Schmoozing Over Coffee

Art Exhibitions in your room - Schmoozing Over Coffee

August 31, 2020
By Samriddha Bhattacharya
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Image source: artnet News

The world is at your finger tips is no longer an euphemism, but a reality. Art is something which needs to be touched, felt and enjoyed in person, is a thought of the yore. Feeling it with your eyes is the new norm. Things which were previously unimaginable to have had a virtual existence, now do, thanks to this pandemic we are in.

This is how you will be visiting art fairs this year

So here's bringing to you two Indian Art Fairs that have gone virtual this year, to bring a touch of colour and aesthetics in your quarantined lives.

The India Story

An arts and design exhibition brought to the people of Kolkata by the Neotia Arts Trust has preponed its exposition from December to August this year and ventured into an entirely new platform. The India Story was an exclusively immersive experience where one could stand and admire all the art installations, and a live fashion show was also held by the top designers of the country. One could not possibly imagine how this experience could be duplicated online.

Different times call for different solutions, and as this is no normal year, the exhibition could not be normal either. While the underlying agenda of the exposition was all about business (exchange of pretty colourful pieces of work in return for some green paper), this year an educational web series in the month of August, leaving slithers of hope for those ever so optimistic souls, that the real exhibition might stand a chance in December.

The live web series will be covering conversations, workshops and performances from artists and designers from every nook and corner of India, and these events have started being broadcasted every Saturday from 15th August. These sessions will be held on YouTube, Facebook and their website.

OnArtFair

Mojarto (India's largest online art discovery platform) promises to bring together artists, dealers, collectors, curators, designers and enthusiasts onto one stage for netizens, by launching their online art exposition OnArtFair. OnArtFair is powered by 10Times, the world's largest platform for hosting business events.

This 3-day exposition began on 28th August 2020 and was divided into booths for art, events and contests. Even galleries were invited to take the online visitors through their collection, peppered with talks, discussions and cultural performances as well.

These are the only 2 full fledged fairs that have gone online. Individual galleries however, have started giving 360 virtual tours for its solo exhibitions.

The famous India Art Exhibition powered by BMW had just managed to avoid cancelling its plan by holding its show on the 29th of Janurary 2020. Let's see what happens for them in Jan 2021.

Business

Doing the Business of Art Management - Schmoozing Over Coffee

August 28, 2020
By Samriddha Bhattacharya
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Think art, you think of large exquisite colourful pieces depicting things beyond your understanding and costing pot loads of money. But there is a community of people and corporations who understand this world and have the money to spend as well. So what do they do? Just buy the art and hang it or cover it with a white sheet and store it in a moisture free room? No.

Art is the largest or at max the second largest asset. People may leave their loved ones when their property catches fire, but grab the artwork and run for the life of the art if not theirs. Art can be outrageously expensive and is almost at par with jewellery in terms of exquisiteness, intricacy and cost. Imagine those movies where there are people smuggling and families fighting over diamonds and rubies, stone specialists closely examining precious stones and super secret transactions with dollars having innumerable tailing zeros. Now replace the stone with art pieces, and everything is just the same.

So this is where the Collection Managers come in. They are hired by tycoons or corporations for dealing with these delicate darlings.

But what does a Collection Manager have to do?

Honestly, a lot of paperwork.

Clients see a piece of art through their Art Consultant and they just drop their business cards saying that their manager will take it from here.

Enter the Collection Manager. The art is bought and the title is added to collection. Now begins the real ordeal. Taxes. Art collections have heavy taxes applied on them, so there is obviously a lot of tax paperwork. Then comes the insurance. Your life may not be insured but you art definitely must be. Or else it will just be throwing thousands of dollars in the ocean. Cataloging the piece, Sales agreements, storage agreements and lease agreements come into the picture thereafter. Lease agreements refer to those documents where museums and galleries loan the art from the collector and display it in their exhibitions. The inventory management, maintenance and logistics are looked after. The shipping is also a super tricky area. There are a lot of airship right involved that need to be cleared before a piece of art can safely land in an another corner of the world. Getting experts to come and check on the art work and restoring them is also the job of the manager. Final part of the lifecycle is Succession Planning. This is the most crucial bit according to most Collection Managers and they set about doing it as soon as a transaction is fulfilled. The Succession Plan is used to document the future whereabouts of the piece of art and God forbid if the collector dies without a proper Succession Plan in place. This is especially useful when there are partial ownerships involved.

A Collection Manager needs to have a lot of focus on:

1. Planning - a lot of long term planning is needed while dealing with art. How will the artwork appreciate in value? What should be done when it appreciates? Who are the buyers worthy of this piece in the market? How will it help in fulfilling the Corporate Social Responsibility? How to loan it? What would be the longevity of this asset? And many more of such questions come into the job of a Collection Manager.

2. Organizing - The Collection Manager has the utmost responsibility of having the paperwork sorted for every piece in the collection. Any bit out of place and the tax committee will come crashing on them leading to hefty penalties.

3. Leading - They have to cooperate and look over multiple teams and people, the curators, the consultants, the lawyers and legal teams to name a few.

So it seems like the job of a Collection Manager ain't easy!

Image Source: Times of India

Business

How to do the Business of Art Digitally - Schmoozing Over Coffee

August 23, 2020
By Samriddha Bhattacharya
1 Comments

Artists, primarily the emerging ones, have often been considered to be people dependent on galleries for raking in moolah. They have to be accepted by galleries, galleries have to find their work promising enough to be displayed, there are commissions to be paid and many more hassles to be crossed before they actually sell a painting and get to see some money.

But there is a roundabout way to get a foothold in the business of art without any begging and pleading and searching, albeit with some knowledge of the web of course.

However, no matter how talented an artist you are, selling ain't all that easy. Remember Van Gogh?

How to go about selling art online?

There are 2 ways, so take your pick.

1. Personal Store

You are the sole proprietor of this personal website where you will be selling your art only. It will showcase your profile and your artwork which people will place orders for online. Also the added bonus of having no competition and no commissions to be paid, so the profits are all yours to keep.

But, the initial effort is quite high. You need to hire a web developer who will build your site and also maintain it, so there goes development and maintenance cost. Also cannot stress on the need for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) enough for the personal websites. To make your work SEO friendly, you have to word out your profile well and in depth. The more you write about your journey and your style of art, Google will understand you and show you to your audience.

You also have to be very careful about giving out the details of your work down to the very t, like the dimensions, the collection name, the price, the medium and even the philosophy behind the piece because that plays a great role in attracting the customers.

All of this is about the front end though. The back end, and by that I mean the financial end and inventory management, is where the real deal is. You are alone in this backroom and you have to manage it yourself. The billings, the returns and refunds and even the money. Setting up a third party payment system in your website is essential. Online Marketplaces usually use Escrow, a third party app, which stores the money till the transaction is satisfactorily completed (and by satisfactorily I mean that the art has reached the buyer undamaged, or the buyer has not had a change of whim and wants to return the piece) and then transfers the money to the seller. This is not the usual model for personal stores though, they are more into PayPal and Credit Cards. Having a safe and secure payment system is of utmost importance.

Refunds and replacements. is the murkiest side of owning a personal store. If the product reaches the consumer damaged, you do not know whether it happened on the shipping end or on their end, so you do not know whom to blame and you are the one bearing the losses. Courier companies do have insurance for damages done on their behalf but then again there are quite a few loopholes involved. Also, the customer may claim that the piece sent is not the one they ordered. So you need to go about having a safety net for yourself. And that safety net is having proper documentation. There needs to be clauses mentioned in the document that need to be agreed upon by both parties before the transaction is initiated in addition to the invoice of course which will come later on.

2. Online Marketplaces

The points that dampened your spirits in setting up a personal store are all killed in an Online Marketplace. All you have to do is just sign up and they will put your art up. Payments, shipment, returns, replacements and refunds are all managed by them, and they have tie ups with courier services as well, so that side of responsibility is shaken off. Online Marketplaces in fact help you to sell your artwork faster with no wastage of time on building personal stores, and at the cost of an initial registration fee. All of the process is entirely streamlined for ease of use on the artist's part.

It even ads a mark of trust on you when the buyer considers your work, and since they already have the resources for optimizing their store, you need not worry about visibility.

But all is not well in this village as well.

Firstly, you are one of the many artists present on show in the site. In fact among people who belong to the same genre as you do, so that just makes buyers compare your work with others, and that dims the process of selling your piece specifically. Also, you get to exercise no control over how you choose to display your profile on their site, unlike what you can do in your personal store. The personal store acts as another piece of your art actually, every element of the website speaks about you and reflects your style of art. All of this added branding will be missing in the online marketplace.

The biggest letdown is the commission. The cuts are large, and the higher the price of your work the bigger the cuts, so that leaves you with lesser profits. And most importantly, your work will have to be worthy of a certain price to be up on their site. So anything lower than their price floor, you will not be shown to the world via them.

However, it is up to you to list down and the pros and cons of each mode based on how much art are you going to start off with, what will be your updation intervals and decide what works best for you.

Points of Focus

Things that you need to consider irrespective of going solo or in an online marketplace:

1. Know your audience. You need to understand how the buyer market is online. Accordingly you will be setting the price as well, because you need to get an idea of how much they can spend on you.

2. Protecting your work through copyrights. Everything is honestly just a screenshot or a download away. Watermarking or uploading low resolution images don't go a long way. So get yourself registered for Copyright. That will act as your second shield after the documentation for sales.

3. Photographing your work. No matter how beautiful your artwork is, if you do not put up an equally beautiful picture showcasing your piece, your buyer is gonna skip it. So take into consideration the aspects of proper lighting, editing and background for your work. Since it is only the art that is going to be in the picture and not any other props, the work is a tad bit simpler, however dealing with the light is definitely tricky. You do not want some parts coming of darker or lighter than intended that will hide the details.

4. Building a great profile. This is the sealer of your deal. This is your brand value. This is how you will engage with customers and keep them engaged later on as well. Your profile is what will be followed by the buyers. Like I said previously, the philosophy of what you have created goes a great length in selling your work. Tell people how you came across this desire of making this your profession, the passion behind your style and why you connect to it. Videos are great tools for engagement and you can create a short video of you describing your journey and even film yourself while making a piece of art so that people can see the passion with which you work.

Now, the most essential part

How to price your art?

Never devalue your art.

1. Cost Markup

Calculate all your fixed costs, variable costs, overheads and set an hourly wage for yourself and for anybody you have hired for managing your studio. S. Based on that add a markup percentage on the sum and price it at that.

2. Comparison Pricing

Visit galleries and interact with gallery owners, art dealers, local artists. Find artists of your genre online and check their pricing rates and shipping policies, shadow them to see their prices according to the size and style of the art.

Art is no more just the expressing through colours. It is a full fledged business.

Image source: shutterstock

Business

Corporate Art Collections - Delving into the hows and whys of Business and Art - Schmoozing Over Coffee

August 15, 2020
By Samriddha Bhattacharya
2 Comments

Image source: chinadaily.com

When we hear of business and art, we think of something eye-catching that companies must have come up with in terms of packaging or display in collaboration with graphic artists or designers. But, there is a whole different side to the words Business and Art when said together, that is known as Corporate Art Collections.

To tell you a bit about what Corporate Art Collecting is - large organizations develop a collection of contemporary art for their office spaces. However, it is not as easy as it sounds. There is an arduous process involved.

Why do Companies wish to buy art?

To Inspire and Invigorate

The primary purpose of the corporate collector is to build an inspirational workspace for its employees. Art is always considered to be thought provoking, and these companies want their employees to gain different perspectives and approaches to their work by being exposed to art pieces. Art is always open to interpretation and triggers creativity in people and because of this, the companies want its people to be inspired in their own ways and go about bringing a change in their work. Sometimes, quite a bit of provocative work is also hung around, just to challenge the intellect of the employees.

Brand Image

Art is used as a part of the marketing mix for brand building and global image. The art that is collected is not supposed to be just any aesthetically pleasing piece of work. It has to be a representation of the values of the company. Every piece of work is carefully selected to align with the kind of image they want to portray to its customers.

Banks and Investment firms, that is, organizations that deal with numbers and are never associated with art in any layman's mind, are actually the biggest art collectors - JP Morgan Chase, Deloitte, Deutsche Bank, Aspen Insurance Holding Ltd to name a few. In fact, investment firms believe that hanging around young art in their office tells their clients that they are representatives of dynamism and are willing to invest in raw bright creative talent. As for banking institutions, contemporary art is supposed to tell its employees to keep thinking of making the bank relevant to its people because they are the ones dealing with nimble and changing situations all the time. They want to tell the clients that banks are not large sluggish giants stuck using archaic methods, but a sprightly bright athlete willing to change and chase. As a matter of fact, Deutsche Bank has even made a commitment to refresh its art collection to reflect the changing times.

Investment

Also, many would think that the reason that I am about to state is the real reason for these corporate collections, however the collectors heavily deny so. Art is an asset. Not just intellectually, but in terms of investments as well. The collectors carefully curate art that will appreciate over time, and can be sold in future to generate revenue. But, selling art does more damage for the company than good. When a company starts to sell its collection, it means that the company has hit rock bottom. Although there are times when organizations involve in healthy exchange of art, obviously for money though.

Ice breaker

Every team has at least one shy member, who is not able to melt his/her walls and approach team members or seniors. But, when employees look at a painting hanging from the wall, they start talking to each other, sharing their thoughts and opinions because they have found a safe ground to begin with and will not have any moments of awkward silence between them. Companies want to build a social work environment where there can be free exchange of thoughts. In fact some companies hold educational meets where the artists themselves come and talk about their work. These are just mechanisms used by the employees to build a more holistic forum outside the traditional work structure to cultivate relationships that might not happen in the office or even when the team heads out for a drink.

Social Responsibility

A lot of organizations even use art for their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) program. Supporting young and emerging artists is a common practice. Apart from buying renowned names, companies buy artworks of young aspiring artists who are yet to make a name. Corporates feel that this way they lend more credibility to the artists and people start taking note of their work. Some even commission the emerging artists to make work which will be for the organization only and not for the world. This provides artists with financial stability and allows them to get a strong foothold. Although companies run the risk of getting art which may not appreciate in value by buying untested artists, but it then becomes a part of their CSR program. Not just artists, they also sponsor temporary exhibitions in museums. The other important sponsorship includes awards. The winner of the award has his work bought by the sponsoring company. This allows the company to tap into the latest trends.

They also try to challenge archaic societal norms. For example, Aspen Insurance Holdings Ltd have a portrait of two women just staring directly at the face of their audience. Their belief is that although Aspen has quite a few female employees, the financial institutions are mostly male dominated, especially managerial teams are hardly seen as a place for women in the society. Unfortunately, their team too is a pray to this norm. So this portrait is supposed to be a constant reminder to men that they should bring about a change in this regard.

Why Contemporary Art only?

Old maritime prints and watercolours maybe fine to depict the history of the company, but they could never tell the company which direction to follow. Contemporary art defines the times in which the organizations are functioning in and one needs to flow with time to be relevant and sustainable. They cannot carry the burden of the past. Hence collections of contemporary art as supposed to be vibrant and revitalize the people associated with the company.

Deutsche Bank London Contemporary Art collection Image

Deutsche Bank London Contemporary Art Collection: Financial News

Types of Corporate Art Collectors

1. The Curators - mostly initiated by a person up in the hierarchy, who has worked in bleak offices in his prime, but fosters a love for art and wants his people to be exposed to it. They bring about their ethos to the cultural environment of their office space. There are certain office buildings which have built to make them favourable for displaying artworks.

2. Builders of Brand Identity - through art they wish to build a corporate identity. Use it as an an expression to differentiate themselves against competitors.

3. Philanthropists - these are the ones that are concerned about their social image, because in the current times every organization is bound by policy to give back to the society. So this is their way of giving back to the community.

4. All rounders - Companies that focus on building an identity that lets art permeate its brand image, social outreach and work culture.

The thread that ties them all together is their wish to make their customers perceive them in a certain light.

Challenges faced in building a collection

Maintenance of these precious artefacts in non museum environment poses as a challenge. People may bump into them and cause dents, scratches and other things that will lead to a dip in its value and a rise in the blood pressure of its collector. There was instance when an office cleaner on duty removed a chunk of metallic paint from a painting with his vaccum cleaner in an attempt to remove a spider from the painting. The poor soul was horrified, although the owners had a good laugh over it and brought back the painter to fix it, at an extra cost of course.

Justifying these expenses to the shareholders of the company. In majority of the cases the shareholders do not understand the reason for artwork in the office space, so bringing them on board is quite a difficult task. The art department and the company appointed consultant or in house curator need to make presentations and justify in every step regarding why it is acceptable to spend shareholders money in buying this particular piece.

It is also considered as a luxury for difficult financial times when jobs are being lost and salaries are being cut. So companies are blasted with the question of why choose art in such diabolic times.

Rapid appreciation in value is also a concern. If the collection becomes too valuable, it becomes a liability more than an asset because its insurance becomes a burden to the organization. The famous law firm Simon & Simon faced such a challenge once, when they realized that the maintenance cost of their collection was reaching unsustainable heights.

Consultants are required to build and maintain the collection. Unless there is someone in the company who understands art and is willing to dedicate the time and effort, it is difficult for a company to go about buying art. So consultants become a must for every organization. They have to treat corporate collectors differently from personal collectors. Consultants have to refer to the larger framework and identity of the company. The collections represent their collectors in some way or the other, so the collection should speak a message which defines their corporate identity with creativity.

Censorship is another shadow that the collectors have to keep in mind. There are some unwritten rules of the collection and they are:

No nudes or depiction of sexuality
No political work
No cultural defamation
Any work that appears offensive to the people of the company must be taken down

How to go about being a Corporate Collector?

1. Have a clear vision of how what you want to say through your art collection

2. Take professional advice. Consultants understand your brief and have greater connections.

3. Examination of display space is also imperative. Art needs to be admired and light and space play a great role in amplifying the experience art provides.

4. Budgets have to be set, because a business is a business after all and it cannot go around spending money in items that are considered decoratory by the world at large. It has to spend money on their operations than on other inspirational pleasures.

5. Storage and handling. Art is organic, so it requires to be handled with care and not carelessness. Any damage or mishandling can lead to losses of thousands of dollars.

Duetsche Bank Corporate Art Collection Image

Image source: www.db.com

So, amidst all these, it can be successfully said that the main objective through all these endevours is to ultimately maneuver the worlds perception of the company as a whole.

A book that played a major guide in my understanding of Corporate Art Collections is Corporate Art Collections: A Handbook to Corporate Buying.

Autobiography

Dior by Dior - Book Review - Schmoozing Over Coffee

August 14, 2020
By Samriddha Bhattacharya
0 Comments

The man who has built Maisan Dior - the home of Christian Dior, had never even thought that he would be the creator of one of the most popular haute couture brands across the world someday.

To begin with, he was a shy man, living happily working as a designer for a fashion house that he was very well settled in. But as chance would have it, he got called in by then industry magnate Boussac to takeover and remodel an existing fashion brand all on his own. Dior, the always doubtful man that he was, took quite a while to drive up a decision. He refused to take up the job, but offered to create an entirely new house of fashion right from scratch.

All of this happened in the year of 1947, right after the war, when Dior thought that women deserved to get out of the blase pantsuits and into something that celebrated the female form. Thus entered the "emphasized bosoms, hollowed waists and accentuated hips" in his collection "New Look" and it took the women of France by a storm.

He describes every phase of his couture life in undeniable detail and the descriptions of how he prepared for his collections every season is an absolute delight to read! He divides his process in explicable detail. About 60 sketches are formed in nights of creative haze, and then comes the visualization of those fabulous dreams. He had a team full of women dedicated to the craft to the point of it being a crime. They were there with him in all the hours he spent in the house of 30 Montaigne Avenue and lent a scrutinizing eye to everything that was laid before them. Dior, a perfectionist who drove himself, his workers, tailors and mannequins crazy, would run every piece of clothing that would go up on a mannequin, about a zillion times just to make sure that they were perfect. Often there would be moments when he would be stuck on one mannequin for hours trying to find out what was wrong with her outfit and end up adding a third button for the sake of aligning the aesthetics. Imagine the plight of the girl standing stiff in front of the man for hours at a stretch just for a button! Sometimes, he would throw away outfits, treating them as blasphemous designs, sending the model and the tailor, both into severe fits of tears. Whenever the models or their seamstresses came to him, pleading him to put their dress back in the show, he would try to explain to them with a heavy heart and say "It is true that I am demanding; but who is not, in pursuit of the realization of his dreams".

His obsession for everything beautiful was crazy. Dior had a passion for interior decor as well. Everything that was there in all his salons, workshops and stores, was his vision brought alive. The interiors also played a crucial role in his designs. He believed that there existed something called 'Salon Optics' just like Theatre Optics. The details which looked good in the workroom, didn't always look good on the model in the salon. Afterall, it was in the salon, that the deal would be sealed; all the ladies would be making their choices for purchases, the journalists will give the make or break take on the collection and retailers would make offers for unending stocks. So the clothes had to be salon ready. Bu at the same time, it couldn't happen that the clothes could only be suitable for viewing in a salon, it would then defy its main purpose of being worn around by women in general. Therefore, he had to strike the perfect balance to appeal to people both in the salon and outside it. Till the final night before the show, he would keep running between the workrooms and salons, sending piles of tules and tailors to and fro, while the models smoked while sitting semi-naked on whatever space they could find which wasn't drowned with clothing. He had a principle that he very strictly followed; he never looked at his clothes after the show was over. He believed that each creation was his child, and once they were revealed to the eyes of the world, he had given them the wings they deserved and they had lost the innocence they once possessed.

The other thing that he lost his mind about before the shows, was flowers! His love for flowers was not for professional reasons but entirely personal. Dior loved flowers as a child and has carried that love with him always to wherever he has travelled and worked. It goes without saying that a man who has such refined sensibilities should obviously be in love with flowers.

I came across something in his memoire that I have often heard modern day designer, the illustrous Sabyasachi Mukherjee say. Christian Dior wrote " Far from wanting to revolutionize fashion, I was chiefly concerned with producing a high standard of workmanship. Iaimed at being considered a good craftsman." If you are moved by reading this, then there is so much more to learn about his journey and the arduous hours spent in building the house of Dior, in not only Paris, but also New York and London, his other two favourite destinations.

Art Exhibitions in your room - Schmoozing Over Coffee

The India Story

OnArtFair

Doing the Business of Art Management - Schmoozing Over Coffee

How to do the Business of Art Digitally - Schmoozing Over Coffee

How to go about selling art online?

1. Personal Store

2. Online Marketplaces

Points of Focus

How to price your art?

Corporate Art Collections - Delving into the hows and whys of Business and Art - Schmoozing Over Coffee

Why do Companies wish to buy art?

To Inspire and Invigorate

Brand Image

Investment

Ice breaker

Social Responsibility

Why Contemporary Art only?

Types of Corporate Art Collectors

Challenges faced in building a collection

How to go about being a Corporate Collector?

So, amidst all these, it can be successfully said that the main objective through all these endevours is to ultimately maneuver the worlds perception of the company as a whole.

Dior by Dior - Book Review - Schmoozing Over Coffee

About me

I happen to be one of those people who prefer living their lives inside their brains. Vastly opinionated about things I feel strongly, and hence this blog acting as an outlet for my thoughts on mostly books that I read while sipping my cup of strong black coffee and even movies at times.

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