It’s supposed to be a good thing when art meets marketing, because marketing bridges the gap between a piece of art and those who appreciate it. However, it becomes almost nauseating when art actually is the marketing. An e-mail from the Kluger Agency, who represents Mariah Carey and Ludacris, proposed offering the owner of Double Happiness Jeans, a virtual sweatshop in Second Life, an opportunity to include Double Happiness Jeans, with the right price, in the lyrics of an upcoming Pussycat Dolls song. While Pussycat Dolls is not a band with too much integrity that will cause heart attacks to their fans, it’s still scary to imagine the possibility of other artists writing songs to advertise products and companies that pay them.

However, who is to blame? Digital music and file sharing have forced the musicians to scour for new revenue sources. Music itself has become less of a product, but more of marketing, branding, merchandising, and targeting rolled into one. This trend can be verified by the fact that more and more major artists such as Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails offer their music for free or whatever price people want to pay. Licensing deals, brand extensions, product lines, live events, movie and TV deals are where the money really is.

What about the contemporary art industry? The sales shows that an art piece is still the product, one that can sell for millions of dollars. Sotheby’s and Christie’s, the two main auction houses, together sold an eye-popping $12.5 billion in artwork last year—an annual increase of more than 40 percent. However, who determines the value of an art piece? Artists?  Buyers? Dealers? Or galleries? My answer is the marketing. Marketing stimulates demand, marketing creates a social status of ownership, and then marketing determines the value of an art piece. The success of some of the most popular artists throughout history is often due to their performance as businessmen. Damien Hirst, undeniably the most profitable artist alive, was once accused by The New York Times of being less of an artist than “the manager of the hedge fund of Damien Hirst’s art.” And as we all know, Andy Warhol once observed: “Good business is the best art.”

Art, when it meets marketing, sells.

Unfortunately museums in the United States aren’t quite as generous as those in London - most of whom open their doors for free to art patrons. However, this Saturday, September 27th is Museum Day across the country. Organized by the Smithsonian Magazine, Museum Day is a great opportunity to discover new venues that you would have otherwise put off. Visit the Museum Day website and use their interactive map to find a participating venue near you.

Towards the end of summer, I started learning Adobe Flash from scratch and after two months of learning, I built and launched my first Flash Web site a week ago.

Here is a little background of my Web design skill level before I started: I have experiences in using Photoshop, Dreamweaver, HTML, CSS and have built two Web sites. So I’m familiar with Adobe’s interface and Web design and development, but never used Flash before.

I found a plenty of online tutorials that are extremely helpful. And I selected and organized them into my top 5 tutorials for the very beginners (like me) to build a Flash Web site.

1. Adobe Video Workshop Adobe itself is a great source for learning its products and this video inventory is great for beginners. Select “Flash” in the top left column, choose “getting started” in the top right column, and double click the videos in the center column and the learning begins.
2. Tutvid.com This site provides video tutorials for specific applications commonly used in Web design such as drop down menu and photo gallery.
3. Good-Tutorials This is a tutorial aggregator that organizes tutorials into various topics such as “Animation” and “Interactivity”.
4. Latest Videos This another tutorial aggregator focuses on video tutorials.
5. Flash My Mind If you want to dig into ActionScript 3.0, this site has comprehensive tutorials elaborating the AS 3.0. They are very well organized and easy to navigate step by step.

There are a lot more out there but this should be a great set to start with.

Recently I met this artist Landon on Newbury St. in Boston, just right by the J.P. Licks. His dark, surreal kind of drawings caught my eye and I finally chose the one called “today’s dream is tomorrow’s nightmare,” which I really liked both the concept and the artwork. You can see his info and arts on his MySpace page or maybe on Newbury st. if you are lucky.

“All Eyes On My Morning Jacket” feat. the Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestra enlisted the help of the band and their fans to shoot footage of My Morning Jacket’s festival performance using digital cameras and cell phones from all angles.

My take on this video is that when people can see the differences they make and get credit for them, they are more than happy working for you. On the other hand, if people think their presence doesn’t make any difference, they would just wonder why they are even here.

Naturally for us, this applies to our fall round of intern recruitment.

5 months ago I started working at For Art’s Sake Media as an intern without having previous related working experiences. I was realistic enough to know where I stood and what I had to offer. Coming to work hearing people throwing around terms and stuff that made me wonder what they were, I knew I had to make a difference in myself before I can make a difference in the company. I did whatever responsibilities came to me and learned from everything, listened to people’s conversation, asked questions and read a bunch of stuff, trying to make myself more “web-savvy” and “in-the-know”. This is a good learning environment if you like entrepreneurship, Web 2.0, social media, Lil Wayne and Burning Man. The key is to be positive, proactive, and a little bit wild.

Good luck to the upcoming new blood.

Recently I had an opportunity to chat with Natalie Kocsis (aka Natty) regarding EndlessRoom. I came across her art after seeing an interview with her on Current TV.

She is a very talented artist in the Brooklyn area and will be featured in Contempt’s 10th Anniversary gala and art show. Keep an eye out for her work once we launch EndlessRoom.

The winner of the 2008 Next Star Artist Competition, Herb Williams, is currently having a solo exhibition of his work at the Monsoon Gallery in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. According to the Monsoon Gallery press release “The Monsoon show will include many flowers ­ a perfect subject choice due to the intense saturation of color the crayons give Williams ­ as well as several homages to great artists throughout history. Williams’ art can be enjoyed by all, but audiences with knowledge of art history will especially enjoy seeing his take on the work of artists such as Jim Dine, Alexander Calder, Paul Cezanne, and Albrecht Durer”

Standing On The Shoulders Of Giants
July 11 - September 3
Opening Friday, July 11

Location:
Monsoon Gallery
11 East 3rd Street
Bethlehem, PA 18015
610.866.6600
www.monsoongalleries.com

Press Reviews:

• According to Caroline
• Museum PR News
• Montgomery Newspapers

Image Source:
“Homage To Andre Serrano”
15? x 17? x 17?
mixed media
in artist collection
©Herb Williams

About the Author
Nicholas Forrest is an art market analyst, art critic and journalist based in Sydney, Australia. He is the founder of www.artmarketblog.com, writes the art column for the magazine Antiques and Collectibles for Pleasure and Profit and contributes to many other publications.

A report into the questionable conduct of some of Australia’s top art dealers and auction houses by the current affairs program Four Corners has led to a formal complaint being made regarding the practices of Australia’s top art auction house. Rodney Menzies of Australia’s leading art auction house, Deutscher Menzies, has been accused of inadequate disclosure in relation to minimum price guarantees given to the owners of works being sold through the auction house. Also part of the complaint are allegations of unethical practices relating to the sale of works of art through his own auction house that Mr. Menzies either owns or has part ownership in as part of a syndicate. These unethical practices include instances in which Mr. Menzies has allegedly sold works that he owns through his auction house and then purchased that work through, or as part of, an entity that he either wholly owns or partly owns for the purposes of creating better results for his auction house.

The complaint has been made against Mr. Menzies by several rival art auction houses who are of the opinion that this lack of disclosure and misleading conduct have resulted in inflated prices and misleadingly positive perception of the performance of his auction house and the art market as a whole. Several examples of this misleading conduct are available on the Four Corners website including the example below which indicates that Mr. Menzies purchased a work outright that he had himself consigned to the auction as part of a syndicate of owners.

Arthur Boyd’s Death of a Husband

This picture was consigned to the August 2000 DM sale and sold to private buyer who consigned it to the DM September 2004 sale and was purchased by a partnership syndicate (including Mr. Menzies as a partnership member), the picture was subsequently consigned to the LM February 2007 LM sale and 100% ownership of the picture was purchased by Mr. Menzies. Mr. Menzies consigned the picture to the DM June 2008 sale and it was sold to a private buyer.”

Misleading conduct by art auction houses and art dealers is a very serious matter that is putting the future of the art market at risk for what can only be considered as opportunistic greed. If these art dealers and auction houses participating in questionable practices had any brains they would be trying to ensure the longevity of the art market boom instead of using inflationary tactics to make more money faster.

View program on Australian art market.

Image Source: Owner of Menzies Art Brands, Rod Menzies, with a painting by Brett Whiteley titled “Olgas”

About the Author
Nicholas Forrest is an art market analyst, art critic and journalist based in Sydney, Australia. He is the founder of www.artmarketblog.com, writes the art column for the magazine Antiques and Collectibles for Pleasure and Profit and contributes to many other publications.

The more information you have about artists and the art market, the better your chances of being a successful art investor.  Check out the full post to see my top ten sources for videos

I’ve worked with a lot of graphics people in my years on the web, not that I’m that old but it just seems to work out that way.

The best and the brightest I’ve worked with lately is, suprise suprise, For Art Sake Media’s own Greg Blake. His ambition, talent and drive have made our design process awesome– not to mention his pitchfork worthy music collection.

So here’s to you Gregory!