Art collecting 3 - The art work

The watchful eye and the art work.

When I started this blog, I wonder if what I have seen so far provides concrete lines on the practice of acquiring works for a collection and on how to look at works of art.

A work of art has different components: the work itself, the artist who creates it, and their artistic curriculum. As a gallery owner, there are many collectors who ask me for a dossier in front of one or an artist.

The artist dossier that the gallery will provide you includes training, exhibitions, fairs where she has participated, awards and acquisitions for relevant collections.

It is important to know how to read and relate the sections of the curriculum. Don't panic because with a little attention and dedication you can learn this. When you enter you will understand that at this point it would be impossible to cover all the possibilities or give lines of what is correct or what is incorrect or what contributes value and what does not.

We can start by dividing the artists into:

• emergent career artist
• mid-career artist
• artist with a consolidated career

This is not necessarily related to the age of the artist. But in this there is an important idea; Established artists were emerging  in their beginnings, as well as mid-career artists were also emerging at the time.

My recommendation is to start an art collection with emerging artists, emerging artists with works that fit the design characteristics of the collection. This does not prevent you from following artists from the other groups.

It is important to think that not all emerging artists become established, so it is interesting to follow the career of artists that seem interesting to us. I observe if they have a continuity in the representation and in the production and if important collections acquire their work or have noticed their work.

If you visit emerging art fairs, the offer is very interesting and also varied. Some works fascinate us from the first moment, others intrigue us, or attract us and raise questions. For this reason, it is important to reflect on the look of art, which is why I recommend visiting art galleries and reflecting on what we see. Do not forget that visiting art galleries is free and the artists that are now in museums and art centers were previously exhibited in art galleries.

In this installment I am going to recommend a text that seems interesting to me because it analyzes the look of current art, the author questions some ideas and some topics that are verbalized in front of a current work of art.

The text recomended is:

Polanco, A.F. (2004). Ways of looking in contemporary art. Edilupa.(Spanish)

The link to the text, which is freely accessible but its access requires a different job: In this case I recommend entering "Ways of looking at current art" in Google Scholar and opening the text of that title by the author Aurora Fernández Polanco.

I will attend or comment in private on questions or doubts that come to:

ojoavizor@mardevidaart.com

I hope you enjoy it and see you on the alert.