Career Woman!

Still on the topic of female art photographers, the photographers Amy Elkins and Cara Phillips started Women in Photography to bring together...women in photography. They have bi-monthly online exhibitions. Website HERE.

My favorite artist that they featured is Birthe Piontek. Here are some images from her series Sub Rosa.

Amy Elkins came to talk to one of my classes last year and she said that one of the reasons for starting WIP was the reaction to and conversations surrounding an article published in the New York Times about "Gallerinas" or women who work lower level jobs at galleries.

But in a world in which art, fashion, celebrity and money commingle, gallerinas know that their looks — or, at least, their look — can make a difference. Yancey Richardson, the owner of an eponymous Chelsea art gallery, notes that she employs front desk assistants who can answer questions from the public and clients, and also attack a rigorous list of tasks. “You can’t just hire people who are decorative,” she said, “but you can find someone with all those necessary skills and who is beautiful.” Her latest desk assistant is Marla Leigh Caplan, 30, a blue-eyed soft-spoken photographer from Elkhorn, Neb., who studied philosophy at Vassar, has a Master of Fine Arts degree, and worked at three other galleries. As Ms. Caplan learned, her appearance can matter more than her résumé, never mind her thesis on Heidegger. When she interviewed for one job, she recalled, the director shook her hand and, before she said a word, he proclaimed: “Look at her! She’s perfect!”

Full Article HERE

I went to go see a Mickalene Thomas show at the Lehmann Maupin gallery and it was a pretty dazzling experience. It was a huge space with beautiful hardwood floors and the women who worked there were completly gorgeous and absolutely flawless. I asked the woman at the front desk for a price list and then time slowed down and for a few moments there was a complete failure of communication.

Me: Hi. Can I see a price list?
Her: jgkhkdlfgjhlkfgjhkldfghjfgjklgjhkgjh
Me: What?
Her:I'd be happy to help you with anything you have questions about.
Me: Ok... Can I see a price list?
Her:I'd be happy to help you with anything you have questions about.
Me...
Her: Are you interested in a specific piece...?
Me: ...Ooooh...uh...yeah...the large one over there?
Her: That one's 40,000
Jocelyn: Wow
Me:kthanxbye

So awkward. I just wanted to gawk at the prices at my own pace and not in the context of a conversation. I mean obviously I was not going to buy this

Naughty girls (need love too) 2009
Rhinestones, acrylic, and enamel on panel

36'' x 120''

even though I kind of really wanted to. In person the gloss of enamel paint and the textured layering of the rhinestones gave many of the works a sculptural effect. Beyonce probs has this in her living room right now.

Apparently some galleries don't display price lists so they can tailor the price based on the client. Sssssmoooooootttthhhh.

So I read this article on Mary Boone in W Magazine last year. Article HERE. Some interesting bits from the article:

And if you think sexism doesn’t exist in the art world, she asks, why is it that virtually every story written about her in the past 30 years has fixated on her (sexy, sky-high, expensive) shoes?

" ...with her skin tanned from two weeks spent hiking, doing yoga and eating vegan at the Ashram retreat near Santa Monica.

"Meet the new Mary Boone. The dealer who epitomized the hard-charging excesses of the Eighties art market, whose dragon-lady reputation made her a convenient scapegoat for its devastating crash, now improbably says that her mission in life is “helping other people.” Today the pint-size (five feet one, 105 pounds) pit bull of yore donates her thick, tar black hair to Locks of Love..."

Together Boone and her artists redirected the art world’s gaze. Rejecting the Minimalist and conceptual-laden Seventies, they re-energized painting with bold, heavily figurative canvases and made neo-Expressionism the dominant aesthetic. Boone became the queen of SoHo. It was a mantle she did not wear lightly. Boone gained a reputation as aggressive, manipulative and combative. When the crash finally hit, in 1990, she was vilified for tackily hyping her artists in the media, turning them into commodities with stratospheric prices and waiting lists for their work. Whatever her role in overheating the market, she stuck by her suddenly struggling artists during the Nineties chill.

Anyway I thought she sounded awesome so I visited her upper east side gallery under the guise of viewing the Patricia Coffie (recent SVA grad, represent!) show which was pretty sweet.

"Daydreams" 2008

My sister once told me this story about how she was walking down the street in NYC and some crazy yelled at her and probably said "C'mere woman!" but it sounded "Career Woman!" My sister studied economics in college and this whole Gallerina thing reminded me of this article I read in W about hot women being hired as Marketing Executives to use their hot bodies to facilitate financial deals. A few quotes from the article:

“Guys who have a load of money [invested] in these big funds are often pigheaded, type A male personalities,” says one male marketer by way of explaining the estrogen predominance in his field. “They want a hot chick with a nice ass and nice boobs who is going to come in and sell the fund to them. I have a friend in the industry who is drop-dead gorgeous, and even she knows that’s the only reason she has her job.”

Says the curvy blond, “Just last night I had dinner with a potential investor, and he e-mailed me 20 minutes after we left, saying, ‘Great spending time with you tonight. Let’s do it again soon.’ That’s not, like, a professional follow-up note. But,” she adds, “he was nice and cute, so I wrote back. Some guys flirt a lot, and you have to be very careful, because some of them get dirty. You can never get your reputation back.” Another lithe exec complains about men who repeatedly arrange evening meetings without ever actually investing in the funds. “It’s a gray area: We know it’s business, and the men know it’s business, but there is also the allure of attractive, young girls taking them out,” she says.
Such stories are part of the reason intelligent, ambitious women in the hedge fund world are still struggling to be taken seriously. “Marketing is the ghetto where they put the women,” says one woman who heads up her own hedge fund. Adds Levin, “The marketers don’t like that stereotype, but there is a lot of validity to it.” Says the aforementioned male marketer, “I have never, ever seen an ugly person in this role.”

Though they usually don’t receive a cut of a fund’s profits, they are compensated well (marketing directors can make up to $2 million including bonus, while lower-level execs can make between $200,000 and $500,000). And, according to one investor who’s been wooed by hedge fund hotties, there’s another upside to the job: “It’s an easy access point to a rich husband,” he says. “These girls don’t talk to anyone worth less than $50 million.”

So that guy yelling at my sister was probably some pervy investor. Seriously though I'm totally becoming a "Marketing Excecutive". What do cougars invest in?

© Phillip-Lorca diCorcia

© Phillip-Lorca diCorcia

Can we talk about these pictures? Can we talk about how much I love Phillip-Lorca diCorcia's work? Can we talk about how these were commissioned for W magazine? Can we talk about the evil geniuses that must work for their photo department? Can we talk about how the top photo basically describes working in retail? Can we talk about how hard I had to hack the html to rip these off THIS amazing website? Can we talk about how I don't know what the rules are for using images from the internet? We have much to discuss.