Episode 10: Lucas Zwirner

This conversation with Lucas Zwirner was recorded on the occasion of "Set in Stone", the collaborative exhibition between David Zwirner and Galerie Kugel, which closes on June 26th.

In this episode, Adam speaks with Lucas and Laura about growing up in major art-dealing families and why family galleries continue to thrive in the art market. The conversation also explores whether taste can be inherited, the role of art books in our increasingly fast-paced world, and how one should cultivate their own taste (good or bad!) to build a meaningful art collection.

"Set in Stone" is on view at David Zwirner 34 East 69th Street until Saturday, June 26th.

Learn more about the exhibition here and discover David Zwirner Books here. 

Follow our adventures @adamcharlaphyman and @laurakugel_

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:07

Hi everyone, I'm Laura Krugel.

SPEAKER_01 0:09

And I'm Madam Charlotte Hyman. Welcome back to Handle with Care, the podcast you didn't know you needed about curtains, chairs, lamps, and how to sell art.

SPEAKER_00 0:17

Today's conversation was recorded a few weeks ago at the David Zverner HQ in Chelsea. Zverner is widely recognized as one of the largest, most successful, and rigorous galleries in the world. Lucas Zwerner and his sister Marlene represent the third generation of this incredible art business. An academic by training, Lucas joined the gallery through the books publishing arm of Zwerner and has a very specific thoughtfulness when talking about his family gallery, the art market in general, and where things are headed.

SPEAKER_01 0:44

Last month, Lucas and Laura opened a really quite moving collaborative exhibition at David Zwarner Uptown on 69th Street, titled Set in Stone. It brings together some of the greatest contemporary artists and historical artworks from Zwarner, alongside hardstone precious works of decorative art from Gallery Cougar. What a cool opportunity this is to get to talk to two people that are both a part of these amazing and complex multi-generational family businesses about how family galleries thrive in the art market, if taste is inherited, what role books play in today's crazy fast world, and the way they see collectors collecting today. The show ends on June 26th, and I hope you all see it. You know, we don't have to like dwell on this idea of the family business, but it is just an interesting thing about how really good galleries work, and then you both have this in common, which is just kind of cool.

SPEAKER_00 1:40

And also the way galleries operate kind of fascinates people, or even more than the way when it is a family gallery.

SPEAKER_02 1:47

Yeah. I mean, I think there are no large public businesses in our industry, right? So it's the last creative industry where corporate forces have not infiltrated, which is just interesting. Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:58

Yes, and there's a dominance somehow still of family businesses, at least in the antiques trade, perhaps even more than in the contemporary trade. And it begs the question of why, how that can sustain itself, and what advantages and disadvantages it has.

SPEAKER_02 2:13

Aaron Powell Yeah. These things are studied. Family businesses are extremely good at certain things. Uh long-term planning is one of them. I think there's a largely a misconception in America because outside capital has infiltrated so many industries, but not always successfully. I mean, private equity struggles to run businesses super efficiently, and uh super efficient businesses don't always have super longevity. So the downside is you need to be very deliberate about how you continue to plan for the future. But you know, some of the greatest businesses in the world still today are really well-run multi-generational family businesses.

SPEAKER_01 2:46

It kind of begs the question what is most efficient really? Like how do we define efficiency in a business that is involved with this sort of whole psychological realm of collectors and collections. There may be like other facets to this definition of efficiency. Totally. There's something there that's curious to me.

SPEAKER_02 3:08

The one thing that I think is very true, and I would imagine it was true for you too, Laura, is the communication of values is done very well in family businesses because you have one generation communicating and transmitting values to the next generation. And typically the magic to most successful enterprises at any scale is something around values. It's not about how unbelievably optimized you are. We can have business cycles where what you sell is super popular in business cycles or whatever you sell, whether that's widgets or fine art is less popular. And if values are maintained, you have the possibility of continuity.

SPEAKER_00 3:42

That's absolutely right. It's interesting because one of the questions that I wanted to ask you is one that I get asked quite a lot, which is kind of like, how do you know what types of objects to buy? How do you know if something is good or not? And everything that kind of relies on what I've been taught, not explicitly. And that's why one of our questions is also like, do you think taste is inherited in some way when it comes to art? And that is, as you say, because basically the learning starts in the private home and then finishes in the worker office, and there's no distinction, which is also something interesting to think about when you're expanding a team like you have. How much can you actually explain to someone else about those kinds of things?

SPEAKER_02 4:22

Aaron Ross Powell Yeah, I mean, how taste is transmitted is of course one of the big questions in the art world right now as an older generation ages out or starts to sell their collections to a potential younger generation, not knowing if that generation is going to be interested in the art that's coming down from them. And so I think even more so than other industries, or maybe more so than any industry, the communication of taste or of values is sort of part of the DNA of doing what we do for the audience. And so the fact that it would occur within the business itself is not surprising, since that's what has to happen in order for a collector base, for continuity to be to be found. And I think obviously having a motivated next generation that believes in the values of the older generation, but also wants to embrace the new is part of what can be very magical in our field.

SPEAKER_01 5:15

And the values that you're talking about, are they values around what makes something of quality or what makes something worth collecting or worth owning? Like what are you sort of defining?

SPEAKER_02 5:29

You know, not being overly trend conscious, right? Trying to understand the underlying uh meaning and import of what an artist is trying to do. I think that's part of the magic of the exhibition, is the pairings are so surprising and there's this whole cross-category collecting element. But there's also the fact that every artist that is in that show and every object that's in that show was made with real deliberateness. And I do think that those are the kinds of values that are much harder to just tell someone to have. You need to see those embodied uh in order to kind of feel them. And I think when you do truly inhabit them, then of course your audience will believe you.

SPEAKER_01 6:14

It connects to this idea of the long game, and I think in many ways, taste is a long game. And that is something that I have really gotten to learn about from doing this podcast, actually, is that there are these instances in which you can encounter somebody that somehow has a body of knowledge that seems like it might have been inherited from multiple generations of people that have studied and passed it on, but somehow they have it intuitively. But that's very rare. And a lot of times it does seem that the longer you spend with a certain type of material, the more you are able to discern what is good and what is bad within it and what makes it tick. And something unique that you both have is that you have spent a lot longer with this material than a lot of other people for your age.

SPEAKER_00 7:15

Yeah, I mean, even unconsciously, it really matters. We evolve in different segments of the art market, and the way we source is very different, obviously. But I have learned now from my father and uncle's own experience upon their father passing away when they were very young, that basically without the presence of a teacher, like I get to have and you get to have, the objects taught them about their father's taste. Would he have liked it? Would he have bought this? There is something deeply rooting. So I am very happy to be working with my father and my uncle, but also in a way with my grandfather, whom actually I never met and certainly never worked with, but it's quite soothing in a way and grounding. And I don't know actually if you could talk a bit about your grandfather who was also a dealer.

SPEAKER_02 7:59

Yeah. What I would say first is I think that's part of what made this collaboration feel so natural, is that it was clear that Cougal approaches each object with such deliberateness. And I think that that's very palpable. Yeah, my grandfather he has an autobiography actually called Give Me the Now, which is a fun read. I wrote the foreword for it for fun. But you know, he was a very charismatic, very passionate guy at a time when the art market for contemporary art was forming. Germany was the center of the art world at the time. People don't really know that. Cologne was kind of the center of the European art world. And he was really at the vanguard. He worked with artists like Richter, uh Polka. He also worked with artists like Warhol, who would show Americans. He was the undersecretary for the second documenta, which was for a time the most important art gathering in the world. He was very influential at a time when the art market was growing and developing. He was also instrumental in creating the first art fair, which was called the Cologne Art Fair. It was soon eclipsed by the Basel Art Fair because they made the strange decision not to let anyone outside of Europe exhibit. And Basel, of course, turned into an international fair. The center of gravity shifted to America or to American dealers just because so much wealth was being created there. And the rest is sort of history. But it was also the biggest difference between then and now is there wasn't the same representational model that you now have among what we do or some of our competitors, where you really work with an artist over the course of their career, right? I mean, my grandfather had a very different model, which was much more, you know, doing one project with an artist, or you know, you would buy the inventory, like the early gallerists buying Picasso's inventory and then bringing it somewhere else and selling it, right? It's a very different model.

SPEAKER_01 9:42

So And why did your dad start a new gallery?

SPEAKER_02 9:47

Aaron Powell My grandfather actually closed his gallery in 89. And so there was actually no overlap between the two businesses at all. My father opened his gallery technically, I think that was 93 was the opening year. I was born in 91. And I think he just wanted to do his own thing in a new city in New York. And of course, the timing was both, I think, very scary for him, and it turned out to be very advantageous because it was basically an equivalent to what has happened the last couple of years in the art market. There was a big pulled drawdown in the contemporary art market. And I think he was opening a gallery, and people would say things to him like, Oh, I'm so sorry to hear that. I'm so sorry for you. You know, like because it was like, why would you do that? This thing's in free fall. You know, like and of course, what that does is it clears out some of the old and makes room for all sorts of new artists and new voices. And many of those were ones that he built relationships with or discovered or worked with.

SPEAKER_01 10:35

Yeah. So obviously uh something that can be transmitted generationally is the idea of relationships, but also there's the idea of even an inventory. Like I remember your amazing amber show, which was comprised of amber pieces collected over multiple generations, right?

SPEAKER_00 10:58

Yeah, completely. I mean, it's something that has been present in my father and uncle's way of seeing business for a very long time, which is this idea of creating markets and kind of like identifying re-emerging artists or specialties. Of course, you need to already be at a level where you're performing to be able to store some inventory for decades and wait patiently for the right time to show it. So, in the case of the Ember show, indeed, they had never sold a single piece of Ember for their 40-year-long career until that one exhibition, which was actually pretty amazing because it meant that we had no clients for Ember because we didn't know them. So it is so much fun to be able, you know, to present something fresh. And I think that's a very potent narrative for antiques dealers also.

SPEAKER_02 11:46

Aaron Ross Powell I'd love to talk a little bit about you, you know, you talking about not having clients for this thing that had been in the collection, and then of course you find clients, I'm sure people discover and they end up in collections. How have you felt the client-based changing? What is your sense for that? Obviously, we're embarking on this adventure in part because I think we both believe that there is a younger, hungry generation that's interested in looking at lots of things side by side. But I'd be curious to hear a bit about that from you.

SPEAKER_00 12:16

It's very different for us than it is for you, because we evolve in a much smaller slither of the art market. Right. And we have objects at very different price points, but we are known for the really top end. Top end, yeah. Um, so I guess historically, our gallery would cater for people at one certain stage of their collecting journey. And today, because there is so much fewer antique dealers and there is this need for renewal in our market, we are still here for like the collectors at the top end who already have like collecting experience, but we're also meant to foster brand new collectors. And to be able to do the two at once is a little tricky, but you can obviously start working with younger artists and offer this kind of maybe let's say more attractive price point in a way that for us it's a little trickier. So what I do instead is say, okay, I focus on the fact that there is great curiosity and great appetite. And that's why I'm happy to do this project with you, this podcast with you. And I'm like as much outreach as I can because it's not really about selling something today to someone, it's about capturing interest, creating relationships. And I think that in both our worlds, of course, if you're a gallery with the best object, there'll always be a client for it. But at the end of the day, people also buy from you because they like you. They like your eye. So then your object becomes the best object for them. So it's very important to be open-minded and not discard people who obviously might not have neither the budget today or the appetite today to purchase our artworks. But to be open, foster, advise if need be, not like in a formal capacity, but in like a friendly capacity, and work with young decorators and basically recreate an ecosystem, which I think we have planted the seeds for. Yeah. And now we have to basically be able to wait a little bit.

SPEAKER_02 14:08

Yeah, and continue to do things like this. I totally agree. It's a big mistake to be dismissive of anyone who's interested in what we do, because ours is not a need to have, it's a nice to have. And so anybody who wants to spend time learning about what we do is someone that one ought to encourage to do so. And I think what you're really saying is one way to do that without compromising quality is through education. And I think that encouraging that and fostering that is a way to build relationships with these objects and with our worlds without it needing to be transactional right away. And also, as we all know, the greatest collectors, of course, they're not just people who have the ability to purchase things at a high level. They're obsessive people who have educated themselves, often on their own, without formal training, but to a degree that is incredibly high because they're super passionate.

SPEAKER_00 14:59

What I do like in the art market and in our fields is that there is something that lives above or below modern life. When we talk about taste, when we talk about desire for an object, you cannot really chart it into an Excel. You cannot really put your finger on it. You can identify trends, and of course, you know, we try to, the media in the arts try to, but you can't actually. Like I have as many trends as I have clients, and I think there's as many business models as there are galleries, and everyone evolves differently. And as you say, it's one of the last fields where you don't need formal training and a specific curriculum to be great, either as a dealer, as a collector, even as an art historian or a curator, you know. And that's kind of magical, I think, in today's society. And a lot of people fall into that rabbit hole at some point in their life. I believe also for that reason. Actually, this is quite a nice segue into the books that I wanted to chat with you about so much, because if I understand correctly, you entered the business through the publishing arm of Zveniro. I don't know if you created it or if it was the beginning of it.

SPEAKER_02 16:07

Yeah, it predated me just a little bit. There was a wonderful guy named Todd Bradway who came to us from one of the great distributors. We had a super talented mentor of mine. Her name is Julia Jorn, and she conceived of this idea of having an independent publishing arm. Of course, as all galleries publish books for exhibitions, but the idea of thinking about that as being programmed independently and having broader distribution and all that. And I entered that way. I think in part because my background was very academic. I was a teacher before working in the publishing thing. I taught at charter schools uh uptown for two years, which was great. But before then, when I was in college, I wanted to be a translator. I wanted to be a novelist. As some of my now more famous novelist friends know, I was not a particularly good novelist, but I was diligent for some time. I think I basically also realized that I didn't want to be alone so much, which is what it takes to be an artist. It's one of the things that to me is so daunting when I look at an incredible exhibition by a living artist, and you just think about the amount of hours that were spent alone in the studio coming up with what they're coming up with. It's sort of unimaginable. And I found out that I liked working with people, but I had a real academic bent from my training. So the books department was a very natural and authentic way for me to have a job that was in this context, but in a domain that I felt comfortable contributing to in my own way. And so one of the first things I wanted to do was bring more non-art writers in to write about art, which was why early on we came up with this series called the Ecforcis series, which is all these reprints of ecfrastic writing. It's just a Greek word for writing about art. And so we partnered with academics, like a wonderful guy named Donat Jung Grau was one of the first people to select a text for us and introduce it. Um it was called Ramblings of a Wannabe Painter, very fun piece of writing. So it was sort of like how could we expand how people thought about art writing? And that was very exciting to me. And I also thought it it was very additive at the time, given what we were doing in the kind of more obviously contemporary setting. And then, you know, things took their own course, and I ended up in another part of our business. But I loved and still love all the books that we publish. And a lot of these projects are kind of cooked up with the artists, and I see it as a vehicle for the artists to realize their kind of passion in printed media. Again, I do think the role of the book has changed even in the last 10 years. I think 10 years ago, everyone wanted a book. It was an incredibly important distribution mechanism for images. We all know that there are other distribution mechanisms for images that reach more people more quickly. It doesn't invalidate what books do, but I think it changes the kind of book that you want to make if you're an artist. Meaning you don't just want to take your most recent imagery. If you're gonna put the energy into making a book, you might want to make something more comprehensive. And so I have found that our catalogs have become less exhibition catalogs and more monographic, and therefore there's fewer of them, but they're much more ambitious in scope. I think that's what, in a way, the books should be, because you have that ability when you are investing in research and and writers and and hiring that you can do something that's really a forever project as opposed to just documenting a single exhibition.

SPEAKER_01 19:21

And maybe this is obvious, but what role do the books play in the gallery ecosystem?

SPEAKER_02 19:27

I think people still love to look at and spend time with art books. I don't think that has changed. It's funny, I think that has been true since color plate printing was happening, that there is something super mesmerizing about looking at artwork in printed form when it's been well printed. And I also have seen how much fun artists have getting into the color accuracy and the specificity of a book project. I don't think they've ever been, you know, the easiest way or the fastest way to distribute images. I think they are kind of wonderful ways to sink into a body of work.

SPEAKER_01 20:02

I also think selling art has to do a lot with storytelling. And it's a very interesting sort of component of the whole picture, I think, of Zwerner, that there are a lot of books being made. Yeah. To me, you know, as kind of an outsider, it suggests a sort of mythical type of permanence to an artist's body of work when I encounter a book about that artist.

SPEAKER_02 20:29

Yeah, I mean, for sure, the idea that books give some kind of permanence, or the idea that storytelling and narrative are essential parts of how we make sense of everything. I mean, it's a platitude in a way, but obviously visual objects, the idea that they can be totally decontextualized and then be aesthetically received is crazy. You know, like that's just not how it works. And, you know, that was like the famous story about Clement Greenberg, great critic of abstraction. And, you know, he put me in a room with three paintings and I could tell you what the great one is. And it's sort of like, sure. And then 50 years later, history will tell through the reception of those three paintings, which was the one that ended up having meaning for groups of people and all of that. And I think books contribute to our ability to make sense of objects and certainly make sense of the visual world, which is increasingly chaotic. You know, I mean, there's just so much information that curation, which is sort of what the show Set in Stone is all about, is such an important part of helping focus people's attention. I I would say books probably serve a similar function, as does narrative in general.

SPEAKER_00 21:32

As you saw, and and as Adam knows, one of my wishes would be to start a little editorial branch of our gallery. We already do our exhibition catalogue that you know, and the catalogue lives on after the show is done. But to me, the potency of a small book printed at 1,000 issues about a very niche subject with three great illustrations is huge. And I wanted to ask you what advice you have for me, or if this is like a dead end and a gonna suck all my money.

SPEAKER_02 22:01

Publishing it's difficult business. The economics of the business are challenging. And that's not to say one shouldn't do it, but it's those are just the facts of the matter. I often think if you look at book prices compared to general inflation or other kinds of asset prices, how they have become inflated, books seem unreasonably inexpensive still. You know, like that you can buy a work of major intellectual labor for $39.99 in a hardcover is sort of like, why haven't the economics been pushed forward it's true. It's like it's crazy.

SPEAKER_01 22:30

It's like how much a latte cost. That's what I mean.

SPEAKER_02 22:32

It's like you you can buy a matcha for that. It's like you can go and have a matcha or you can buy a massive biography of Michelangelo that just came out. It's like why? And obviously the people in private equity and elsewhere who are opening every other matcha place in America have realized that there is intense price elasticity when it comes to selling beverages and that the margins are enormous because most of it is water and water is really cheap. Books are the opposite everything is expensive. The binding is expensive, the paper is expensive, hardcover is expensive, color printing is extremely expensive. It's all the unit economics as they say in in business school are bad, you know, meaning you can't charge enough for it to really make sense. That said, I think it's amazing you should totally do it.

SPEAKER_01 23:14

Well and it seems like it gets back to your point Lucas your role as somebody that is educating people and there is a kind of cultivation of clients but also just a cultivation of a culture of a corner of the world where people know and engage with and are meaningfully involved with the material that you guys are working with. That's so interesting. And what have you learned about that very niche audience that is coming to this show? And did you have a preconceived notion of who that would be or is it something that you're just experimenting with and learning about as you do it?

SPEAKER_00 23:54

Well for us this collaboration is a first. I cannot tell you how many times in the past 10 years someone has come to us and say like the Hail Mary lies in us exhibiting with contemporary art. It has been said to us so many times that I just definitely not you know completely closed up like a turtle because we literally exhibit artworks across like 2000 years of art. If people cannot concentrate on them, maybe we need to better the way we do it but I don't necessarily think it's by entering a market that we know nothing about that it's going to happen. And I always spent many years kind of discarding the idea because frankly the right partner and the right context had not come about. And I think since I met you and David Lieber like almost two years ago and you came to our gallery immediately there was such a nice exchange and appreciation of the artworks. I think we sit on a similar level of reputation in our respective fields whereby it can surprise our audience but it can totally make sense to them. But also we had the chance to have our friend Emma as someone who knows both our corners of the art world in a very intimate and enthusiastic way with a lot of thoughtfulness. And it's thanks to her that it is so special and it really focuses on how much relationship count and how much an eye is necessary to bring these kinds of projects together. So we embarked on this kind of like with our eyes closed because it relied on this mutual friend in whom we have total I think curatorial trust and commercial trust. And that has been kind of the cornerstone of it. So this is a very long answer. But basically it's a first for our gallery and what I really expect from this is nothing in particular if not that people smile when they're in the galleries, stop in front of an object they've never looked at, whether it's Werner's or Kugel's, and live a little bit happier, a little bit more knowledgeable having discovered something to make collectors understand really how relationships can be created around works of that kind of quality next to each other. Maybe it takes more than one visit, maybe it takes more than one show, but it's a first step in a direction that I think we both believe in and it looks so damn good that I'm thrilled about it.

SPEAKER_02 26:14

I think what I really like about it is that it's it sort of reminds you what collecting is about and it's about coveting objects or coveting artworks or coveting their dialogue in a space. And I think we're obviously both of us we're big participants in the art market and I love being a participant. I actually love markets. I love market dynamics and I like thinking about them. But I also it's important to remember that what we present at the end and what these objects mean is not coextensive at every turn with how they trade. And I think this show feels uncommercial in that way. Of course people are coming in and they're buying the objects and the show is selling itself as it were but doesn't feel like that's the purpose. It feels like a reminder. And I think that's really nice for young people because older collectors who have been collecting for a long time they know that's not the point. They know that there's nothing they can do about the market becoming more efficient or accelerating. I think there's a lot of young people that grew up with the art market. You know what I mean? Like every artist that they started collecting immediately had a market that they could say, okay, was this a good decision? It's almost like buying a stock or has it gone up in value? Of course if you can't separate those two things, then you're gonna have a problem because that's just not how what we do works. Great art is supposed to provide something that when you spend your time with it, you come out of that feeling enriched or feeling elevated or as you said, you're smiling or whatever it is. You know, I think that can get lost in the kind of rapidity I also think we're headed into another like slowness cycle as we all see and I mean we all feel it more and more can be automated at a very high level. The question for human beings is what do you want to spend your time doing right? Not like what can you spend your time doing? It's like you can spend your time doing a lot of things but it might be that a lot of your emailing can be automated. It might be that a lot of your trading can be automated. I think there's going to be a lot of young people that are kind of looking suspiciously at systems that are telling them they need to move really quickly or they need to not make time for these kinds of experiences.

SPEAKER_00 28:15

Yeah. I think that show makes time slower.

SPEAKER_02 28:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:19

Like a leisurely stroll people who are interested in the art market, they really want to identify a trend and they want to know like ooh you want new clients, you want new generation like of course I want lots of new younger clients. But that's not really what I want. What I want is exactly what you described is someone to come to this exhibition, see something they never knew they needed and all of a sudden that's all they can think about. And there is a very specific kind of satisfaction to be able to identify the right object for the right client that you know they've been looking for years and placing the right picture in the right museum collection like that's just so wonderful when it happens. But even better is the impulse by and the spontaneity of witnessing someone literally fall in love with something new. And because of the dynamics you're highlighting witnessing this is actually quite rare nowadays. Yeah rarer than we think when really that's what it's all about. And I can already see that in the eyes of some of the people walking through the doors and by the way also not just your collectors but some of our collectors who see things similar to what they already have in their house displayed differently and that elicits new ideas and new fantasies. And yeah to be able to like make those little moments of awe that really have no reason to be other than like beauty and desire it's fabulous.

SPEAKER_02 29:42

Yeah I also think it's a show that encourages you to trust yourself, which is crucial. You know, whenever people talk about value in the art market, it's like what makes an artwork valuable is ultimately if people like it, if people want it, right? And of course the only way you can find that out is by trusting yourself. Nothing that you see on a spreadsheet is going to let you know whether or not a lot of human beings are going to be moved by this in the future. If you're moved by it and you trust yourself, that could be a very good indication that is how many of the best collections have been built, right? By people who trust their taste and then they look back 30 years later after having done something that they felt passionately about, turns out they made some really great decisions, right? I think very few super meaningful or impressive collections have been built by people who are constantly trying to game the market because it's not like the stock market, right? Whatever anyone wants to say, the prices don't get marked to the market every day. People don't buy things strictly to see their value increase, right? They buy things for all sorts of other reasons.

SPEAKER_01 30:40

But there is also a very palpable like zeitgeist kind of paradigm shift that seems apparent in the imagination of collectors and people that are enthusiastic about the art world and art history. I mean you have Peter Zamtor's new lachma with all of these things from antiquity against concrete backdrops and the frick when it was at the old Whitney and there's a kind of renewed interest for this sort of tension that I feel like I see in kind of historical imagery from like the 50s and the 60s a lot like looking at images from old Domus magazines where they're like these modernist houses with a Renaissance painting. And then in France you have also this same kind of little moment where there's like you know stainless steel rooms with a poussin or something. And that kind of very energetic tension it's feeling fresh right like people are interested in that right now and it's sparking something.

SPEAKER_02 31:49

What do you think that's about it I think you're right that there's something about the exhibition that is topical in that sense, right? Like people come in and they feel that there's something in the air that this is capturing or crystallizing for them. And I think that part of that is also the surprise of the pairings of those contexts with these objects being something that when both are at a really high level is super compelling and new. And I think the tyranny of the white box is maybe releasing its hold on art or what people consider how they want to live. And I think that's a great thing. It means that you can present objects in whatever way you want to. I love seeing some of Kugel's objects in the kind of white box setting. So there's also this interesting thing that you don't need to be in a very ornate environment for an ornate object to really sing. So I think that's in a way what is being spoken to or what's in the air is that people understand that any environment can be conducive to the presentation and experience of any kind of object if it's done in a in a thoughtful or high quality if you will way.

SPEAKER_00 32:56

Completely to me it we talk about cross collecting which in and of itself is no new idea but the reason why people start cross-collecting today are new and to be able to witness that and identify that it's interesting. I haven't gotten to the bottom of why that is right now. You know I have my own opinions and theories and they may be true for some people and wrong for others but I think technicity is something that is really moving us to the core today. Yes. And the fragility of objects living with this kind of precarious fragility being in the presence of something so well preserved and then some people will resonate with textile or painting or it can be whatever, you know. But there is something that is actually specific to I would say our generation of millennials maybe we have been disenchanted by something and we need to root ourselves again. You know we were speaking on our last episode with Felix Berichter about the fact that a little level of nostalgia is also soothing and we need to be soothed today in the world we live in. So there's all these theories and I think it's a mix of everything but definitely it's in the air for the better because I believe those objects bring us a lot of joy.

SPEAKER_01 34:10

Well there's something there for me that feels like a really fresh take on what taste is or what good taste is, let's say what you know in this kind of insanely charged phrase good taste. But the idea that maybe good taste is not a set of standards by which you must have everything meet but actually the sort of idea that being surprising and surprisingly good or mysteriously good or secretly good is actually the marker of good taste. That it's not about a conforming but it's about actually almost the opposite the sort of taking you by surprise that this thing that you've never heard of is so important actually and isn't that amazing.

SPEAKER_02 35:00

I think that word conforming is sort of like that's what our generation is now starting to reject. There are all these kind of frankly bourgeois tendencies around what is good taste or impressive and all of them just conform to some standard that actually I think many people don't feel and I think that this shows feels to young people like an expression of you can do things in your own way, right? You can present objects in the way that you want to and maybe good taste is actually just trusting that you can express yourself in your own way.

SPEAKER_01 35:31

And confidence.

SPEAKER_02 35:32

Confidence. And confidence is something you can't really buy. No. And bad taste as we all know is just when you see cliches you know when people just are doing what everybody else is doing. You know whether that's buying the same bag everyone else has that's not good taste. That's bad taste. You know what I mean? Like that's just a cliche.

SPEAKER_01 35:50

Well and it's weird that our generation would arrive at this conclusion considering we're also the generation that created like this tidal wave of companies that offered you know like one type of mattress or one type of healthcare. It's the same people that you're speaking about, which is just kind of a funny thing. It's almost like we played ourselves.

SPEAKER_02 36:11

But I actually think that is why this is happening in a funny way is that there was this drive to uniformity which produced some really really good and efficient businesses, but maybe didn't end up being for the people even that founded those businesses an accurate reflection of their interiority and that art has always been a vehicle for that kind of reflection or books or any genuine passion, right? And choice. And choice, yeah exactly the luxury of choice.

SPEAKER_01 36:37

Yes by eliminating choice from the market to some extent regenerated an enormous fascination and the idea of choice.

SPEAKER_02 36:46

And the expressions of choice are of course what make great collections great or interesting collections interesting. It's where you can see that choices were made, right? That some human being determined to make these choices. And I think that gets lost a lot of the time when people think about taste because like you said they think about these big categories. Does this send the signal about myself that I want it to send as opposed to am I confident in how I'm expressing myself and is this a confident expression of that inner self? Does that feel good to me? I mean that's what I felt I think when I met Laura frankly it's like it's a person with good taste and by that I just mean a person that is authentically themselves and trusts their body of knowledge and their passions for their objects that they know and can communicate those in a compelling way. That's it. You know like I don't need anything more than that. There's so many people commenting about the art market from outside of the art market. And it's crazy. I mean I often I read the news about the art markets like has absolutely nothing to do with what is actually happening. You know like where are the young collectors? They're around you know like there's a new generation buying contemporary art right they're also buying older art. But obviously if you're not seeing that happen then of course you're reading some statistics from UBS that are telling you that the wealth transition isn't driving new collecting that's not true. And people have been collecting objects design art things for millennia and it's cyclical and we're in a really interesting moment where I think taste is opening up again to cross pollination and there's an openness not a kind of rigidity and I think that will lead to some really amazing collectors. And I'm already seeing it. And some of them are coming from industries like technology where you can just feel that there's an incredible brain power there and now it's turning its attention to visual culture and visual history and there will be some unbelievable collections cross category of all kinds that will have the most important artists living today and objects like the Sardonics vase from zero to 100 CE sitting in Arcougal show. And that's inspiring. That's exciting you know you know what I mean like you're actually gonna have to figure out what looks good together or have an authentic expression. And what you like or take a chance and then maybe it won't look good and that's also okay. Even not looking good can be good taste because at least that's an authentic expression of someone's inner life or inner world and that's much more interesting.

SPEAKER_00 39:12

Thank you Lucas that was amazing amazing thank you thank you very much