this works have an fixed price for a certain time.

 

But there is a different way of working with arts, especially with older works of art, which usually do not have a fixed price. Many galleries (and especially the gallery I am associated with (no, not as an artists)) work with living artists on 50%, as well on commission with (mostly older) works from collectors or from other galleries. Usually the commission is more or less 30%. If you sell a piece for 20.000 or 50.000 US$ 30% commission is fine, but it is not to much for the effort which is usually necessary for a sale.

Galleries with a strong financial background prefer to buy from collectors and sometimes store the works for a few years to increase the profit considerably. But for this you must be very well funded which most galleries are not.

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Maybe it varies from country to country, but with major artists I've worked with (Venus Bienalle calibre, in the main institutions) then 40% in Australia, and other places has been the norm. In Thailand the galleries are sometimes greedier. The more pull the artist has, the better he can get the price lower.

 

The galleries that work on 20% are often at the low end, and are there to encourage students etc.

 

That said a mate of mine who showed her once had a exhibition and ended up with 10%! Ie the gallery took 40%, the person who introduced him took 40% and then some one else took 10%. He imagined when they said 40% commission that would be it, not that EVERY ONE would take 40%!

 

Singaproe used to charge a high commmission, but its dropped, as has Japan and Taiwan.

 

JB

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>>>That said a mate of mine who showed her once had a exhibition and ended up with 10%! Ie the gallery took 40%, the person who introduced him took 40% and then some one else took 10%. He imagined when they said 40% commission that would be it, not that EVERY ONE would take 40%!<<<

 

 

that is taking the piss!

i reckon though that this gallery will have to close soon, only inexperienced artists will exhibit there, and that only once.

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why such a stagnant arts scene? I'd suggest a couple historical factors.

 

50 odd years of fairly autocratic rule which indirectly (through education) suppressed a 'creative' environment.

 

a fairly oppressive 'nationalistic' art mindset. Art is not art unless it's Buddas and temple murals etc.

 

a very 'cliquey' art scene with each group putting more energy into undermining and backstabbing each other than creating better works.

 

absence of a patronage class. your average military dictator is an utter philistine in a faux Versace shirt. Those educated overseas and perhaps exposed to Western art concepts tend to turn up their nose at the local product.

 

No transition from traditional estacical???? (religious) art (temples etc) and secular art.

 

A total obssesion with style over substance. Thais have an eye for decoration but ignore meaning.

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"why such a stagnant arts scene? I'd suggest a couple historical factors.

 

50 odd years of fairly autocratic rule which indirectly (through education) suppressed a 'creative' environment.""

 

Dont know about this....autocratatic rule is pretty common yet art flourishes what about Franco, though often in exile

 

"a fairly oppressive 'nationalistic' art mindset. Art is not art unless it's Buddas and temple murals etc."

 

Sure official art stinks mostly...but the mindset is always there somewhere question is why dont thais oppose or de-bunk

 

 

"a very 'cliquey' art scene with each group putting more energy into undermining and backstabbing each other than creating better works."

 

yeah but the dearth applies to literature too which is often a more private creation

 

"absence of a patronage class. your average military dictator is an utter philistine in a faux Versace shirt. Those educated overseas and perhaps exposed to Western art concepts tend to turn up their nose at the local product."

 

great (even good)artists somehow 'sear' their patrons, fashion them if you like

 

"No transition from traditional estacical???? (religious) art (temples etc) and secular art."

 

this confuses cause with effect IMHO

 

"A total obssesion with style over substance. Thais have an eye for decoration but ignore meaning."

 

Hera we are reluctantly at thai nature where I didnt want to arrive!!

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What is art if not about the nature of man(kind) or nature and mankind?

 

Anything else to me is craft, not art.

 

There are a few artists here I like Vasaan a obvious choice for me, the Pink Man photographer and few others.

 

NO ONE from that crappy gallery H which is a western concept of "creating" a artist for monitary gain, sacrificed against talent/technique/and critical concepts.

 

JB

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>>>There are a few artists here I like Vasaan a obvious choice for me, the Pink Man photographer and few others.<<<

 

 

both are racist wankers symptomatic for the problems of the thai art scene.

 

manit, the "pink man" amateur photographer, has mainly excelled in ripping off the styles of other, more gifted, photographers. look at his black and white book and you see the styles of certain other photographers here, than you see his own stuff, and that completely lacks empathy.

look what happened after araki was brought here by apinan from the chula: not long after manit copied araki's flowerseries. the history of manit is a smart maneuvering of apinan. he exhibited manit with far bigger names than manit to get his name promoted, than pushed manit to international artfestivals over the head of those other photographers.

look what they brag now about manits inclusion in that book about the 100 best living photographers. if you know how that book was put together you will understand the hoax: the editor asked lots of curators for their favourite boys, obviously apinan was also asked.

 

vasan is mainly a womanising drunk who blatantly rippes off artists like the early baselitz (have a look at vasans famous character heads from isaarn and then have a look at early baselitz portraits...). i remember a few years ago the visit of the queen of england. vasan made on that occasion a "poem to the queen" - enough to say about that piece of shite is that it basically consisted of the F... word. he then said that it was supposed to be some allegory firstly against "colonialism" and then about a topic we better do not talk about here on the board.

 

now, lets have a look at the so called political activism of those artists.

vasan was trying to make a great statement about politics, and went as a human shield to irak. in reality he had a nice time in a 5 star hotel. than ask yourself what happened at the same time here in thailand - the drugwar. where was that great political artist from thailand during the horrible time when deathsquads murdered thousands of thais?

look at manit's great activism durin g the filming of the beach: oh, the bad hollywood. but where was he when thai companies film in ancient towns such as sukkhothai? those companies do not take the effort to clean up everything before and after filming such as the beach people did. more the opposite. also making hollywood responsible for the destruction of ko phi phi is a joke not worth discussing about.

very funny was when manit received a few threads (which he marketed very well) - he pissed of where? to some asian country? nops - he went for a holiday to greece which his little pubertarian rich princess ing-k financed (and don't get me started on that cow!).

 

those two are the embodyment of everything that is wrong with the thai art scene. two "artists" who have very little talent, but who use the existing mafia like systhem to their own advantage of making very good money. sucking the right cocks, pretending to be what they are not.

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