Barry McGee art sales

Barry McGee, Untitled, 2005, acrylic on sixty-eight glass bottles, dimensions variable.
Photo: Tom Powel.

Nice article about Barry McGee in ArtForum that addresses the ways in which his work gets distributed into the art market. Having gotten his start as an artist by writing graffiti on the streets of San Francisco, it's unsurprising that his work flows into the marketplace through many unconventional means. I love the possibility of owning work by a major artist regardless of having the proper art world status even to get on a waiting list at a major (or even minor!) gallery.

Just as his works course through networks of display and exchange that circumvent normal transactions, the artist begins with a near-Cagean openness. He maintains his more illicit engagements while working informally with a group of dealers (rather than with just one or two), as well as with nonprofit and public spaces, seeming to appreciate the risk that the work can end up on eBay, in an abandoned building, or at Art Basel. As McGee says, “I like that something could potentially sell anywhere, at any given place. For better or worse, I used to like that chaotic nature of it, too. Someone could buy it from me, or on a street corner, or from Jeffrey [Deitch], or someone else.” That kind of expansive traffic “challenges the order of the art market,” says Deitch.