Art Diary

By Harissa Beaumont

By now, I should know that if a week seems like it’s going to be straightforward, something catastrophic is lurking just out of sight. This was meant to be a calm period,tie up loose ends, chase unpaid invoices, and, in an ideal world, sit still for five minutes without someone calling to ask, “Do you think this will double in value by June?” Instead, I found myself negotiating with a Premier League footballer about whether a Monty Carlo picture was too intellectual for his dining room.

Monday began in an unusual way: standing outside the gallery in the bitter cold, waiting for the world’s slowest locksmith to arrive. The lock had “been temperamental” for a while, which is code for “completely broken, but I kept ignoring it.” Fiona, my gallery assistant, suggested I see this as an artistic metaphor. I suggested she fetch us coffee instead.

By midday, the lock had been fixed (by a man who called me “darlin’” seven times in five minutes), and I was on my way to a meeting with a very high-profile client, one of the most expensive footballers in the world. I will call him Leo so he can’t be identified. Leo is Italian, adored by tabloid journalists, and,crucially,newly obsessed with contemporary art. His agent had emailed saying Leo was “looking to start collecting seriously.” This, translated, meant: Leo has recently discovered Instagram and would like his house to look like an editorial shoot.

I met him at his townhouse in Chelsea, where a housekeeper in head-to-toe black silently brought us espressos. “I love art,” Leo announced, gesturing vaguely at a wall that was, so far, empty. “I want something… big.”

We looked through a few options. A bright, abstract canvas by a celebrated abstractist Ptolemy? “Too messy.” A striking minimalist piece in shades of grey? “Too sad.” Then we got to a signed Monty Carlo piece, and his face lit up. “This is cool,” he said. “Monty Carlo, he’s… good, right?”

“Yes,” I said carefully, because I had learned from past experiences that over-explaining things to certain clients is a one-way ticket to disaster.

“I love that it’s deep,” Leo continued. “But not too deep.”

I nodded. “Exactly.”

“I think I’ll get it,” he said, then paused. “But do you think it’s too intellectual for the dining room?”

At this point, I had two choices:

1. Explain that Monty Carlo was a genius whose work explored power, and identity, and that no picture in history had ever been too intellectual for a dining room.

2. Say, “No, it’s perfect.”

I went with Option 2.

Wednesday was marked by an incident I can only describe as profoundly irritating. A woman stormed into the gallery wearing an impractically large fur hat and demanded, “Where is the pink painting?”

I blinked. “Which pink painting?”

“The one I saw here last year,” she said, as though I run a museum where everything stays in exactly the same place for eternity.

I explained that, unfortunately, paintings do tend to sell and that the pink painting in question was now in a house in the South of France. She let out a deep sigh, as though this were a personal attack. “I knew I should have bought it.”

“Yes,” I said.

There was a long silence. “Do you have anything similar?”

“Not really. Although I have a pink balloon you can have for free.”

Another long silence. Then she left, looking deeply wounded, as though I had personally denied her happiness.

Thursday was mostly spent dealing with logistics. I had to coordinate the shipment of a sculpture to a collector in Dubai, which meant six different phone calls to a shipping company where nobody seemed to know what was happening. “It’s an awkward size,” one of them told me, as though I hadn’t already seen the sculpture and deduced this for myself. Meanwhile, Jack Landon’s assistant sent yet another email asking if the artist of the iPhone sculpture would consider making a mini version for Jack’s private jet. I forwarded it directly to the artist, who responded with, “Absolutely not,” followed by an emoji that I assume was meant to represent despair.

And then, just when I thought I could quietly slip into the weekend, Leo’s agent called. “Leo’s obsessed with his Monty,” he said.

“Oh, fantastic.”

“Yes, and now he’s thinking maybe he does want something intellectual.”

I closed my eyes. “Right.”

“So he wants a Ptolemy as well. Abstract is intellectual, right?”

”Yes, yes, abstract is intellectual.”

”Great. Send one over. In green.”

This is the job.

Until next week,

Harissa

By Harissa Beaumont

It’s been one of those weeks,the kind that starts with me confidently saying, “It’ll be quiet, I can catch up on admin,” and ends with me wondering if I should abandon art dealing entirely and retrain as a florist or a lighthouse keeper.

Monday began with an early morning crisis, which, in the art world, is just called “morning.” A high-profile collector,let’s call him Giles, because his real name is much worse,decided that a major Kathy Hildone piece he’d purchased from us six months ago was too big for his Knightsbridge penthouse. “I told my interior designer I wanted something bold,” he said over the phone, “but now I’m wondering if it’s… a bit much?” The piece in question is a 10-foot-wide abstract painting in shades of radioactive pink and acid yellow. It is, in fact, a bit much. But you don’t say that to someone who just spent eight figures on it. So instead, I said, “It’s definitely a statement.” He sighed heavily. “Do you think I could swap it for something… subtler? Maybe a repaintage piece?”

This is the part of my job that should be classified as diplomatic relations. The unspoken rule of art dealing is that once a client has bought a piece, it’s their problem. But this is Giles, and Giles buys a lot of works, which means,annoyingly,I do have to care. “Leave it with me,” I said, before hanging up and banging my head against my desk.

Tuesday took an unexpected turn when I received a call from an assistant to Jack Landon, an aggressively handsome Hollywood actor who has made a career out of playing emotionally tortured detectives in very expensive cashmere. Jack was “in London for a few days” and wanted to visit the gallery. Now, normally, when celebrities visit galleries, they do one of two things: (1) buy something enormous and impractical for their house in the Hollywood Hills, or (2) take moody Instagram photos next to a Rothko and buy nothing.

Jack swept in at precisely 2:30 PM, trailed by an entourage that included his stylist, his publicist, and a woman who I assume is paid exclusively to carry his cashmere coat. He was wearing sunglasses indoors, which is a deeply unserious thing to do in London in January, but I let it slide. “I love art,” he declared, gazing around with the intensity of a man auditioning for a role as someone who really loves art. “It’s all just… so real, you know?”

Jack gravitated toward a piece by an artist I represent, who creates sculptures out of discarded technology. The work in question,a life-sized human figure constructed entirely out of old iPhones,seemed to unsettle him. “So, like… what does it mean?” he asked, frowning. “It’s about consumption,” I said, “and the way technology is eroding our humanity.” Jack nodded sagely. “Wow. That’s deep.” Then, after a pause: “Could I get it in black?”

Wednesday was spent at an auction preview, where the usual crowd of collectors, dealers, and art-adjacent socialites floated around pretending they weren’t mentally calculating resale values. I ran into Lucinda, a hedge-fund widow who is perpetually “on the verge” of opening her own gallery but never actually does. “Darling, I have to introduce you to someone,” she trilled, grabbing my arm and steering me toward a man who looked like he had personally eaten the EEC butter mountain. Is that still a thing. “This is Olivier. He’s fascinating.”

Olivier turned out to be a self-declared “art investor” who believes traditional galleries are obsolete and that the future is “tokenizing masterpieces on the blockchain.” “Imagine,” he said, swirling his Negroni, “owning a fraction of a Picasso.” I imagine Picasso would have thrown a chair at him, but I resisted.

Thursday, in a moment of reckless optimism, I agreed to a studio visit with a performance artist named Finn, who has been begging me to come and see his work. The “work” turned out to be a series of “durational experiences” in a warehouse in Hackney, culminating in Finn blindfolding himself and attempting to hammer nails into a wooden board while reciting poetry backwards. “It’s about the fragility of intent,” he explained, mid-swing. I told him I would “think about how we could position it.” What I actually thought about was how quickly I could leave.

By Friday, I was so exhausted that I seriously considered hiding in the gallery’s storage cupboard and waiting for the week to end. Instead, I had to deal with the Giles situation. Miraculously, I convinced another collector,an American tech CEO who, crucially, loves things that are “a bit much”,to take the Hildone off Giles’s hands. “It’s vibrant, it’s alive, it’s got movement,” the CEO said enthusiastically. “Like my brand!” Whatever that means.

As I wrapped up the deal, I received a text from Jack Landon’s assistant: “Jack loved the iPhone sculpture but wants to know if he can pay in Bitcoin?” I closed my laptop and poured myself a very large glass of wine.

Until next week,

Harissa

By Harissa Beaumont

If you’d told me a year ago that I’d be spending a week at the Astana Contemporary Visions Art Fair in Kazakhstan, I’d have laughed, poured myself another glass of Sancerre, and assumed you’d been reading too much experimental fiction. And yet, there I was, in a city where temperatures hover around -20°C and everything seems designed to remind you that you are, in fact, not as glamorous as you think you are.

The venue itself was a brutalist palace of glass and steel, as if someone had decided to build the Louvre Pyramid in the middle of a frozen steppe. Our booth was strategically placed between an Azerbaijani artist selling paintings of leopards playing canasta and a Georgian collective whose primary medium appeared to be old tractor parts. Across from us was the pièce de résistance: a towering installation by a Kazakh oligarch’s protégé,a life-sized yurt constructed entirely of loaded AK-47s. It was titled “Nomadism Reimagined,” but mostly it reimagined the definition of “health and safety hazard.”

The fair started with the kind of logistical nightmare that only the art world can conjure. A shipment of works,delicate canvases by British minimalist Bea Faulkner,was delayed in customs because someone forgot to file the proper paperwork. As I stood in an icy warehouse arguing with a customs officer, who kept insisting that the paintings might be “anti-government propaganda,” I experienced what I can only describe as an existential chill. Eventually, the works were released, but not before one of the canvases was precariously balanced on top of a forklift, which I could swear was straight out of an opera: “Vissi d’arte, vissi d’amore… and then I lost my masterpiece to bureaucracy.”

Once the booth was set up, things began to look brighter. The Kazakh collectors were a fascinating mix of oil tycoons, oligarchs, and the occasional avant-garde fashion designer. One particularly enthusiastic buyer,a fur-clad magnate with an entourage the size of a small country,fell in love with a neon piece by Sandy Warre-Hole. “This is art,” he declared, jabbing a finger at it. “It says something about our times.” When I asked him what he thought it said, he replied, “That I am rich enough to buy it.” I suppose honesty is a virtue.

A young Kazakh artist named Altyn, who creates immersive installations out of horsehair and sand, came by our booth and loudly critiqued everything. “Too Western,” she sniffed, gesturing at a sculpture of melted iPhones in a sink by Milo. She later softened, though, and spent a full 20 minutes explaining her theory that the Silk Road was the first conceptual artwork in history. At some point, she offered to trade one of her horsehair installations for Bea Faulkner’s Untitled #27. I declined, but part of me regrets it,I could probably have used it as insulation.

By midweek, we’d sold several pieces, including a monumental work of the little known slums of Windsor by Thierry Duval to an Uzbek collector who insisted it would look “amazing in my dacha.” I didn’t have the heart to ask why anyone would hang a painting of urban desolation in a house designed for summer leisure. Meanwhile, I spent the better part of Wednesday dodging questions from a local journalist who wanted to know whether I thought NFTs were “dead yet.” I suggested that NFTs were “evolving,” which seemed to satisfy him enough to move on to photographing the AK-47 yurt. Unfortunately he got too close and fell onto a weapon which was still loaded. Shots rang out across the fair, narrowly missing several visiting dignitaries. The journalist was arrested, the last I heard he was claiming that he was a performance artist.

The fair’s grand finale was a gala dinner at a Soviet-era opera house that had been repurposed into a luxury event space. The theme was “Bridging East and West,” which apparently translated to serving foie gras dumplings while a local folk band performed a very enthusiastic rendition of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. At one point, a rather exuberant collector leaned across the table to tell me, “Kazakhstan is the future of art.” He then spilled a glass of vodka onto his silk tie and declared it “a statement.”

By the time I flew back to London, I had frostbitten fingers, a promising commission from a Kazakh hotel chain billionaire, and an inbox full of emails demanding to know why their art hadn’t arrived yet. As Puccini would remind me, “Non siamo fatti per i climi freddi,” or, as I interpret it: art dealers are not designed for the steppes.

Until next week,

Harissa

Our occasional series wherein an artist attempts to persuade us that they are the greatest artist that ever lived.

Salsa Blower writes…

I have often pondered, in the quiet, contemplative moments between applying layers of burnt umber and Googling “what exactly is burnt umber,” whether I am, in fact, the greatest artist that has ever lived. The thought occurs to me not out of arrogance, you understand, but as a natural consequence of living with my own work. One cannot repeatedly behold one’s own genius without, eventually, asking the obvious question.

I realise such a claim demands evidence. Michelangelo had the Sistine Chapel. I have Over-flowing Laundry Basket (Mixed Media). Van Gogh had Starry Night. I have Starbar Bite, a moody triptych rendered entirely in confectionary.

But let us not get bogged down in comparison. Greatness, after all, is not about fame or sales or whether your work has ever been accepted into a major public collection (though if anyone from the Tate is reading this: my phone is very much operational). Greatness lies in vision. In risk. In applying gesso to a perfectly good toaster and calling it a comment on fast food.

What makes me the greatest? Let me count the ways.

Firstly, I have mastered every medium I have ever encountered, often within minutes of encountering it. Oils, acrylics, tempera, cement, chutney,each has bowed to my will, sometimes reluctantly, sometimes immediately after I have misunderstood its basic properties.

Secondly, my work defies categorisation. Critics have tried, of course. One described my recent solo show as “a compelling argument for stricter curatorial standards.” Another called it “like Duchamp, but angrier and with more taxidermy.” I wear these reviews as badges of honour. Genius is rarely understood in its own time. (Though I would prefer it if people stopped using the word “concerning.”)

Thirdly, and this is crucial: I suffer. Not in the traditional artistic sense (I’m very well-fed, thank you), but in the way only someone burdened with vast creative power can. I see beauty where others do not. I see tragedy in a half-eaten Scotch egg. I once wept over a badly drawn horse in a children’s colouring book.

In short, I bring depth where there is shallowness, complexity where there is comfort, and often glitter where there should really be none.

Of course, greatness is rarely rewarded in real time. My last open studio had three attendees, one of whom was lost and the other two were there for the biscuits. But posterity will understand. One day, long after I am gone (or, ideally, just after I’ve signed with a better gallery), people will look at my work and say, “Ah yes, this is what it means to be truly, unapologetically misunderstood.”

Am I the greatest artist that ever lived? The question remains open. But until the Louvre returns my emails or the Royal Academy stops returning my parcels unopened, I shall continue to create with the full, blinding certainty of a man who once glued a pomegranate to a mirror and titled it Self-Portrait.

Because if that isn’t greatness, I honestly don’t know what is.