Yes it was.

I like your attitude towards 7th graders.

It must have been exciting around 1961.

Thanks for telling us your experience. I’m sure you’re right about stage of career making a difference. I don’t recall exactly, but I believe I’ve read on Ed Winkleman’s blog that some young artists, “hot” for whatever reason, benefit artistically from a degree of insulation from the speculators in the market. Anecdotal, naturally. For someone like myself, I feel the more contact with anyone interested in my art, the better.

I appreciate Kimberly’s comments, though if there’s a thicker skin around than yours, I don’t know whose. Possibly Rex’s, but I believe he has taken himself out of this conversation.

Second, for some of my writing about art the blog to read is scriverart.blogspot.com. My experience with art in Montana goes back to 1961 when I first fell in with Bob Scriver, who was 47, just beginning his career. No, he was NOT like Charlie Russell. He was like the major Beaux Arts educated American monumental sculptors like the Borglums, Fraser, French, Dallin, et al who have gotten sucked into the category of “Western Art” through dealers and administrators, not academics. He didn’t use a gallery until the end of his life and then it was only because he didn’t have the stamina to both make art and sell art. But when he (we) “sold” art it was a full-court press. By the time we got through with them, they’d been on a picnic, ridden the horse, seen “secret places,” maybe witnessed a bronze being pouring — they were practically a member of the family. This was quite different from a Cowboy Artists of America show with whine and cheese, Dolly Parton hairdoes and cowboy tuxes (jeans on the bottom), everyone being la-de-dah.

When artists and galleries are young and full of it, both can afford to share customers and works. When an artist begins to sell for big bucks, a whole new dynamic kicks in. It’s like a diesel engine — hard to start, then almost self-perpetuating. Stuff sells for big prices because it already did sell for big prices. Few customers or galleries or even institutional curators can tell you exactly why. Towards the end they are waiting for you to die, in the hope that your prices will spike.

Am I cynical? You bet. But that’s only part of the story. It’s about managing the synergy, keeping the proportions of juice and heat balanced, not letting the Dionysiasism overwhelm common sense.

Of course, if you do “pretty” art for “nice” people there’s not much need to worry.

Prairie Mary

Rex: Perhaps “interests of the art galleries, museums, and other institutions” are not our interests any more. That’s what I get from such nonsense.

Rex, I think that’s Mary’s point.

Let’s not flame on this site.

Seems pretty clear to me.