It's an age-old question. What makes art valuable? Why do some artists sell their works
for thousands of dollars, for example like those who show in New York City's Chelsea
Gallery District, while others like portrait drawers in nearby Central Park sell theirs
for as little as $20 per phase drawn? And what about those armies of art school graduates
who can't sell their work for even a nickel? The Central Park Portrait Exchange is an attempt
to calibrate value along a different scale. My name is Peter Walsh and I'm an artist.
With the Portrait Exchange I've invited professional portrait drawers in Manhattan's Central Park,
artists like Zhuang Zhu Min, Ren Jian Guo, and Wei Chen to trade drawings with me. First
they draw me and then we switch seats and I draw them. This simple structure puts us
on an equal footing as far as our time, our labor and our materials. Of course they're
the professionals and I'm the amateur and I struggle to keep up.
He's been working in art since 17 and so he's been doing art for about 40 years now
and he taught at a college, at a university in China for 20 years before just kind of
striking out on his own. But still the Portrait Exchange format allows many variables to be
held constant which helps to highlight other factors such as skill, style and technique.
What also becomes apparent is that determining value is a social process. Who is involved
in the negotiation? Where was the art made? And where will it be sold? With the Central
Park Portrait Exchange we're creating a series of double portraits that capture each one
on one drawing exchange which are meetings of our minds, our eyes and our hands. At the
same time we are jointly producing a larger artwork that not only measures my work against
theirs but also uses my face as a kind of still life. A basket of apples and oranges
if you will to calibrate their skills and techniques placing their drawings side by
side illuminating each artist's abilities. And simultaneously my drawings are creating
a group portrait of the community of professional artists drawing portraits in Central Park.
So what does make art valuable? The answers aren't obvious but these portrait exchanges
do provide some partial clarity. Skill and technique matter. An ability to satisfy a
customer or an audience matters. Who you sell to and where matters. An artist's public
reputation or an absence of a reputation matters. All of these elements combine to produce what
we know as an artwork's value. Artists working in Manhattan's parks are under pressure from
the city and the parks department has created restrictive new rules that threaten their
livelihoods and their ability to share their art with the public. The parks department doesn't
value these artists or their work so the artists are suing the parks department to protect their
rights. For more information about the ongoing legal struggle or to find out more about the
portrait exchange go to centralparkportraitexchange.blogspot.com.
