The usual path for art is from artist to gallery, shop, cafe to your wall. Artists often trade works among one another. Art is now finding a home direct through artist websites, Etsy and Myspace. There is a secondary market though, where art is resold. An extreme example are art center auction houses with prices in thousands to hundreds of millions. In contrast, the secondary market in regional art, where it existed at all, has been behind closed doors and conducted in whispers. That is changing.
Seattle artREsource, connected to dealer Greg Kucera, has created a persistent visible secondary market for art. In Portland, Marilyn Murdoch mixes new shows with consigned resale at The Murdoch Collections. A more rational system would follow European droit de suite law, in which artists, or their heirs, receive royalties each time the art is resold. Ideally droit de suite would apply to private sales, and to emerging artists.
Mark Woolley presents a show this month Choice Cuts: Selected Work from Private Collections, a one time version of artREsource. The show is an excellent opportunity to see art of the 1990's in Portland, some earlier. How does that work fit between regional work in the Art Museum and today's art?
Artists include Rick Austin, Rick Bartow, Louis Bunce, Marc Chagall, Tom Cramer, Michael Dal Cerro , Richard Davis, Christian Eckhart, Howard Finster, David French, Gordon Gilkey, Francisco Goya, Paul Green, Anne Grgich, M.K. Guth, Sally Haley, Claudia Hart, Tom Hardy, Tyler Hays, Barry Haram, Charles Heaney, Bill Hoppe, Jerry Iverson, Manuel Izquierdo, William Jamison, Liza Jones, Mary Josephson, Barbara Kruger, LaVerne Krause, Ferdinand Leger, Fritz Liedtke, James Martin, Jack McLarty, Kenna Moser, Royal Nebeker, Alison O’Donoghue, Trude Parkinson, Robert Rauschenberg, Dana Roberts, Ralph Rosenborg, Laura Ross-Paul, Michele Russo, John Serl, Roy Setziol, Ku Fu Sheng, Russell Simmons, Corey Smith, Amanda Snyder, Jay Steensma, Eric Stotik, Jed Thomas, Marie Watt, Milton Wilson and Purvis Young.
At Mark Woolley Gallery www.markwoolley.com 817 NW 2nd
