The Ones That Got Away

NEW YORK—What does the phrase “the New York art scene” actually mean? It means all of the galleries. It means the artists that those galleries show and who couldn’t imagine having their studios anywhere other than here. It means the museums. It means the people who visit the galleries and museums. It means the auction houses and the collectors. It means the art schools and the students that arrive here every fall. It means the publishers. It means the magazines and Web sites and blogs that churn out a constant stream of information and opinion.

But the scene also includes a rather less visible underclass: the thousands of people who think of themselves as artists, who work hard at their practice, and who have done so for many years, but who never get shown in the sorts of galleries or magazines that I’ve just mentioned, let alone in the museums. Still waiting for success, these people think of themselves as part of the New York art scene, and the reasons why they aren’t embraced by it—despite the passion that they bring to their work and the energy that they devote to sustaining it—provide key lessons about the nature of art in this city.

Despite the familiarity of the expression, it’s not the case that “anything goes” here. Although it would be impossible to predict everything that’s going to show up in Chelsea’s galleries this fall, for example, when you look at some of the work that definitely won’t be there, you begin to realize that certain territories are off-limits. In addition, it’s clear that some skills and personality traits, while not absolutely necessary, are certainly an advantage. Never-say-die confidence in the value of your work, an awareness of how it can find its place within or beyond current art practice, savvy about the art market and its major players, and an instinctive understanding of contemporary relevance are all important. And of course it never hurts to have a degree of good old-fashioned luck.

In the vastness that is the New York art scene, with so many thousands of individuals spinning around in it, the difference between success and failure can come to down to a question of who you know, which parties you go to, and who you talk to. But for many artists, that all-important chance encounter never happens.   

“A Matter of Confidence”
Audrey Gottlieb has worked as a professional photographer for over 20 years, since giving up a full-time job in public information at the United Nations in 1985. She calls photography her “passion” and she continues to devote herself to it. Ask her how many photographs she takes a year, and she responds with a smile, “Well, let’s say I’ve been doing it for 20 years. What’s a million divided by 20?” And how many has she published or exhibited in that time? “Oh, just a drop in the bucket.”

Maybe she’s being a little modest. She’s shown consistently in group and solo shows; she’s been published by the New York Times, Newsday, and a bunch of magazines; she has work in private collections from here to Tokyo and many places in between; her pictures have been included in all sorts of books; and she has her own Web site, www.audrey-gottlieb.com. But when you take a look at her site, you’ll see that her exhibitions have not happened in any of Manhattan’s commercial galleries. They’ve been held in places like the Lobby Gallery of the Durst Organization on Sixth Avenue, the Public Library of Dover, in New Hampshire, and the Joseph P. Addabo Building in Jamaica, Queens. Her work is in public collections, but not those of MoMA and the Met. It’s in the collections of organizations like the Hellenic Cultural Centre in Queens, the New York City Convention and Visitors Bureau, the New York Folklore Society, and the Queens Borough Public Library.

So why aren’t we more aware of her? Well, first, although her work is well suited for many publication or illustration purposes, there is little about it that surprises. Its visual language is familiar and picturesque, pleasing rather than provocative. She’s worked a lot for travel magazines, and one senses that her work is valued more for the topographical, social, or ethnographical information that it carries than its ability to make us understand that information in new ways. It’s perfectly suited to the United Nations, for whom she’s completed a number of assignments, but apparently not to a contemporary photography gallery.