A world-wide phenomenon

It is a real pleasure to see how, for the past ten years or so, more and more artists have shown that they were prepared to go out into the field⁽¹⁾ in order to seduce the public. All the more so after the long withdrawal process which we described in our previous edition, when recalling the context in which our editorial activities started up twenty years ago⁽²⁾.

Indeed, fairs, exhibitions, studios open to the public, on-line ‘displays’, symposiums or publications keep on growing and developing wherever they can be effective. Many artists, once powerless or resigned observers, although the providers of multiple scenes, are now ‘entrepreneurs’ who no longer hesitate to collaborate with one another in order to create or revive events, even if this means having to get some private and/or public financial support themselves, or paying out of their own pocket part or all of certain activities, like many masters used to do, when the art trade was also their trade⁽³⁾.

This is a world-wide phenomenon. It underlines both the narrow-mindedness of the ‘official’ art market and the surge of an audience not normally influenced by trends, which ‘learns’ (and buys) art on a passionate impulse, during a meeting, while reading or when seeing an exhibition⁽⁴⁾.

The artists’own commitment and the new audience they seek, and which they contribute to increasing, form a double and fundamental evolution regarding the diversity of art and the world surrounding it, distributors included (art gallery owners, publishers, journalists, etc.).

For several years already, we have been following this double evolution while multiplying bridges between artists and this growing audience, increasingly present among our readers. Now, we are paving the way for it even more by bringing them closer in a new manner, which is the fruit of twenty years of experience at the service of artists and the public.

A double evolution: some new tools to read through it and promote it

This new form is called the WHO’S WHO Art club international and it is under its impulse that the close knitting is taking shape.

Indeed, the 146 artists from the 18 countries represented in the 2006 edition of the WHO’S WHO IN INTERNATIONAL ART guide are all members of the WHO’S WHO Art club international.

This means that they are honoured and encouraged by the editorial staff for their artistic work and approach but also for their actions out into the field in favour of an audience which they contribute to satisfying and increasing⁽⁵⁾.

As such, they can have recourse to all the professions within the WHO’S WHO Art club international for exhibitions, publications, advice, valuations, conferences, meetings, cultural trips, the making of films and documentaries, Internet activities or to take part in fairs. Meanwhile, the WHO’S WHO IN INTERNATIONAL ART yearbook now devotes all its pages to them, since it features artist members exclusively, along with a selection of historical artists, which varies from one year to the other (depending on the preference of artist members).

In short, just as an art gallery or a curator would do on a long-time basis, the WHO’S WHO Art club international offers to all artist members a set of activities, never static, forever evolving, and draws many bridges to help them with their work, their relationship with the public and the artists, their knowledge of the current artistic and commercial reality (the official and the not so official one).

A network of solidarity over five continents

Through this action, we are binding together experiences presently scattered in this new art world formed by the world of artists meeting the public and the public itself, including professionals also seeking a wider or new audience.

Within the WHO’S WHO Art club international, every path pursued has its own place because every member enriches the others with his/her own experience, whether new or consolidated – either as an artist, a mediator, a distributor, a spectator, a prescriber or a buyer.

Thanks to this sum of individual and cosmopolitan paths, the WHO’S WHO Art club international is setting up a network of solidarity over five continents motivated by common centres of interests and issues. The members on one side – i.e. the artists – and the friends on the other – i.e. the various private and professional audiences met – are both the protagonists and the first beneficiaries. A hard core is forming...

Our friends the readers and the net surfers are leading the way

Dear readers and net surfers (our precious whoswhoart.com as the editorial staff call them with endearment), this new art world therefore concerns you, because if you are not artists, you are mediators, and/or distributors, and/or prescribers, and/or buyers, and/or visitors. In fact, each of the 146 artists which you will find here (and in the edition published on-line as from 1st March 2006), is opening the doors of his/her studio to you, through our intermediary, thus putting you within this network of solidarity, which you, in turn, are enlarging and enriching.

This will not have a neutral effect on you. Strong from this new relation, you are going to share more rapidly the passion and the professions of the artists which you like best; you are going to switch from one to the other more rapidly; you are going to appreciate more fairly what brings them closer and what separates them – but not only that.

Through their respective experience you are also going to discover what ‘being an artist in our contemporary world’ means without being part of the ‘star system’; you are going to discover their role or simply discover them, given that the international contemporary art market is not like a display window accessible to all artists⁽⁶⁾.

With the WHO’S WHO Art club international, you are going to leave the usual market to see the artists with your own eyes and according to your own rules.

This is why the set of activities offered by the WHO’S WHO Art club international concerns you as well. Indeed, you will be able to follow the progress of the artists featured in the 2006 edition (particularly) in our exhibitions, through our other publications, on our web site – a site conceived like an agora for all your activities and at the origin, or so we hope, of meetings full of all kinds of experiences, suggestions and ideas shared.

Therefore, you too are invited, dear readers and net surfers, to become active friends of the WHO’S WHO Art club international, by following and taking part in all theses activities designed to create visibility.

Besides, some of you will even have the opportunity, if they so wish and on a regular basis, to act within the Steering Committee, the other source of ideas and initiatives of the artist members and friends, whose (biannual) journal is Art Together, distributed in four languages, both on paper and on our web site⁽⁷⁾. Why? Well, to keep track during the year of the current situation of artist members and the life of the WHO’S WHO Art club international: what happened (evaluation), what is happening (to be followed), what will happen (not to be missed), among other columns⁽⁸⁾.

Setting light on this new art world through the artist members, setting more and more light on it, setting light in a more effective way, such is indeed the aim of the editorial staff, with your precious support, dear readers of the WHO’S WHO IN INTERNATIONAL ART yearbook, faithful friends present in forever increasing numbers over twenty years, including in the cyberworld of an art which is developing, no matter what they say, at the same speed as the cyberworld itself⁽⁹⁾...

We now wish you to make some good discoveries in the following pages and... see you very soon on our web site, in the studios and in every place where artist members have a prominent place on the picture rails – or simply a prominent place!

⁽¹⁾ The 2005 editorial is available on our web site. Soon, some older editorials selected among the numerous ones which we have published over the past twenty years will also be on line. By way of recalling the fact that many ‘surveys’ now published in the press or in some essays were already on our front page, well before.

⁽²⁾ As mentioned in the report on the situation of artists in France, published in Beaux-Arts Magazine (September 2005), which, for the first time, does not limit its survey solely to artists in vogue.

⁽³⁾ For a long time artists were their own merchants and occasionally acted as such for other painters: ‘(...) Organising an art market of recent importance allows them (the artists) to have a profitable activity related to art. Their adherence to a logic based on economy therefore varies, depending on the chosen profession. Brueghel, Rubens, Teniers sold pictures: many an 18th century painter wished to take advantage of the market growth.’ Le commerce de l’art, de la Renaissance à nos jours, edited by Laurence Bertrand Dorléac, 1992, Editions de la Manufacture. See also our study published in the 2001 edition, from which the above quotation has been taken.

⁽⁴⁾ See the excellent article by journalist Erika Lederman, Wall Street Journal Europe, 14th-16th November 2003. Let us also note that, in the year 2000, the on-line publisher Artprice.com reckoned that the number of artists in Europe and in the United States was one million and that the number of ‘art lovers likely to seek or acquire a work of art once every three months’ was five millions (in a brochure distributed during the Lyon biennial, 2000).

⁽⁵⁾ Among the criteria for admission, every artist must have at least one individual or joint exhibition per year on record.

⁽⁶⁾ Let us quote again Patrick Barrer’s book (where all is said and demonstrated with facts drawn from current affairs), Le double jeu du marché de l’art contemporain, Editions Favre, 2004.

⁽⁷⁾ The first issue came out in April 2005 and will be of special interest to those who wish to know more about the functioning of the WHO’S WHO Art club international.

⁽⁸⁾ Thanks to headings like AgendArt, ContactsClub and InfoClub, exchanges between artist members and friends of the WHO’S WHO Art club international should soon expand.

⁽⁹⁾ A billion net surfers in the world, including 220 millions in Europe, according to ArtAujourd’hui Info (6th July 2005), and the on-line publisher Artprice.com announces 2.1 million visitors on its site.