Artspace editor-in-chief Andrew Goldstein talks about:
His work as e-i-c of Artspace and, since the publisher Phaidon purchased Artspace, his additional role as chief digital content office of both Phaidon and Artspace; how Artspace emerged within months of both Paddle 8 (online auction house) and Artsy (discovery platform), with the emergence of a high luxury commerce space, and how this ecommerce model is in its toddler-hood in terms of growth; and how the art market is lagging behind the audience growth in art; the landscape of Artspace and how its editorial content is the primary source for bringing users to the site; how the big perk of his job is the opportunity to go around the world to art fairs and biennials, being on the ground so he can stay on top of what's happening in contemporary art; the difference between being a collector going to an art fair (hint: everyone treats you like it's your birthday) and being a writer at an art fair (when it becomes a trade show); how he convers art fairs, which is like a starting gun going off as soon as you get there, and so he needs to cover, cover, cover, maximizing every single second without really getting a chance to breathe…it was more the "you can sleep when you're dead" approach when he first started out on the scene; the merits of Belgian collector Alain Servais, who Goldstein describes as an art advisor and a collector combined; how he sees the same people at art fairs over and over and over again, and yet such a large profusion of them that it's hard to keep straight who many of them are…there are the friends, the sources, the dealers and artist you respect and admire, and then the people you don't know who they are, but they say hello to him and he says: "hello, nice to see you again;" the art "market" (small) vs. the art "audience" (immense); how his approach to covering art fairs is to actually cover the art itself, by really diving in and wrestling with each given work (as compared with most coverage which talks about who's buying what and for how much, etc.); how for many collectors, it's about the works they buy and what association(s) it gives them access to, including a certain social milieu, as compared with the exceptional collectors who are passionate and uniquely quirky in their own ways; and we talk about his interview with Stefan Simchowitz, the often provocative collector and art world interventionist, who Andrew describes as having a totally worked-out worldview, his business built around addressing the industry's inefficiencies, and what the fall-out from Andrew's article was (hint: it was an interesting phenomenon).