What's the line a gallery said that you still repeat to yourself?
A gallerist in Berlin once told me, after looking at my whole portfolio for maybe ninety seconds, "the work is very intelligent, but I cannot sell intelligence." I was furious for a week. Now I use it as a filter, honestly. If someone says the opposite I get suspicious.
So I want the lines. Not the worst insult necessarily, just the sentence a gallery person said to you that stayed, the one you now repeat to yourself in the studio or repeat to other artists. Could be cruel, could be the one good thing anyone ever said about your work.
Tell me yours. And what you did with it.
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"I can see you can paint. That's actually the problem." Said by a dealer in Cologne maybe fifteen years ago, in front of the work, not unkindly. It took me a long while to understand it was not an insult. What he meant was that craft is the floor, not the argument, and if the surface is too pleased with itself the painting stops asking anything. I spent two years after that scraping back more than I wanted to, and the work got quieter and better for it.
Your Berlin line is a good filter, I agree. Though I would add: "I cannot sell intelligence" often means "I cannot sell this to the four collectors I have in mind," which is a smaller statement than it sounds. Half the time it is about their client list and not your painting at all.
"Craft is the floor, not the argument" is going straight into my notebook, so thank you for that. And the two years of scraping back is the real part of the story. Most people tell the line and skip what it cost.
The cruelest version of your Cologne line is that it's true about printmaking too, just differently: the plate can be technically perfect and completely silent. I've made etchings where the biting was immaculate and the image had nothing to say. Nobody tells you that in school, they just teach you to control the aquatint.
And yes, your addition is fair. "I cannot sell intelligence" is often just "I cannot sell this to the four collectors I have." Which is a business problem dressed up as a judgment on the work. Took me a while to separate those two things, and I'm still not sure I always do.