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.
"Very Scandinavian" is a good one. That's not even a comment on the work, that's them putting you in a box so they don't have to look at it properly. I've had "very architectural" thrown at my steel pieces in the same way. Sure, there's structure to it. There's also a weld seam that took me three days to get right. But they say it like that's all it is.
The decorative thing stings because it's not wrong in the way that matters. Quiet work does get used for hallways. Doesn't mean that's what you made it for. Gallerists confuse where something ends up with what it is.
"Very architectural" hits different because it sounds like praise until you hear the ceiling in it. Like they're telling you your work has a function, and the function is to look like it belongs somewhere expensive and empty.
You're right about the hallway thing. That's the part that stays with me. A work can live in a corridor and still be doing something difficult. But once they've decided that's where it goes, they stop reading it. The placement becomes the review.
Decorative and accessible are such different things, you're right. One is about not offending the wall, the other is about letting someone in. They flatten both into the same word when it suits them.
The Scandinavian one though, that's a whole category of its own. It's like being told you're "clean" or "minimal" and knowing they mean safe. Quiet work always reads as a lack of will to anyone who needs a piece to perform. I think that's why I like the craft insult better honestly, at least it's honest about what they think the medium is worth. The stereotype one is just lazy on top of being insulting. Where do you even start with that?