Last week as I browsed through the art galleries in Old Town Scottsdale, I came across a mutant breed of art gallery curators – art connoisseurs on the outside, used car salesmen on the inside. The moment I and my friends set foot in one of the galleries, the curator was upon us, asking us whether we were collectors. (Yeah right, I’m an art collector. Do Playboy centerfolds count as art?) Not satisfied with my answer that I was merely an ‘art browser’, he wanted to know what my budget for art was. The fact that I couldn’t even enjoy the paintings while he constantly droned in my ears about the virtues of collecting art, was completely lost on him. In a desperate attempt to lose him, I ventured that I wouldn’t be buying any art until I had a house of my own, but he promptly suggested that many folks ‘roll the cost of art into the cost of buying the house’. This is what I really wanted to tell him:
Mr. Curator. If I wanted to hear about loans and mortgages, I would go to a real estate convention, not an art gallery. Maybe I have the money to buy your art, maybe I don’t, but you will never know. The only reason I would ever buy an artwork, would be if I was totally smitten by it, not because you were constantly extolling the virtues of the artist in your glib tone. If I had the money to buy your art, not only would I _not_ buy anything from you, I wouldn’t even recommend this place to anyone. Art, my friend is something to be enjoyed like a cuppa on a cold winter day. To be sipped slowly while you inhale the aroma and let your senses absorb every nuance of it. Your salesman attitude is an insult to the profession. May the paintings in your gallery not have to suffer your shadow for too long.