Artists on Loan
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Wier, whose gallery opened just last summer, says he mounted the show to foster cooperation and a sense of community among art dealers battered over the past couple of years by a difficult economy and a collapsing art market. “People in the art business are pulling together more now,” notes Wier. “I am trying to get behind artists and push them in ways” they haven’t been pushed before. Dealers who loaned Wier their artists say they decided to participate because it made good business sense. According to Ken Saunders of Deson-Saunders Gallery: “The recession has changed the art business dramatically, and it’s now all about exposure for the artist.” Indeed, if nothing else, Wier’s show will provide a number of artists from other galleries one more opportunity to display their work in a commercial setting. Adds Tim Lowly, an artist represented by Gwenda Jay Gallery whose work will be on display: “I wish this kind of show would happen more often, but there seem to be a lot of notions of loyalty and allegiance in the art business here.” Local dealers working with Wier claim they’re not worried. “If one show is enough to take an artist away from another dealer, then the relationship probably wasn’t very solid to begin with,” notes Gwenda Jay.
What happens when a theater company by the name of Steppenwolf snares a first play called Picasso at the Lapin Agile penned by a Hollywood celebrity named Steve Martin? You wind up with national publicity of a particularly repellent kind, like that found in the November 29 issue of the New Yorker. Adam Gopnik’s sycophantic take on Martin’s attempt to transform himself from a comic actor into a serious author begins by describing a reading of Picasso at the Lapin Agile last spring at Martin’s Beverly Hills mansion with Tom Hanks, Martin Mull, and Remains ensemble member William Petersen. Gopnik goes on to describe the first day of rehearsals at Steppenwolf this way: “The cast members said hello to each other, and tried not to look too excited at the presence of the famous comedian.” Any attempt at objectivity was completely abandoned when Gopnik blithely summarized the reviews as “mostly excellent.” In so doing he chose to completely ignore the assessments of Tribune critic Richard Christiansen, who called the work more of a conceit than a play, and Reader critic Albert Williams, who said the play was a “TV sketch for the stage.”
