Artoon
Thursday August 21, 2008 | 09:41 by | permalink
Filed Under: General
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Very funny Pablo. Responding to the image: the legalization of same sex marriage is a hot issue this election year, but gay marriage has been “de facto legal” and part of the art world’s social whirl for a long time. Various states and municipalities now just catching up to an existing social reality.
But this is really about gallery musical chairs, a phenomenon not limited by gender or sexual preference. Since there are generally no binding contracts, no legal marriages, there can be no real divorces. But long relationships between an artist and dealer, consummated over the years at openings and parties, written about in the art press, can lend the illusion of permanence. So if they end, the public rift is dramatic, at least within our rarefied art precincts.
Interesting that the artist is represented as the fickle, opportunistic member of the wedding, the potential “cheater”. Dealers also drop artists, although most recent attention has been devoted to those star artists who are able to “trade up”.