Money Isn’t Everything
Money Isn’t Everything
Matthew Slotover of Frieze
Matthew Slotover is not only the publisher of the successful twenty-year-old English art magazine Frieze, he is also the organizer of several large art fairs of the same name in London, and soon also in New York. Is there still a future for art criticism without commercial sidelines?
The relationship between what it means to write criticism, publish criticism, and actually making money out of it is changing. Frieze is in a particular position with regard to its dual role as a fair and as a magazine. Did you know you were going to be running a fair when you started an art magazine?
‘Definitely not. When we started the art magazine, it was kind of like a fanzine. We didn’t consider it as a business, either, for maybe ten years. It was something that we thought would be really interesting to do, and fun. And that we would learn, and be around interesting people, and hopefully contribute something other people wanted. It just brought together lots of things that I love, which had been writing, design and magazines and publishing, and then I got interested in art, and looked at the publishing that was going on in art, and thought it was kind of poor.’
Other people were doing something that didn’t work?
‘Exactly. I thought the magazines were really badly written and designed. This was around ’89, ’90, with the peak of a kind of philosophy masquerading as art, bad philosophy masquerading as art philosophy, and vice versa. For me, if you look at art criticism over the last 40 years, that was a real hole. There was a lot of incredibly pretentious writing. I studied a bit of philosophy, and I could tell these people were not philosophers. They also weren’t art critics, but artists, galleries and critics all thought this was the clever way to write about art, because they thought it made the artist look clever, and the philosophers thought it made them look glamorous. It was horrible.’
Was that a particularly British problem?
‘No, it was international. It was in the States. Places like Australia and Canada were particularly bad, but we were also infected in England.’
In Frieze’s first ten years, how did it work as a commercial operation? This is a current question about the supporting economies for art magazines.
‘Typically, all publishers have two or three revenue streams, from sales on the newsstand, subscriptions and advertising. Specialist magazines rely more on advertising, certainly in art. But we had some Arts Council funding for the first ten years. We had £19,000 a year, which at the beginning was maybe a third of our annual revenue, so it was very important. By the end it was about five percent of our revenue, and they said, “Well, maybe you could live without us now.” We said, “Yes, fine.”’
Did they take shares in it?
‘No, they didn’t! It would be a smart model. I do wonder. The “venture capital” Arts Council could be a really good move…’
Going back to the question of whether you ever thought you were going to be running a fair, did it strike you at some point that there was maybe a limit to an art magazine in English coming from Britain? A fair obviously is a sideways move, which perhaps is strategically quite shrewd.
‘Or stupid! I still don’t know. We’re not as strategic as we get credit for! We started in ’91, and around 2000 everyone changed their roles. Once you’ve been doing something for five or ten years, you sort of feel like you need a change, that you’re a bit worn out, not coming up with fresh ideas anymore. We did some book publishing. It was very unsuccessful, financially, but rewarding and fun to do. At the same time, London was becoming a major international art centre, which it was not in the early ‘90s. Even when Tate Modern opened in 2000, it was unclear if London could stand an international art fair. It was probably that night when Tate Modern opened and the whole international art world came to London that we thought, “Yes, you know what? London can be an international art centre.”
When we started the magazine, if you wanted to know about young art, you went to the commercial galleries, because the museums were not showing young artists. If you wanted to see a lot of international commercial galleries in one place, you went to art fairs. So we went to Paris, we went to Cologne. Cologne was really the big one then. I mean, we had no interest in the art market. We had no idea what people are buying and selling. We never covered that kind of thing in the magazine, but we thought art fairs were great places just to find art and look at art. We just never had this anti-art fair feeling that some people have. We used to love going to art fairs. You meet people, you meet writers, you talk to galleries about artists. What was not to like?’
When you set up the fair, was the idea to be able run Frieze as a broader business that might cross-support itself? There is a lot of talk about commercial viability and economies of art. The issue is whether one cross-finances different types of operation, and there are various models that have emerged. Take, for example, e-flux, which I find interesting. They run a news service…
‘It’s advertising, basically, isn’t it?’
Well, they charge to send out information, but then they take the revenues and they do projects, and now they’ve started a journal, so there’s an issue about critical influence…
‘They do Art-Agenda as well. It’s not branded e-flux, but it’s very, very closely linked. It’s the same email that the galleries are paying to go in, that there’s criticism in.’
Yes. Do you want to comment on that?
‘We’ve all got to negotiate this all the time. When we started the fair, a lot of people said, “Hold on, you’re a magazine, and you’re intellectuals, and now you’re in the market. Isn’t that a conflict?” We were slightly upset and offended that people might question the integrity that we’d built up. So with the fair, we thought, “What are the potential conflicts? What are the scenarios?” Let’s say we have a gallery who says, “I’ll do your fair, as long as you cover my artist in the magazine.” What do we say in that scenario? Well, we say, “Admission to the fair is through the selection committee of peers, other galleries.” Clearly, Amanda Sharp [cofounder of Frieze – ed.] and I are responsible for selecting the editors and the selection committee, but that’s where it stops.’
I guess my question was about how to constitute different ‘wings’ of a commercial operation. I mean did you think, ‘Well, the resources that might be generated out of a fair might allow us to do more things with the magazine’?
‘The fair and the magazine are separate limited companies, and they’re both profitable. The fair lost money a bit to start with, like most start-ups, and then broke even, and then started making money. We’ve always had a policy on the magazine where we kind of spend what we’ve got. I don’t think we’ve ever – maybe in 1999 or 2000 we made a loss – but basically it’s been a break-even or occasionally profitable situation the whole way through.’
Tell us a bit about internationalisation and regionalisation. You’ve just launched a German edition of the magazine, and you’ve just launched a New York edition of the fair.
‘Maybe it’s another of our seven-year cycles. For a few years we’d been thinking, “Okay, this is working. What can we do next?” I’ve always been very surprised about the art magazines in Germany because I’ve never thought they have the magazines that they deserve. Throughout Germany, Austria and Switzerland there is such an amazing array of museums and galleries and artists. There’s basically Texte Zur Kunst, which is kind of on the October end of things, and then there’s Monopol, which for my personal taste is too personality-led and not ‘serious’ enough. So we couldn’t really see a magazine in the middle, like us, I suppose. The new edition is in German and English. Initially we thought of it just in German, but Jörg Heiser said, “Look, in Berlin about eighty percent of the art world is non-German speaking.” In fact, that’s one of the problems, he felt, that there’s a lot of debate that goes on in German, but not in English, and vice versa. So to have it bilingual, you’re bringing those two communities together.’
Coming back to art fairs – there are a lot of fairs that don’t have that kind of overview, editorial, or whatever you want to call it, curatorial, cultural overview, and can end up becoming simply spaces to hire by just anybody.
‘I don’t think that’s because they don’t have that overview. I mean, we’re all looking at each other. If I were to start an art fair in, say, Nigeria, and I were a businessman who had a big space, I would probably just go down a list of Basel and Frieze art fairs, and ask those galleries to participate. They’d be my number one choice. I wouldn’t have to know anything, really. I could just see what other people are doing – and that is happening. I mean, even without the brand thing, we’re trying to get what we consider the best art in the fair.’
So you are projecting an idea of what it is that should be seen as…
‘… good art.’
That means you need an idea of what’s good internationally, which takes into account understanding things from an international perspective.
‘Well, that’s the committee’s job. It’s not about us being an art-savvy brand who know about art, and other art committees don’t. I was surprised, having come from art criticism, how in touch and smart a lot of the galleries and collectors were, to be honest. There are galleries and collectors who know about artists way before you or the editors on the magazines do. So I would reject the idea that the good selection of galleries in the fair is directly coming from the magazine.’
So you’re looking for a ‘culture’, not a market?
‘Yes. Some of the galleries that we’re most interested in having in the fair, and most proud of having – we a great deal of time trying to convince them to do the fair – are some of the least commercial galleries in the world. Maybe certain museums and critics would be interested in their work, but they struggle, even if they’ve been going for many years. The art is a bit more difficult, but they do amazing exhibitions in their gallery. It’s not just about a market-led thing.’
With regards to the cuts facing public funding for art institutions, does it concern you that that reduction in support will change the kind of art that’s made?
‘It’s really hard to know. Of course, there were people, when all the cuts were coming in, and the recession came, who said, “This is going to be a great thing for art.” You know, “the best art appears out of adversity”. And that was my experience in the early ‘90s here. The art everyone still talks about coming out of Britain for the last twenty years was done with zero public support, really. That’s not to say I welcome any of the cuts, or think that museums deserve their funding to be withdrawn, because I think, particularly in Britain, they’re doing an amazing job.’
You’re fairly agnostic on the dynamics of public and private, and how it might affect what you’re most interested in.
‘Artists, if you give them two pence, they’ll do something. If you give them £2 million they’ll do something. If they’re great artists, they’re going to make it whatever. The production scale might be different, or the materials they use, or the venue they do it in, but the really committed people who have to do it, who really have got something to say, they’re going to find a way. So it’s not the end of art. It’s not the beginning of art. I think you’ll probably get the same amount of great art developing in different scenarios.’
JJ Charlesworth is a critic and editor of ArtReview, LondonJJ Charlesworth is a critic and editor of ArtReview, London
– Frieze Art FairRegent’s Park, London- Frieze Art FairRegent’s Park, London
13-16 October13-16 October
JJ Charlesworth