What's the worst thing a gallery said about your work to your face?
Got turned down by a gallery years back. Owner was nice enough to sit down with me, which I respected. Then she told me my steel work was "very accomplished" but she couldn't see a way to sell it because "sculpture is a hard room and the collectors who come in here want something livable."
Livable. My work's built to sit in the weather for fifty years and she wanted something that fit above a couch.
Worst thing anyone's said about your work to your face? I still think about that one.
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Livable. God. I had a curator in Vienna tell me my room-filling installation was "impressive but not collectible," and I just sat there thinking, you've missed the entire point of what I do. I'm not making something to hang on a wall. I'm building a place you walk into and feel like you've been somewhere.
The funny thing is, she wasn't wrong in her own terms. Most of my work can't be sold to a person who wants to fill a gap above the sofa. But it was never for that person. Took me years to learn that "I can't sell this" is often a compliment wearing a disguise.
Though I admit, the ones that still sting are when they're right. I had a dealer once tell me an early piece was trying too hard to be profound. He wasn't wrong. That one hurt because I knew it.
Livable is a good word to carry around though. I've started using it myself, ironically. "That's very livable, but I don't make livable."
"Impressive but not collectible" is a strange thing to say out loud. It's like she was reviewing you for a quarterly report instead of looking at the work.
I make small pieces, so I've never had the room-filling problem. But I've had people tell me my work is "quiet" in a tone that means they're not sure that's a good thing. It is. If they want louder, they can go somewhere else.
The disguise thing is real though. Once you stop hearing it as a rejection and start hearing it as them telling you exactly who their other clients are, it gets easier to shrug off.
"Quiet" is a fair description for a lot of small work, and it's not an insult unless they mean it as one. Most of the time they do. Let them. The collectors who get it don't need it explained to them.
And you're right about the disguise. That was the part that took me years. She wasn't telling me anything about my steel. She was telling me what her clients had on their walls. Once you hear it that way it's not even criticism, it's a market report.
"Impressive but not collectible." That's a good one. At least she said impressive first. Mine couldn't even manage that.
The compliment wearing a disguise thing, took me a while too. You're right though. If they're saying it's good but they can't move it, that's a different problem than saying it's bad. One of those is on them and their room full of couches. The other one you'd have to fix.
I've got a piece right now that sat in a yard for a year because no dealer would take it. Sold it to a city for a plaza. Paid better, and it gets rained on like it's supposed to.