Art Bazaar Results

Those of you saddled with better memories than mayflies might remember I wrote, at the opening of this lovely, rainy summer, about Lyons Wier Gallery's Art Bazaar. Quick précis: Michael Lyons Wier started Art Bazaar, where he opens the walls of his near-Chelsea gallery on weekends to the first handful of artists who show up Saturday morning. For $20 American, artists can then display and sell their work to whoever happens to wander in. The artist who sells the most wins a show in the gallery.

The problems with this struck me and some of my readers as manifold, but I admit to also thinking it wasn't the worst idea of all time. After all, some artists might sell some stuff, and the little community of artists forming and re-forming every weekend might be fun. I decided to try and keep an open mind about the experiment and follow up.

Following up turned out to be hard. I meant to go the first Saturday it was open, but you might recall that was the Fourth of July. And while that is my second least favorite holiday -- the first being New Year's Eve -- still even curmudgeons like me tend to have plans that weekend. So I'd hoped to go some weekend later in the month, but then a few extra people moved into my house -- I'm not joking -- and life got complicated.

Which, alas, left me with no follow up. Damned shame. Time to move on. Until today, that is, when a faithful reader pointed me to the Art Bazaar site and its interestingly artistic interpretation of mathematics. The site now crows (in an annoying scrolling text box):

Total number of participating artists: 154
Average price: $250
Average number of works sold per artist: 4 items
Most work sold by a single artist: 30 items
Total items sold: 143

Anyone beyond, say, fourth grade math can see these numbers don't work out correctly. 154 artists selling an average of 4 items per artist works out to 616 items. This is significantly more than 143 items as claimed. I ran the numbers past my wife, who is eminently suited for working out columns of figures, and she suggested that perhaps Mr. Lyons Wier excluded non-selling artists from the average. This is dishonest but at least mathematically possible.

So let's run the numbers again. If 143 works are sold and the average number of works sold per selling artist is 4, then there's a maximum of 35 artists who actually sold anything. One of those sold 30 works all by themselves, leaving 113 works to be sold by the remaining 34 selling artists. So the scrolling bullet list should look like this, minus the dopey scrolling:

One artist sold 30 pieces.
No more than 34 artists sold an average of at least 3.32 pieces each.
At least 119 artists sold nothing.

Looks less impressive when you put it that way, doesn't it? Especially when you add:

Each artist sold an average of 0.93 pieces each.
Aside from the artist who sold 30 pieces, the average was 0.74 pieces per artist.

The site also brags about getting 25,000 hits in 7 weeks, which works out to about 500 hits per day. This tells me that Mr. Lyons Wier did not put the $20 per artist he received into any kind of publicity at all, given that my own crappy blog -- for which I do essentially no publicity of any kind and which has a budget of less than zero -- gets 200 hits a day. 500 hits a day could easily have been topped by cute photos of Michael's dog. Especially if he wrote "Fuck You, Dog" next to it. Seriously: Fuck You, Penguin gets over 10,000 hits per day. Fine art is trounced by a volunteer, amateur site of snarky commentary on photos of adorable animals. Which would just be one more example of life in these United States except, hey, isn't one of these things supposed to be a business?

And yet I can't be entirely negative. I mean, in the end it's clear Michael wasn't ripping anyone off. He certainly didn't make bucketloads of money and he wasn't unfair. It's not his fault basic math eludes him; I'm not even entirely sure of my math here, and I nearly had a minor in mathematics in college. I've certainly made more boneheaded mistakes than screwing up an average calculation. I don't think Michael is dishonest in any way and I'm not saying he's a bad person.

The Art Bazaar may yet prove to be a good thing for all concerned, even those 119 artists who didn't sell a thing. Maybe they got good feedback, maybe they met some new friends, maybe they had a fun time worth every penny. Twenty bucks certainly isn't a big sum these days. I think I use more than that per day in toilet paper.

It's even possible the winner of the solo show, Jan Huling, who I'm sure is a lovely woman and kind to animals, will go on to have a great art career. I, for one, would not begrudge that.

Really. Don't let my cynicism, nastiness, and ability to perform simple calculations rub off on you. Be positive.