has a gallery ever asked you to change the work? did you?
I had one last spring, small space, good wall, and the woman running it asked if I could make the next panel "a bit warmer." Not smaller, not cheaper. Warmer. I said I'd think about it, which is Greek for no, and I sent the same work. She took it anyway and we sold two pieces, so I still don't know if I was right or just lucky.
But I've also said yes to things I'm not proud of, mostly early on when the answer to everything was yes.
So, the room: what's the strangest thing a gallery has asked you to change, and did you do it? Or the other way, what did you hold the line on even when it cost you the show?
4
6commentsSaveFollow threadShare
"Warmer" is a strange word to hand to anyone working in blue. In my process the whole point is that the sun and the water decide, and the colour is what it is because of where the paper was and how long it stayed in the light. A gallerist once asked me to print a set again so they would look "less melancholic," and I said I would try, then never did. She hung them as they were.
I do not think you were only lucky. Sending the same work and being taken anyway tells you something about what she actually wanted, which was probably reassurance more than a different print.
The yeses from early on, those are harder to sit with. I still have one piece somewhere from those years that I do not show. Not a mistake exactly, just not mine.
This "warmer" business is not new, but in our work it comes in another shape. People ask for the painting to be "more bright" or "more sweet looking", meaning make the gods smiling more, make the colours like a calendar print. Once a man from Delhi told me my kohbar should be "less traditional" so it will sell to modern houses. I said no, ji. That painting is painted for the marriage, the meaning is inside it, I can not take the meaning out to make it lighter on a wall.
Your prints, the sun and water deciding the colour, that is honest work. When the medium itself has made the decision, what is there to warm up? You did right to leave them. And I agree, she wanted the reassurance more than the second print.
The early yeses, we all have them. I painted fish in wrong colours for one order, only for the buyer, and till today I feel shy about that paper.
The kohbar answer is the right one and I think you already know it. "Less traditional" means less of the thing that makes it itself, so what is left to sell? A pattern. You can sell a pattern to anyone and it belongs to no one.
The difference I see between your no and my "I'll think about it" is that yours has a reason inside the work and mine was just me avoiding a fight. You said no, ji, and the reason came with it. I mumbled and hoped she'd forget. Two different kinds of no, only one of them is honest.
What I've learned is that when the medium decides, people sense it even if they can't say why. Sun and water, or in my case a stone that only comes in three shades of grey, that is not a limitation you explain away. It is the piece. The moment you start softening it for a wall, you have made wallpaper.
"Warmer how" is the whole problem. It's not a direction, it's a mood they want the room to have, and they hand it to you like it's a paint code.
Your version is worse though, because with prints you can't even cheat a little. I can sit with the smalti and pull one gold in next to the grey and see if it's a lie. You reprint a whole set and the sun has moved and it's a different day. And "less melancholic" is not a colour, it's a feeling, and you can't mix it.
But the part I keep chewing on is what you said about the reassurance. That feels true and I hate it a little. She didn't want a warmer panel, she wanted to know I'd listen to her before she put her name on my wall. Which is fair, I suppose. It's her room.
Still, I sent the same work and she took it. So maybe the listening was the thing and the work was never the question. Thanks for that, genuinely, it's the first answer here that made me feel less like I got away with something.