Commissioning Contemporary Art

A Handbook for Curators, Collectors and Artists

Louisa Buck, Daniel McClean

• Publisher: Thames and Hudson Ltd
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9780500771525
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Art Theory & Criticism

This handbook provides the definitive guide to commissioning contemporary art. Every step and stage is revealed and demystified from the initial invitation to an artist to the financing of a project, from the drafting of contracts to the final siting and installation of works, from the care and preservation of commissioned pieces to their interpretation and publicity. Combining theoretical and conceptual considerations with practical ones, Buck and McCleans lively and instructive text is supplemented with copious quotations and insights from some of the best-known artists, curators, commissioners and museum directors of today, including Nicholas Serota, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Jeff Koons, Vito Acconci, Mark Wallinger, Anish Kapoor, RoseLee Goldberg, Thomas Krens, Anne Pasternak, Barbara Gladstone, Mera Rubell, and Olafur Eliasson, to provide a detailed and informed how-to guide to the commissioning process.

Chapter 1

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The excitement is to produce new works, to make them happen. There is a utopian aspect to commissioning: you are very close to the artist’s intentions.

Christine Van Assche, chief curator and curator of new media, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris

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Whether undertaken by a public institution or a private individual, commissioning contemporary art is often an intricate and specialized business, especially as what constitutes a commission can now range from a monumental steel sculpture to a carnival parade. The various protocols, procedures and agendas in sourcing and approaching artists through public and commercial galleries, art consultants and art fairs all require careful negotiation, alongside the need to grapple with the myriad forms and concepts of contemporary art itself. As a result, specialist curators, commissioning consultants, independent producers and commissioning agencies increasingly play a key role played in the process. Especially in the public realm or in the case of large-scale projects, these individuals or organizations are crucial to facilitating every stage, from the initial selection of the artist to the ultimate completion of the commission and the effective management of its afterlife. (For purposes of clarity, throughout this book individual intermediaries who work on behalf of a commissioning client will be referred to as commissioning agents, while organizations that exist to carry out commissions either on their own behalf or for clients will be described as commissioning agencies.)

Within this complex ecosystem, the commission-based patronage of individual artists is undoubtedly one of the most sophisticated forms of artistic engagement. Even among those well versed in the contemporary art world, it is only the most dedicated, enthusiastic and committed who are prepared to take the plunge and venture into what can be a minefield.

Commissioning is a much more difficult process than building a collection, and because of that, you probably shouldn’t be thinking about it unless you have been at it for a while, maybe a decade or so. You have to have a sense of who you are as a collector.

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Dennis Scholl, collector, Miami

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So what lies behind the leap of faith that distinguishes a commissioner from a normal purchaser of contemporary art? Why are an increasing number of organizations, institutions and individuals choosing to have work specially made for them, rather than buy it off the peg when their budgets and locations would allow them to do either? It is not simply a matter of acquisition, since many of today’s commissioned artworks are brought into existence for reasons other than individual ownership. Both the desire for a unique bespoke artwork and the enduring prestige of the artistic commission may go a long way towards explaining why local authorities and developers commission art for architectural schemes and public spaces, why collectors commission works for their homes, and why curators work directly with artists on projects for museums and galleries. But behind these concerns lie a number of other key reasons why, even with all the attendant complications, an ever-greater number of individuals and organizations are keen to commission.

Over the years I have learned a lot: about chemical processes, treatments of metals, exotic flora and fauna, the problems of floor load capacities and much more. If you are not interested in this kind of experience, then I would recommend that you don’t commission any artworks, except for small paintings.

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Miuccia Prada, president, Fondazione Prada, Milan

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Forging a relationship with an artist

One of the most appealing features of commissioning an artwork is that it generally involves entering into what can often be an intense dialogue with the artist. This patron–artist relationship can provide the commissioner with a privileged insight and involvement in the creative process, and in some cases even the chance to have an impact on it. Thereafter, the patron — whether public body, commercial organization, private foundation or individual — can be both actor in and witness to the artist’s vision, and in many cases have the added bonus of owning the outcome — or at least the satisfaction of exhibiting it and of being associated with it. Museum curators, independent not-for-profit producers, representatives of commissioning bodies and especially private collectors all testify to the importance of this relationship and creative exchange.

When I was in college I read John Dewey’s Art as Experience and the idea that art should be an experience became very important to me. So by commissioning works I feel that I’m collecting experiences. I love the objects that have resulted. They have become part of my life. But just as important are the memories and the experience of working closely with the artists and having them here in the house.

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Andy Stillpass, collector, Cincinnati

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One of the biggest advantages is the contact with the artist and their process. It’s an amazing journey, very educational and rewarding. When the commission is complete, you have more than an artwork; the relationship between your history and the work’s history … it makes the collection more alive.

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Anita Zabludowicz, collector, London

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The key is the trust between the artist and the curator; that trust is the curator’s highest reward.

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Chrissie Iles, Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Curator, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

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Creating culture

Whatever the scale or nature of the commission, it carries with it the excitement of being involved in bringing something new and unknown into the world, and thus potentially having a direct role in adding to art history. At the same time, it is also satisfying and reassuring for many commissioners to know that with the works they are commissioning they are continuing a long tradition of patronage established over centuries, however radical those contemporary artworks may be.

In many cases, a direct historical precedent acts as a contextual point of reference, which not only provides a rationale for a commission, but also serves as its conduit into the broader history of art. Henri Matisse’s windows for the Chapelle du Rosaire at St Paul de Vence and Marc Chagall’s windows for the Fraumünster Abbey in Zurich have both provided worthy antecedents for Gerhard Richter’s stained-glass window for Cologne Cathedral, completed in 2007, and for the etched window made by Shirazeh Houshiary and Pip Horne in St Martin-in-the-Fields in London a year later.

Sometimes a commissioner aims to blaze a completely new cultural trail. The ambitious commissioning of more than four hundred monumental sculptures for the Saudi Arabian port of Jeddah by its then mayor, Dr Mohammed Said Farsi, gave the city a series of landmarks that had no equal anywhere else in the world. Between 1972 and 1986, the art-loving Farsi raised the funds from his own pocket and from prominent members of the Jeddah community to commission works by the leading international artists of the day, as well as from a number of local practitioners. These sculptures still punctuate Jeddah’s streets and waterfront, and there are now plans to reactivate the project.

My father didn’t just want to plan roads and streets. He also wanted to leave a legacy of art. We did not have a culture that had museums or galleries, and instead he wanted to bring art into the city itself and have people interact with it. Some of the art that he chose was complex; some of it was simple.… The idea was to try to appeal to everyone’s taste.

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Hani Farsi, collector, London

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Adding lustre and a spirit of adventure

As the ruling families of quattrocentro Italy were all too aware, if the commissioned artist is highly regarded, then their prestige can in turn reflect favourably on the patron. For a well-known name to agree to take the time and effort to make a special piece is a testament to the status and ‘pulling power’ of the commissioner. The art and artist may be ostensibly at the centre of the commission, but nonetheless this does not prevent the patron from benefiting from the association with the maker. Equally, if the artist is young or emerging, then a successful early commission points to the courage of the patron or the expertise of their artistic advisor, who can then be applauded for their prescience and ability to take a risk.

By commissioning the very best artists, you get the opportunity to do something that can happen only at that time and that place, and it can reap great rewards in terms of shifting reputation and making a gallery a place that people want to visit and where they think exciting work is going to be shown.

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Maria Balshaw, director, Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester

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Commissioning an artist — whether emerging or established — to work on a new scale or in a hitherto untried material can often be a fraught enterprise, requiring nerves of steel on the part of both commissioner and curator, as well as the artist, but many patrons feel that it is a risk worth taking that can lead to worthwhile results. After all, every artist has to have a first commission, and the freshness of approach by an emerging artist can sometimes outmatch what might be a more predictable vision from a more established, safer choice. It was a leap of faith, for example, for Unilever and development company Stanhope to commission the young British artist Conrad Shawcross to make a permanent suspended sculpture for the grand atrium of the newly refurbished Unilever House on London’s Victoria Embankment in 2007. The resulting Space Trumpet, a 1.5-ton kinetic work inspired by listening devices developed by the British government at the beginning of the twentieth century to amplify the sound of enemy aircraft before they came into sight, was Shawcross’s first public sculpture. It was soon widely acclaimed, and a year after its installation won an award for a successful commission within a working environment.

Miami collectors Dennis and Debra Scholl have a policy of commissioning young artists, whom they invite to make works both for their home and World Class Boxing, their exhibition space in Wynwood, Miami. Similarly, the Zabludowicz Collection, founded by Anita and Poju Zabludowicz in 1994, also commissions artists at the beginning of their careers to make works both for exhibition in the collection’s project space in a nineteenth-century former Methodist chapel in north London, as well for a series of indoor, outdoor and even underground locations on the island of Sarvisalo, east of Helsinki in Finland. Virtually all commissioned works enter the collection. These include Matt Stokes’s film The Gainsborough Packet (2008), Toby Ziegler’s installation of monumental sculptures and readymades The Alienation of Objects (2009–10), and, on Sarvisalo, Matthew Day Jackson’s excavated subte...

Table of contents

• Cover    
• Title Page
• The Authors
• Other Titles of Interest
• Table of Contents  
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: An Ancient and Intricate Practice
• Chapter 1: Why Undertake a Commission?
• Chapter 2: Who Commissions Today and What
• Chapter 3: Making It Happen
• Chapter 4: The Commission Thereafter
• Conclusion: A Practice With No Limits
• Sources of Quotes
• Index
• Copyright