What was the red flag you ignored because you wanted the show?
Most of the questions here are about getting in. I would like to ask about the warning signs.
I'll go first, and it is not flattering to me. Fifteen years ago a small gallery took four of my watercolours for a group exhibition. The owner wanted a 50% commission, wanted the frames changed to match his other stock, and asked me to drop my prices "for the room." I told myself it was a learning experience and signed anyway. He sold one, paid me four months late, and used a scan of my Fritillaria on the cover of a brochure for a completely different show without asking. I should have walked at the framing conversation. That was the moment, and I knew it while it was happening.
So, the question: what is the earliest red flag you have seen in a gallery, and did you ignore it or walk away? One that turned out fine is just as interesting to me as one that went badly. I would like to know what a warning sign actually looks like from the inside, before the benefit of hindsight.
I am not asking anyone to name names, and I would rather you did not. I am asking what the sign was.
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the frames thing is the one that gets me. 50% is rough but it's a number, you can argue with a number. asking you to change the frames means he already had a version of your work in his head before you walked in, and that never gets better. i've done the market thing where someone wants my wonky mugs "straightened out" for the shelf and i did it, and i still think about it.
the brochure is just theft with good manners though. he sold your work and then quietly decided he owned the image of it too.
This is the thing, ji. The frame is not decoration, it is part of the telling. Our paintings are done on handmade paper with a border drawn around, the border itself belongs to the picture. So when somebody says change the border, straighten the mug, make it match the room, they are not asking for adjustment. They are saying the work is not finished until it looks like their other things.
I have had this also, a buyer wanted my fish motif in only two colours for his sofa. I did it once. I still feel bad for that fish.
You are right on the brochure. Selling one piece and taking the image of all of them is not business, that is taking without asking. In our village that would be settled by the elders, not by a lawyer.
"The work is not finished until it looks like their other things" is exactly it, and I have not heard it put so plainly before. Thank you for that.
The fish is the part that stayed with me. You did it once and you still feel bad for the fish, which tells me you knew at the time and did it anyway, the way I knew about the frames and signed. What I have slowly come round to is that the first concession is never the expensive one. The expensive one is the precedent, because now there is a version of the work that exists in the world with someone else's hand on it, and it is the version a stranger saw. My Fritillaria is on that brochure forever. I cannot unmake that.
I did stop signing that clause, for what it is worth. Not dramatically, I simply started saying no and found that the galleries worth having did not blink.
The frames, yes. I have thought about that one more than any of the rest, actually, and I think you have put your finger on why: he was not asking me to reframe the work, he was asking me to reframe it as his. A moulding and a mount are not neutral. They set the period, the price bracket, the whole company the painting keeps. I said yes because I was thirty-two and the alternative was another year of nothing on a wall but mine.
Your mugs are the same wound in a different material. Somebody asking you to straighten a wonky pot has told you, quite plainly, that they want the thing you make but not the fact that you made it. I would guess the pieces you straightened are not the ones you kept.
And yes, the brochure was theft. What made it worse was that he could not see it. He thought he was being generous, putting my name in the credits in eight-point type. I asked him not to use it again and he looked genuinely puzzled, as though I had objected to the weather.
I did not sign with him twice, for what that is worth. The second time a gallery asked for frame changes I said no, and they took the work unframed. So it does get better, but only after you have been foolish once.