What makes a gallery

Resch explained. Both Mr. Fuentes and Mr. Taittinger love their locations in the Lower East Side and Ms. Bortolami looks forward to moving to Tribeca.

Your gallery might run at a loss. Resch admits. So how do industry veterans like Bortolami and Fuentes stay afloat? They ride the ebb and flow of a volatile market. The Castelli Gallery would have been a mere picture shop had its owner not orchestrated public quarrels between his artists about what art should look like.

Like Kahnweiler, Castelli was a keen conductor of polemics; and like the German dealer, he also had financial ups and downs. Yet the American dealer, like Kahnweiler, had a clear vision with his gallery programme; he knew what conversations he wanted to foment and how to mould them into existence. Like all the best dealers, he had an essentially aesthetic intellect.

It is a high bar, but few contemporary art galleries today have such clear mandates; many have no real programme to speak of. All but a few of them present a smattering of artists who are practically blind to one another. What meaningful discussion could be had between the respectable mid-century paintings of Morris Louis and the garish fashion photography of David LaChapelle, who made his name with flashy portraits of Britney Spears and Brooke Shields?

What do these artists have to say to the young American sculptor Will Ryman, who once showed a sculpture at Kasmin made from coal that depicted Barack Obama and his national security team in the White House Situation Room?

A confused situation like this is partly the result of our eclectic and unfocused age. When movements collapse and artists splinter, it is difficult to make larger points or sustain conversational energy.

The art on hand looks in too many different directions. There is more leeway today for eclecticism than ever before. Contemporary art galleries do not fail because they are too conservative, but because they are not conservative enough.

There are other pressures too, because a gallery is not simply an aesthetic or historical project, it is also a business and there are financial considerations to take into account. Few dealers can buy a For most, rents in New York and London are expensive enough. Some, like Minus Space Gallery in New York, operate as non-profits the gallery focuses on geometric abstraction.

Other dealers, like Marian Goodman, represent artists who can bring in enough money to subsidise the larger project. Plus, the world of art and artists is unconventional — the people who inhabit that world are the most interesting characters and do not fall into the predictable patterns of tiresome career-based drudgery and unhappiness that so many people experience.

CE: My single biggest expense is rent. I do 4—6 per year, depending on my energy level. CE: Up until a year and a half ago we probably netted anywhere from 2—4 times our expenses. Miami, we usually are pretty good — six figures net, but we lost money the last two years, which is just unheard of. CGN: There is a financial obligation tied to representing artists. How many artists do you represent now? I work on projects now, so that can be a year, year and a half and then they go.

I find that exciting, but it also is nerve wracking. CE: My passion for what I do and the fact that I save well. We finally have our c 3 , and we have a different way of thinking about costs. Exhibitions Opening Reception. We own this building, which helps, but I have to pay the mortgage and taxes CGN: What single factor has mostly kept you afloat?

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