State of the Art Market 2023

By Norman Kolpas

Over the past year, across the nation and in many places around the world, life in general seems to have returned to some semblance of normalcy since the pandemic first turned things topsy-turvy almost four years ago. The same holds true for the art-collecting world.

That’s not to suggest, of course, that the state-of-the-art market is anything like what might have been considered normal pre-pandemic. All of us—art lovers and collectors, artists and the professionals who represent and sell their work—have through necessity, and often with great resourcefulness and ingenuity, found ways to go on doing what we love. And, as evident in the following observations—from Elizabeth Harris, co-owner with her husband Stephen of InSight Gallery in Fredericksburg, Texas; George Irwin, founding director of the online Western Gallery; and Beau Alexander, owner of Maxwell Alexander Gallery in Los Angeles—the current market is not only strong but also dramatically revitalized, in ways both familiar and sometimes dynamically different.

You’d be hard-pressed to find an art gallery, or an artist, today that isn’t sophisticated about the virtual world, not only with a well-developed website but also a presence on such social media platforms as Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. “Social media works for all of us,” notes Harris. “It creates a familiarity” for art lovers—and not just with galleries but also with the artists themselves. Harris regularly hears gallery visitors remarking that they “know” artists, only to explain to her that they’ve “‘followed [the artists] on social media for years.’ That’s why Facebook calls followers ‘friends.’”

Adds Alexander of Maxwell Alexander’s successful decade-plus in business, “Social media is another tool for reaching people, and it’s something that we’ve used since day one.” In recent years, Alexander and his team have even occasionally taken a page from the playbook that fashion-forward clothing or athletic shoe companies use to market to millennials, and even early 20s Gen Z customers, by selling artworks through online “drops.” He says, “I get a lot of feedback from people who’ve never bought art before, and they’re so excited by it.”

Alexander recently used such an approach to sell a series of eight small-scale paintings and sketches Brett Allen Johnson created while on a two-week road trip through the Southwest. The gallery promoted them through social media as “an online exclusive, and told everyone that one week from now, at 9 a.m., they’ll become available on our website on a first-come, first-served basis. And they sold out in one to two minutes,” each at a low four-figure price.

Recent years, especially during the pandemic, have even seen the rise of exclusively online galleries. One of the most prominent has been Texas-based Irwin’s Western Gallery, which launched online in early 2020. A graduate of the University of Texas with a BFA in design and experience creating beautiful and highly functional websites, Irwin focused on showcasing rising young Western artists who were primarily posting and selling their own work through Instagram accounts and “wondering what to do now that the galleries were all closing down” during the pandemic.

The gallery’s success certainly played a part in what Irwin has seen as “a shift in general that it’s more acceptable to be shown online or to look at art in an online way.” In the process, he helped launch artists who have, in turn, found major gallery representation, such as modernist landscape painter Whitney Gardner, now represented by Medicine Man Gallery in Tucson, Arizona, and McLarry Fine Art in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Though Irwin still maintains an active online presence, Western Gallery has gained such a following that he has recently opened his own brick-and-mortar location in Austin’s up-and-coming South Lamar area.

Indeed, real-world art galleries, having survived the pandemic, now seem in many ways more important than ever. “Everyone just wants to see works of art in person again,” says Irwin, “and a gallery really curates that work for you.” Adds Harris, “A gallery puts art in a contextual environment. You see a painting on a wall, and how it looks in the right lighting. You get to feel the painting more than you do looking at it on a screen. It’s so much more personal an experience.”

That critical role a terrestrial location plays is certainly well-recognized even by a gallery with a reputation as one of the most dynamic deployers of social media. Maxwell Alexander Gallery itself will be moving early next year from leased digs on the western edge of downtown LA to its own, larger, freestanding location in an up-and-coming part of Pasadena. “It’s an old building that we’re renovating, with 16-foot ceilings and its own parking,” says Alexander. “There’s still nothing better than seeing art in person.”

Real-world galleries also play an indispensable role for the artists, one that cannot compare to the digital world. “Galleries and artists are in a mutual relationship,” says Harris. “We’re all on the same team. When collectors support galleries, they’re supporting a small business and an artist all at once. And the artists are free to create, rather than posting on social media or handling the business part.” InSight Gallery also pays particular attention to making its openings “experiences” rather than just displays of art. A recent opening for a show by cowboy artist Bruce Greene, for example, featured food from an “upscale chuck wagon,” while the launch of works celebrating Native American culture by famed artist John Coleman included “a multidimensional experience complete with Native American dancers.” Such events, she concludes, “are so much more personal.”

There’s no doubt that such gallery experiences also acknowledge and appeal to the fact that, as Alexander observes, “We’ve definitely seen a new generation of collectors coming up. Through the accessibility of our gallery, we’ve been cultivating those relationships. And we represent artists that speak not only to the seasoned collector, but also to the younger audience.” He points to such rising stars as Eric Bowman, whose wholly original scenes of Native Americans and cowboys in the Western vastness evoke the masterpieces of the Taos Society of Artists; and Johnson, who paints modernist Southwestern landscapes inspired in part by Maynard Dixon. Both artists have major solo shows at the gallery in, respectively, September and October.

Irwin, who began Western Gallery with a determined focus on underrepresented younger artists, saw a “generational shift” in collectors as well, who found themselves attracted to “a less traditional representation of Western lifestyles, and or landscapes.” As just a few among many examples, he points to recent works by such artists as Lucile Wedeking, who portrays Dixon-style landscapes and cowboys akin to those of Remington or Russell in a fresh modern palette; or Taryn Boals, whose atmospheric, dreamlike compositions “perfectly straddle Western art and the wider contemporary art world. You’re not going to find this in your grandfather’s Western art collection.”

By contrast, InSight Gallery—which tends to feature more well-established artists in the broad Western genre like Robert Pummill, a longtime master of the Texas Hill Country landscape, featured in a solo show throughout November; pop art Western painter Billy Schenck; and Gladys Roldan-de-Moras, who celebrates the Spanish and Mexican heritage of Western culture—brings a longer-term perspective to the notion of younger collectors. “The truth is, a lot of younger people are focusing their finances on other things, like their homes or their children’s schooling,” she observes. “We need to focus the conversation on younger art appreciators, and make sure the gallery environment is welcoming and not intimidating to them. When the time is right for them, they will become collectors.”

With such forward-thinking approaches, the future will continue to bode well for the state-of-the-art market.

Beau AlexanderOwner, Maxwell Alexander Gallerymaxwellalexandergallery.com

Elizabeth HarrisCo-owner, InSight Galleryinsightgallery.com

George IrwinFounding Director, Western Gallerywestern.gallery

This story appeared in the October/November 2023 issue of Southwest Art magazine. Subscribe today to read every issue in its entirety.

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