How many are there? Ten years ago, Artprice ventured a figure of at least one million, in Europe and the United States alone. A rough idea rather than a specific figure, in fact, because it is difficult to evaluate the number of working artists, in the so-called developed countries. In France alone, today, some reckon there are between 100,000 and 150,000¹ One thing is sure, though, many of them,wherever they are, need to find some partners who are in a position to make them more visible. Although some artists manage to do it through the (narrow, even when globalised) contemporary art market, more often than not the public meets them somewhere else.

Meeting the public

Whether they have an art school qualification or are self-taught, artists soon feel the need to meet the public, once the round of friends and relatives has been done. This was already true in the past, it is even more so now.²

Indeed, one needs a viewpoint from elsewhere than the private sphere in order to see one's work differently, at least for a while, when one is ready to receive it, i.e. to hear it – sometimes read it.

Meeting the public but also one's peers, in other words another audience besides that of experts and gallery owners – equally essential, even if cohabitation and exchanges are not always easy between artists. Every artist who once became a gatherer of artists to organise what people call a group exhibition or a salon has experienced it.

Nevertheless, it is through such a collective event, whether or not organised by an artist, but without art galleries, that the encounter with the public begins, and often continues: artists showing their work together in the same place and over a specific period. With a possibility for visitors to buy the works without going through an intermediary.

A renewed tradition

Whereas art fairs reserved to galleries were born during the second half of the 20^th century in Germany (Art Cologne), then Switzerland (Art Basel), artists salons are linked to the French history of art, not to say the history of French art.³

Through it, one discovers the relationship artists had with the art trade, first as craftsmen then as artists as such⁴. Artists played a crucial part in making their works known, and therefore selling them, before the ark market became the sole territory of merchants at the end of the 19^th century, with the arrival of the artists behind modern art.⁵

In fact, two recent exhibitions show what place artists had on the art market of the time (as well as the competition between artists themselves): Turner et ses peintres (2^nd link) and L’art et ses marchés.⁶

Paradoxically, we now find that, through artists salons, relayed by numerous artists (web) sites, artists have recuperated the territory which was theirs, when they had no other option but the salon to show and sell their works.⁷

This is why, in the same way as the press insists, because of globalisation, on the expansion of the art galleries market and the art fairs market, we wish to underline here the new expansion of the artists market – a market which attracts an increasing number of people among the public.⁸

At the same time, this is a market which, in the Internet era, reveals a non-official art, close in this respect to other lights, such as the French art review Artension. ⁹

The artists market

The artists market is characterised by the commercial and non-commercial exchanges which artists organise or help organise with the public and among themselves, by occupying real and virtual places, either directly or through organisations, controlled by them or not, but usually financed by them or through them.

With the artists salon, the studio is the typical place for the artists market. A private refuge in which to work, it opens its doors to the public for an exhibition (the “Ateliers portes ouvertes” are, for example,  appointments between artists and the public more and more frequent in Europe) or throughout the year when the artist sets up a private gallery, like in yesteryear (Turner used to show his work at the Royal Academy and at the British Institution, while selling in his own gallery).¹⁰

Through a ricochet effect, artists are also behind a particular type of communication, especially on the Net, which makes their activities (creations and exhibitions) more visible, but also sends a new echo to art lovers and intermediaries among internauts from the “Internet generation”, operating in networks and rarely prone to a hierarchic interpretation.¹¹

In fact, strangely enough, this increase in importance of artists on the Net hasn't escaped the powerful contemporary art merchant and collector Charles Saatchi, who confirmed his own interest in a website which puts artists in touch with collectors without going through an intermediary: “the art world consists in 1000 artists who receive all the attention, he explains. Yet, there are thousands of them who never get a chance to show their work. This site is for them. (...) I probably see as many interesting artists on the screen as in galleries. And, in five or six years, the biggest stars in the art world will come from there.”¹²

Same conclusion for Danièle Granet and Catherine Lamour, in their book Grands et petits secrets du monde de l'art: “Initiatives are sprouting everywhere. The Internet has a key role in them, with websites specialising in photography, in the works of confirmed artists or, on the contrary, new talents. There is no limit to inventiveness to grab a piece of this exponential market.^”13

At last,  the artists market is characterised by the financing going partially or entirely through the artists. Which, depending on the case and place, transforms the artist into the gallery owner, organiser, publisher, promoter, provider and, finally,  accountant of his/her own activity.¹⁴ But in France – once again – this is done with and around a central player: the artists salon, in the post 1881 reviewed version, i.e. the one embodied by the historical salons, away from state control.¹⁵

Artists salons in France: modus operandi

Over 200 artists salons are organised in France, including some twenty devoted to sculpture.¹⁶ This shows their importance and the part they play in the artists market – a plural scene which, in fact, many an expert deems essential.¹⁷

On top of the subsidies which some of them receive, big salons are financed by their exhibitors and therefore by the artists themselves. In the same way as art fairs are financed by their clients, i.e. art galleries.

Such is the case, for example, with the Salon des Indépendants, Salon d’Automne, Salon Réalités Nouvelles, Salon Jeune Création, MACParis, Salon de Mai, Puls’art, Figuration Critique…¹⁸

The enrolment fees vary from one salon to another. Some add registration charges to the display fee. There are also the optional or compulsory charges to have a work reproduced in the catalogue.

Concerning the display of the works, the  sales of modules (exhibition stands) are also expanding, on top of the traditional fee related to the exhibition of one or more works. Of course, artists see personally to the charges payable for the transport of their works, the packaging if applicable, etc.

For example, the Salon des Indépendants – whose transparency on their website is remarkable, in the image of its historical and famous 'neither jury, nor reward' motto – makes a distinction between members and other exhibitors. The enrolment fees for non-members are  € 250.- for one work, € 400.- for two and € 550.- for three. A page of publicity in the catalogue costs € 375.-, a half page € 240.-, and a quarter page  € 125.-. It also offers some stands: a 9 m² module at € 1530.- and a double module at € 3060.-. Then there is a commission in the guise of a donation equivalent to 20% of the selling price for paintings and 10% for sculptures.

For the Salon d’Automne the enrolment fees are € 290.- per work, on top of the € 35.- for registration fees and a 15% commission, also in the guise of a donation.

At MACParis, besides the registration fees fixed at € 150, they offer an 18 m² stand for € 1100.- (reproduction in the catalogue and on the website included).

Other salons, but not managed by artists, are equally financed by their exhibitors. Such is the case for the Grand Marché de l’Art Contemporain held in several places in France, and in particular at La Bastille. Here, 'market' must be understood in the ordinary meaning of the term since the exhibition is held in the open-air, in barracks or under some tents, like traditional markets. Artists are offered a 9 m² stand for € 1045.- on top of the registration fees amounting to € 150.- (in 2008).

These few examples confirm both the need for artists to meet the public and the success met by the salons which cater for it, each in its own way. At the same time, they confirm the necessary existence of financial resources among the artists, however modest these may be. Thus, if the annual budget devoted to exhibitions held in salons obviously varies from one artist to the other and one salon to the other, it seems quite reasonable to make an estimate of between € 200.- and  € 1500.-.

A tradition and a practice common in France

And outside France?

In Switzerland, and more generally speaking in Europe and in the United States, there are some events designed to gather artists but, most of the time, they are limited to specific cases when financed by the artists themselves, and to artists associations or gatherings such as biennials which are more like exhibitions of an institutional type with the corresponding private and/or public financing.¹⁹

In Switzerland, for example, while the Geneva group that forms the Société Suisse des Beaux-Arts organises seven to eight exhibitions for its artists in the Villa du Jardin Alpin in Meyrin, a venue which has been allocated to it, Visarte, an other association of artists operating across the Swiss territory, doesn't have any.²⁰

n other words, the artists outside France are more abandoned and their relationship with the public gets less support or inspiration from the past.

At any rate, the idea of a recurrent large-scale national exhibition, conceived like a kind of prolongation of the studio, full of history and still binding the artists of yesteryear with contemporary ones, is a thing of the past for foreign artists, even though they are facing the same deficit in visibility as the French do.²¹ Which doesn't prevent them from turning up sometimes, with nostalgia, at one of theses historical salons... where they are welcome.

A world with a passion for art and meetings

The WHO’S WHO Art club international is at the heart of the “Planet Artists” described here in its main lines. We could have added that it is also (and has been for centuries) a world with a passion for art and meetings. The world which, precisely, we are gathering on this modern-days platform, but also heir to the past and the historical battles lead by artists.²²

Boosted by an experience stretching over more than thirty years (see our Charter and the Editorial 2009), the WHO'S WHO Art club international develops indeed a double activity to increase the visibility of independent working artists who join it: on one hand, exhibitions, through which it situates itself on attractive places that generate dense traffic; on the other, publishing, to shed light on the works and paths of the artists through printed and digital publications.

During the past twelve months, we have thus successfully organised, after Geneva, Nice, Brussels... our nomadic salon, the SAM 09 (Salon des Artistes Membres et Amis du WHO’S WHO Art club international) at the Château d’Auvers-sur-Oise, an institution devoted to the end of the 19th century and to the artists who marked the history of Auvers-sur-Oise, such as Vincent Van Gogh (he is buried there with his brother Théo); we have collaborated with the Galerie Mouvances, 2 place des Vosges in Paris, where eight exhibitions were held to everyone's satisfaction, including the gallery owner, Mrs Sylvie Autef ; we have published the following part of our art cards collection “Les Artistes et Maîtres, au fil du temps”, in connection with the Château d'Auvers (painted by Van Gogh) ; we have enriched this platform together with the on-line edition of the WHO’S WHO IN INTERNATIONAL ART guide, reserved to members.

Soon, we shall take part in the European Heritage Days 2010, while more projects under consideration will be announced during the summer and in the autumn.

Welcome to the WHO’S WHO Art club international !

The editorial staff

1) Catalogue published by Artprice.com and distributed at the Biennale in Lyon, July 2000. As regards to French artists, see the article by Hervé Bourdin, artist, elected member of the Green party and chairman of MACParis, in Artension, March-April 2010.

2) In Paris alone, in 1863, according to the Dictionnaire Général, there were 4450 working artists. La Carrière des peintres au XIX^e siècle, Harrison et Cynthia White, Flammarion, 1991, p. 66.

Another sign of affluence and interest in the exhibition: the number of works presented at the Salon officiel “(which) was forever increasing. 542 in 1800, 1294 in 1812, 2219 in 1835. The culminating point was 5180 in 1848, a year without a jury, then it went down to 4087 in 1861.” La Vie d’artiste au XIX^e siècle, Anne Martin-Fugier, Audibert, 2007, p. 143.

3) “A French institution par excellence, which first gained by the concentration of powers during the absolute monarchy, the Salon was copied both in the  provinces and abroad. It has been a source of inspiration for modern salons, whether it be  the Salon des indépendants or the Salon d'Automne and all those that followed. The Salon allowed enlightened art lovers as well as curious people with less culture to discover the essential part of the artistic creation in France by becoming a must as from the second half of the 18th century”. Histoire du Salon de la peinture, Gérard-Georges Lemaire, Klincksieck, 2004, p. 11.

In his report  called “Les Salons” (December 1989-October 1992), carried out upon the request of the French ministry of education and culture and its minister, Mr Jack Lang, Gérald Gassiot-Talabot, precisely grouped together “Artists Salons” and “Commercial Salons” (art fairs) (with details and an explanation on the part they each play).

4) “In Las Meninas, Velazquez represents himself as an equal to the king of Spain, which places the artist in the foreground. This is a radical change of status because is he no longer the manservant but a character whose essence is comparable to that of the king. The artist is no longer a mere craftsman paid by the piece, in other words proportionally to the importance of the work he submits. His worth is his genius, which implies a remuneration  of a very different kind.” Artistes et marchés, Xavier Greffe, La Documentation française, 2007, p. 39.

5) “Under the Second Empire the art trade took on a more modern shape, closer to that which we now know. Of course, the old Salon officiel was still there and going under reform; but next to it, a true market was being established through the development of public sales and the multiplication of exhibitions in art galleries and associations. Under the Third Republic, the system of the Salon officiel went to pieces and the career of artists was played elsewhere, more and more on the market”. La Vie d’artiste au XIX^e siècle, Anne Martin-Fugier, op. cit., p. 194.

6) Turner et ses peintres : Tate Britain, London, 23rd September 2009 – 31st January 2010. Galeries Nationales, Grand Palais, 22nd February – 24th May 2010. Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, 21st June – 19th September 2010.

L’art et ses marchés : Musée d'art et d'histoire, Geneva, 1st October 2009 – 29th August 2010.

7) “For decades, the annual  Salon officiel was the only place they [the artists] had to show their works and sell them”. La Vie d’artiste au XIX^e siècle, Anne Martin-Fugier, op. cit., p. 12.

8) “There isn't just one contemporary art market, there are several. Look at the fair [reserved to artists] which takes place at La Bastille twice a year. This type of event sprouted some ten to fifteen years ago and spread out in an incredible manner. This means that a portion of the public was waiting for this type of market. (...) With art, there is an obvious process of democratisation of the demand, and it is speeding up”. A statement by the creator of Agence Art Process, Eric Mézan, quoted in Grands et petits secrets du monde de l’art, Danièle Granet and Catherine Lamour, Fayard, 2010, p. 225.

The same goes for the art fairs market. Lorenzo Rudolf, ex-director of Art-Basel  and now manager of the Artparis fair said: “Contemporary art is the mirror which reflects changes in our society (...). It's like the fashion market, you have designer fashion which offers original creations for the happy few; then ready-to-wear clothes for those who can't afford luxury; and finally H&M for the less well-off. In contemporary art, you find exactly the same market segments.” Grands et petits secrets du monde de l’art, Danièle Granet and Catherine Lamour, op. cit., p. 26.

9) See also the numerous publications devoted to the debate on contemporary art in France, initiated by the Esprit magazine in 1991. In particular, the collection of texts called (Tout) l’art contemporain est-il nul ? Patrick Barrer, Editions Favre, 2000. And, by the same author, from the same publisher, Le double jeu du marché de l’art contemporain, 2004.

People au fait with this debate will probably be glad to know that, almost twenty years later, the series of conferences launched recently at the Maison rouge, under the enlightening title “Controverses', brings back (recycles?) a number of questions already raised then. First conference: “Is all of today's art contemporary ?” Second one : “Can fame be fabricated?” - that of artists. A DVD gathering past and future conferences is supposed to come out.

10) “(The art market) includes (from the 14th century onwards) on one hand, direct sales at the artist's studio, on the other, indirect sales made during fairs and through the mediation of a general merchant or an artist-merchant”. Catalogue of the exhibition “L’art et et ses marchés”, Frédéric Elsig, p. 11.

11) Many a member of the “Internet generation” would identify with this sharp statement by April March: “I don’t like categorisations or those who say this is art and this isn't, or this is second-class stuff. Of course, some things are more elaborate than others, but labels annoy me”. Geek, septembre/octobre 2009, p. 17.

12) L’Express, 25th October 2007. Thirty thousand artists had then registered on his website. Now they are 120,000.

Besides, a recent survey in France shows that 51% of the people interviewed regard the Internet as an endless source of information with regards to Art  History and biographies on artists. Journal des arts, 19th March to 1st April 2010, p. 7.

13) Grands et petits secrets du monde de l’art, Danièle Granet and Catherine Lamour, op. cit. p. 259.

14) Among the artists dealing personally with the exhibition of their works, there is a famous precursor: “The first big individual exhibition organised by an artist both outside the Salon and outside his studio, in a public space, was that of Courbet, in 1855”. La Vie d’artiste au XIX^e siècle, Anne Martin-Fugier, op. cit., p. 185.

15) “It was only in 1881, after many reform attempts, that an end was put to  state supervision of the jury at the Salon, which from then on would be made exclusively of professionals – members of the bright new Société des artistes français. In 1884, the Salon des indépendants was created (about a hundred exhibitors at first, reaching 1400 by 1910); in 1890, it was the turn of the Société nationale des beaux-arts, with its first salon; and as early as 1903, came the Société du Salon d'Automne, aiming at “successful independents”. In the 1880s, about ten societies were organising exhibitions: the sprouting of venues for the presentation of the works marked the end of the system and announced the institutionalisation of a new organisation of art, a lot more diversified and private, still in place today”. L’élite artiste, Nathalie Heinich, Gallimard, 2005, pp. 64-65.

16) In the report “Les Salons” mentioned above, the main artists salons are divided this way: Historic Salons; Classical Ones; New Tendencies and New Salons; Specialised Salons.

17) French philosopher and critic Yves Michaux: “The reason why I am interested in salons is that they bring an insight into what you cannot see in fairs, or even in museums, and which nonetheless exists and is good quality work according to criteria which differ from the art community. These criteria are, undoubtedly, different from those set by the market or from the official ones, but they represent an interesting opinion, and it is good to have spaces for public exhibitions with a difference”. Le Monde, 4th April 1991.

18) On www.solutions-creatives.com a list of salons can be downloaded free of charge.

19) With regards to the United States, see the excellent book by Frédéric Martel,, De la culture en Amérique, Gallimard, 2006.

20) Visarte includes 18 regional groups and comprises of more that 2600 artists (active members). While the Société Suisse des Beaux-Arts (SSBA) has 32 branches gathering some 42,000 members, fine arts lovers, supporting the institutions, the museums and the artists. In Geneva, it has 120 visual artist members and about hundred supportive members.

21) Some, however, take advantage of the success of art fairs which are more modest than the historic ones (Art Basel, Fiac, etc.) but also more numerous: “If fairs didn't have any customers, they wouldn't exist, adds Eric Mézan. It's because more and more members of the public are interested that they are sprouting like mushrooms across the world”. Grands et petits secrets du monde de l'art, Danièle Granet and Catherine Lamour, op. cit. p. 255.

22) In those days, let us remember also that being an artist didn't exclude being an “entrepreneur”, as we would say nowadays: “There was an intense competition on the art market, where not only professional merchants but also painters themselves would meet. In the 17th century, nearly all of them used to buy and sell the works of other artists on a regular basis”. During the following century, painters like Brueghel, Rubens, Teniers, did the same. Le Commerce de l'art, de la Renaissance à nos jours, under the supervision of Laurence Bertrand Dorléac, Editions de la Manufacture, 1992 p. 68 et p. 135.