I read Edward Winkeman’s blog from time to time, sometimes going by his openings and having briefly spoken to him last year at one of them.  I don’t generally comment on Winkeman’s posts but this one on The Logic Behind the 50/50 Split seemed so well written and thought out, if you will, that I had to post about it.

I don’t show my own work or want to really, because Art for me, is not about commercial acceptance - it’s about self development (which takes a whole lot of pressure off) and I feel it really should be that way for Artists, in general.  Having said that - most Artists, I’m sure, feel galleries take advantage of them and gouge, taking more than a fair share of the profits.

But Winkleman has done a convincing job of explaining the other side - what a Gallery has to invest before they ever see a profit from an Artist’s work; based on the argument Edward Winkleman laid out, I’d have to agree with him that a 50/50 split of profits between Artist / Gallery is fair.

With emerging artists - the work in creating a market for an Artist’s work totally justifies a 50/50 split:

“..Essentially, a gallery is investing in an artist, betting they can develop a market for the work and (one day hopefully) see a return. Like any investment, however, this includes a significant amount of risk. There are far more artists who didn’t become overnight sensations out there than otherwise. Regardless of how well-connected or determined a gallerist is, there are some artists with more challenging work for whom it takes years to sell anything. If it takes five years to develop a market, for example (which is not that uncommon), that will represent at least two solo exhibitions on average, meaning the galleries I surveyed might at this point have invested as much as $50,000 in this artist (including taking the work to art fairs and promoting it in between exhibitions) before they see the first significant sales. Unless those sales total $100,000, the gallery will still be waiting, five years later, to break even on their investment. Multiply this by the number of artists in a gallery, and you begin to sense how risky a business it can be.”

The whole equation comes down to risk management.

What happens when an artist is established and has a market?  Well… the 50/50 split becomes the 60/40 or 70-/30 split - the Artist’s work has a stable market and risk is less that expenses can be recouped..therefore, the Galleries take should go down; and if it doesn’t the Artist is strong enough to leave and find a better deal with another Gallery or out on their own.

What’s interesting now … is the practical implications of the Internet for Artists who either have an established reputation (and a market to sell to) or Artists that key into a popular trend and can exploit the demand for their work.    It’s possible to foresee eliminating the Gallery altogether, along with the Dealer, and some Artists have begun to do that.

Think of it this way…in Real Estate, sites like www.Zillow.com  have developed the technology to tell buyers what the value of a sellers property is for any given location, along with the forms and processes needed to negotiate a deal.   Who gets cut out of that deal….the Broker.

With Architectural House Plans, many sites including some of my current and former SEO clients (ie: www.mascord.com, www.thehousedesigners.com, etc) make money by selling architectural house plans directly to builders who then create a house and usually flip it - cutting out the Architect (though the sites that offer this service are run by Architects..figure that one out! - life makes strange bedfellows).

In both cases, the Middleman is eliminated the market is better defined and the buyer is more enabled.  I think the same thing could happen for Artists - if the buyers were more equipped…no one would need the dealer or Galleries at all (but they provide other functions as well…and I, for one, like going to Gallery Openings and drinking Red Wine…so I don’t want dealers to disappear, if only for that!).

The comments on the Winkleman post are as interesting as the post itself - and I noticed that Edward Winkleman is a true influential in the Art World, based on the amount of comments he gets in his posts - it’s phenomenal how much he touches the people who read his blog.

Based on the comments I’ve read on this post, like those of julie , I think it’s clear the goals of Artists and the Goals of Gallery Dealers are not the same.  I found the same issue at Google Unbound conference earlier this year with the goals of the Publisher diverging from the goals of the authors being published….I think we should expect that each needs one another but has different points of view and different reasons for the relationship.