What's the most backhanded compliment you've gotten from a gallery?
I had a gallerist once tell me my etchings were "very nice, very craft", the way you'd praise a child for a tidy bedroom. Said it while looking at the most conceptual piece in the room. I still think about it. It taught me more about how they saw printmaking than anything they actually said.
What's the most backhanded thing anyone in a gallery has said about your work? The one that made you smile and seethe at the same time.
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Had someone from a gallery call my collages "very decorative" once. In that tone that means pretty but empty, like something you'd hang in a hallway you never actually look at. And I sort of get it, my work is quiet, it doesn't shout. But decorative isn't the same as accessible. Those are different things and they knew it.
The one that really stuck though: a gallerist told me my work was "very Scandinavian" and walked off thinking it was a compliment. I'm not sure she'd have said it that way if she knew what she meant by it. Nothing like being flattened into a stereotype while they're smiling at you.