Move Over Galleries: Artists Sign With Agents
THE ART NEWSPAPER
By Cristina Ruiz
The British artist Stuart Semple has signed a contract for worldwide representation with the fashion agency Next Management, a move that highlights again how the traditional artist-gallery relationship is changing. Several artists, including Damien Hirst and Keith Tyson, have agents or managers who provide financial advice and handle their business dealings with galleries, but Semple says his collaboration with Next Management will more closely resemble relationships in the music industry, where managers act as a buffer between their acts and the outside world, helping to promote their work and negotiate their projects. [link]
Early pioneers of this type of collaboration are the California music managers Pat Magnarella and Roger Klein, who have represented the US rock band Green Day for more than 12 years, helping them to sell 75 million albums. Around four years ago, the pair started to sign visual artists. They now work with half a dozen, including the street art couple Miss Bugs, the British painter Charming Baker, the graffiti artist D*Face, New York-based Logan Hicks, and Chris Levine, whose portrait of the Queen is on the £100 note issued in Jersey to commemorate the Diamond Jubilee. “I’m not interested in getting the art world to know about my artists; I’m interested in getting the world to know about them,” Magnarella told The Art Newspaper in 2009, explaining how cross-promotional projects could help to raise awareness of the artists on his roster.
By Cristina Ruiz
The British artist Stuart Semple has signed a contract for worldwide representation with the fashion agency Next Management, a move that highlights again how the traditional artist-gallery relationship is changing. Several artists, including Damien Hirst and Keith Tyson, have agents or managers who provide financial advice and handle their business dealings with galleries, but Semple says his collaboration with Next Management will more closely resemble relationships in the music industry, where managers act as a buffer between their acts and the outside world, helping to promote their work and negotiate their projects. [link]
Early pioneers of this type of collaboration are the California music managers Pat Magnarella and Roger Klein, who have represented the US rock band Green Day for more than 12 years, helping them to sell 75 million albums. Around four years ago, the pair started to sign visual artists. They now work with half a dozen, including the street art couple Miss Bugs, the British painter Charming Baker, the graffiti artist D*Face, New York-based Logan Hicks, and Chris Levine, whose portrait of the Queen is on the £100 note issued in Jersey to commemorate the Diamond Jubilee. “I’m not interested in getting the art world to know about my artists; I’m interested in getting the world to know about them,” Magnarella told The Art Newspaper in 2009, explaining how cross-promotional projects could help to raise awareness of the artists on his roster.
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