• The New York Times, Monday, February 16, 2009 10:45 AM

I have a feeling that people will be talking about Holland Cotter's piece in the Times' Sunday Art section for a while, and not just because he suggests that, with the art marketing swooning on the heels of the financial collapse, artists will have to get day jobs like "van Gogh the preacher [and] Pollock the busboy" once did.

The making of art and the marketing of art have become inextricably linked in recent times, Cotter writes, with art schools spitting out "thousands of groomed-for-success graduates, whose job it is to supply galleries and auction houses with desirable retail. They are backed up by cadres of public relations specialists -- otherwise known as critics, curators, editors, publishers and career theorists -- who provide timely updates on what desirable means." Not to mention dealers, brokers, advisers, financiers, lawyers and event planners.

The bottom line is that the whole enterprise has been held together by the inflated salaries of the financial world and many changes --which is not necessarily bad for art, even if it makes things uncomfortable for artists and their marketers -- are afoot. Trying to get a fix on exactly where those footsteps will wind up, however, is like trying to predict the stock market. That doesn't stop Cotter from making a few interesting suggestions of his own.

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