Enabling the public to have access to art scenes and artistic practices which are independent from the contemporary art market is crucial for the artists who are acting and joining forces through the WHO'S WHO Art club international network. Something which they are doing with success and determination. Here is why.

Our path

You are on a site which has been entirely revised, for the reasons indicated below, but which has been in existence for a few years already, given that www.whoswhoart.com was created shortly after the Web erupted in our professional lives.

At the time, the aim was to make the most of the newly born Web to further promote our yearbook, the WHO'S WHO IN INTERNATIONAL ART biographical guide - itself born even earlier.

It soon became a leader within its own category, and although it prompted many comments on the Net that was not the only reason for it.

In order to face the increasing demand from artists, we gradually set up other activities which, almost without our knowledge at first, made us aware of their difficulties (nearly identical everywhere) to reach an audience which wouldn't limit itself to the friends and relatives invited to the private viewings.

By other activities, we mean editorial productions - and above all collections designed to inform about every artist through a range of complementary products: art cards, monographs, engravings, stamps, etc.- as well as collective exhibitions and salons held in venues especially selected for the occasion.

A long experience with the art world and its market

In the end, thanks to the long-lasting or temporary collaboration of new partners and collaborators, we have accumulated (on the spot) an experience of the art world and its market for more than a third of a century, since it started in the 1970s, in other words at a time when art fairs were organised to conquer a wider audience - wider than that of art galleries, no matter how famous they may be (see, for instance, the preface of the 1^st Art Basel catalogue published in 1970). This experience turned out to be decisive in the evolution of our relationship with the artists.

Indeed, apart from gathering and classifying information on the activities and the career of the artists, there came the added task of deciphering the rules of the contemporary art market and the prevailing cryptic grids from which art and the path of the artists are reconstructed at and by the media, among art gallery owners and distributors, and, finally, within the (extremely diverse) community of artists itself.

After the experience acquired out in the field, some testimonials and critical studies were published (see our editorials) with a view to extract the prevailing patterns and behaviours (who hasn't heard phrases like: an artist is necessarily in the vanguard, a work of art has got to be the expression of a concept, a buyer can only be a collector…) and thus showing the discrepancy which existed between institutional creations and the artistic practices lived and embodied by the artists on a daily basis; between the stars of the moment (artists and sellers) and the great majority of artists and distributors (art gallery owners, intermediaries, publishers, exhibition managers and organisers) who develop a rich and varied artistic life, but according to criteria often far-removed from the trends and hierarchies set by the media.

A collective effort, a plural scene

Such a path gradually lead us to collectively formalise several fields of activities under the name 'WHO'S WHO Art club international'.

We are insisting on the term 'collectively' because our activities are not only the result of a joint effort and reflection, hence the joint signature we now use ('the editorial staff'), but also because this is about working with artists, through groupings of artists and for artists.

The WHO'S WHO Art club international was therefore built like a stage to shed light on working artists. For their part, they contribute to the expansion of the WHO'S WHO Art club international network by promoting it around them, including on their other web site(s) when they can and through their personal and/or collective exhibitions.

Already a rallying point and a federative reference name for artists, the WHO'S WHO Art club international also became that for the distributors and buyers whose curiosity does not limit itself to the official art market and to famous people.

Strong from the ambition of becoming a leader in the cyber art world, the WHO'S WHO Art club international now expands the action of its web site by integrating all its activities and relays into it. This way, its scene, in the cyber art world, becomes plural and gathers:

• a nomadic salon, which travels from one country to another, from one region to another: the SAM (Salon of the Artist Members and Friends of the WHO'S WHO Art club international);
• a group of artists of various nationalities presented as friends or members of the WHO'S WHO Art club international, according to a Founding Charter within everybody's reach;
• an academy of artists who publicly honour other artists, featured in the Proposing Committee equally on line;
• a detailed directory, a virtual gallery and an agenda (for the exhibitions) of members with the on-line edition of the « Artists of the WHO’S WHO Art club International » yearbook;
• permanent access to the editorials and bibliographic sources (in which members and friends can participate by bringing forward information and other clues for the study of collective projects);
• a publisher acting as a communication agency, designing editorial products for the promotion of artists (and distributors);
• (soon) a preservation service enabling artists to publicly declare works created according to specific technical identification criteria ;
• (soon) an index of exhibition venues accessible to artists (tried out by members and friends and approved by the editorial staff);
• (soon) the annual election by members and friends of the best exhibition venue or event to discover, with a view to honouring organisers and intermediaries for their work in favour of contemporary art and artists.

Other activities will progressively complete this list, depending on the suggestions made by artists and friends among the audience of the WHO'S WHO Art club international.

Managing the costs to everyone's advantage

We have been among the first to recall the fact that before establishing their reputation, and even while they are doing so, and at all times, artists are acting as enterprising artists. The distinction between artist and entrepreneur is in fact recent. For a long time, artists were their own merchants and even acted as merchants for other artists, alive or dead.

An enterprising artist, means that the artist does not only 'make' the works but that, because he takes them out of the studio to make them known and sell them, he is also the first person to be responsible for their distribution. Sometimes in collaboration with sellers, and sometimes alone. He often provides and manages the necessary funds himself, following a budget linked to financial means and/or external support (patronage).

Showing his work is crucial for every artist and the relays to reach the public are therefore essential.

In fact, it is these enterprising artists (working artists) that the WHO'S WHO Art club international is addressing, with a constant effort to reduce, and sometimes eliminate, the distribution fees to which they are subjected, even to take part in a subsidized salon for artists (especially in France).

For us who do not receive subsidies, this means that for all the activities which require some funds from the artists or their sponsor(s), we are compelled to guarantee some appeal, a singularity, and in the end some costs which no artist could obtain individually.

This is also the reason why all our services and products are described with precision (including the financial conditions or the allocation procedure), and again the reason why we keep the control of all the contents, starting with what we publish on line (no free access to artists to upload information and reproductions, a practice which is unfortunately more and more common to reduce the costs).

Finally, this is why we had to give a visible form to our activities in the shape of a charter stating both our obligations and those of the artists.

A bridge across the crisis?

Times are changing.

After hearing and reading numerous speeches, articles, chronicles and books on the virtue of the 'all market' (art market included), from the autumn 2008 we have seen the big come back of the State, i.e. of taxpayers and of necessary regulations, or at least certain regulations, deemed necessary but on which we still don't know much. Including within the holy of holies of the capitalist system, i.e. the United States, under the impulse of their new and young president.

After being the problem, since the days of president Ronald Reagan, author of the formula, the State is once again the solution to a gigantic crisis.

Some even speak of a 'radical reform of capitalism', an expression which says much about the degree of errantry and isolation affecting many political decision-makers.

Quite surprisingly, those who are meeting on television sets to 'explain' the crisis and whose books, published for the same reason, are piling up at bookseller's, are practically or nearly the same as those who were 'explaining' only yesterday the virtues of the 'all market': 'great' intellectuals, economists, politicians, sociologists …

In such a context, for our part, we are not changing anything. On the contrary. We are pursuing the same goal, but enriching it and deepening it: we want more artists to appear on the scene which is theirs; we want the audience to increase in relation with the artistic practices and art scenes which are independent from the trends set by institutions and the media, and which, for the past decades, seem to have been set mainly for the investors and speculators to whom we owe this dreadful worldly crisis.

After the era of cupidity disguised under the features of 'performance' and 'social success', perhaps we shall see that of generosity alone?

In any case, from our viewpoint, art is a bridge, and by that we mean a hand stretched towards others. From our viewpoint, art is not a financial product for financiers converted to the 'art-people'.

We much prefer 'art together': the one we love and the one we share, the one we follow and the one we support.

Welcome (in advance) to all those who want to join us around this notion and on this platform.

The editorial staff