Alan Klotz behind his desk at the Alan Klotz Gallery
Amongst all the art dealers I’ve met in New York City, Alan Klotz is perhaps the truest New Yorker of them all. He is also perhaps one of the greater advocates of education in the arts amongst his peers.
Born in 1948 in New York City, Alan attended Stuyvesant High School when it was still an all-boys school (it became coed in 1969). “Stuy,” as it is more commonly known in New York, is one of the most competitive public high schools in the US, ranking twenty-third on the 2008 U.S. News & World Report’s list of America's best "Gold-Medal" high schools.
He went on to attend college at the State University of New York (SUNY) at Stony Brook, and then continued with graduate studies in photography at the Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, NY.
Every step of the way Alan feels he was privileged to receive “a terrific education.” He explains, “I just happened to be at the right place at the right time,” which is part of the reason he has given back by teaching history and criticism of photography for the last 28 years.
I sat down with Alan at his offices in Chelsea on a Saturday morning to speak with him for an hour on April 4. Following are excerpts from our conversation.
When did you first know that you wanted to dedicate your life to the art of photography?
When I was 13, I was about to have my bar mitzvah and I had an uncle that was a bit of a crook. He told me, “Alan, I’m giving you a choice—I can either give you money, like everyone else is giving you, or you can have a camera.”
Knowing my uncle, the camera probably “fell off some truck at Newark airport.” But I figured if I chose the money, I might not actually get it. So I chose the camera and that’s when I first started taking pictures.
Now, at the time, it so happened that one of the boys in my neighborhood happened to have an enlarger. So, we teamed up and set up a dark room.
That said, I didn’t start taking photography seriously until I went to college at Stony Brook with money from the federal Economic Opportunity Grant. As part of the program they asked me what skills I had that might be applied toward a student assistance job. I replied “photography” and that’s how I got my first job as a photographer for the art department.
I was officially in college studying political science to be a lawyer, but it was through this job and my experiences at school that eventually made me realize that I wanted to go into the arts.
The college was a pet project for Governor Nelson Rockefeller at the time, so it was endowed with a lot of money and every department reaped the rewards, especially the arts. In 1960, it was given the mandate given by Rockefeller and the State Board of Regents to become a university that would “stand with the finest in the country.” As a result, the school had some of the best teachers money could buy including Alfred Kazin, the famous Melville scholar; playwright Arthur Miller, author of After The Fall; and the revolutionary theater director Jerzy Gratowsky, who is considered the father of contemporary experimental theatre.
Moreover, there was always a lot happening on campus. The Stony Brook school administrators didn’t want us to be just another suitcase school, meaning the kids went home on the weekends. So they arranged great music concerts to keep the kids around on Long Island. Some of the best bands and musicians of the time played for us including Jefferson Airplane, Miles Davis, The Who, and Thelonius Monk.
As a result, art was everywhere and I got involved in it by not only covering all the events as the official photographer, but also as an amateur musician myself and actor and director as well of productions including Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett, and Antonin Artaud’s Jet de Sang, or Jet of Blood.
In sum, I was extremely lucky to take advantage of this unbelievable playground, which inspired my love for the arts. I just happened to be at the right place at the right time, and I made sure to take advantage of it all.
What do you think the difference is between what students were learning back then and what students are learning now?
These days most people are merely spectators, they don’t do, like we used to.
People are much more desperate and will rely on easy-to-use digital devices. There’s no dark room where students learn to develop and handle their art. Subsequently, everyone thinks they’re an artist these days.
Before the recession I was getting 25-30 people coming into the gallery, not to look at the work on display, but merely to present their portfolios to me. The problem was that none of them ever bothered to know what kind of work I was interested in.
One day, this guy steps straight up to the counter with his portfolio in hand. Before he got a chance to even open his mouth I said, “Stop! Before you say anything, tell me what’s on the wall behind you behind you.” He had no clue, for he hadn’t even bothered to look.
He proceeded to tell me that he wanted me to review his portfolio. Facetiously, I told him it would be $500. Without even a blink the guy reached for his credit card.
People need to do their homework, many people don’t these days. People also need to know what dealers think constitutes “good” work before they go out and present it to them.
In Italian there is a saying, “face di culo,” which literally means to have “a face like an ass.” In other words, this is someone who has no shame. Many people these days fall into that category.
It would be like me thinking I could suddenly become an opera singer simply because I like to sing. Once again, people have to realize what the standards are before they attempt to jump into anything.
Another key difference is that back when I was in college, people went into the arts because they had great ideas, not because they wanted to make easy money.
To become a truly good artist you have to realize and accept that time gives you mastery. You must develop familiarity and facility with the medium before anyone will be ready to deem you worthy of recognition. You have to create a body of work that may take a long time to develop. Because if you don’t live a life, you can’t reflect on it, and good art often does just that.
You’ve got to work your way through this stuff, find your legs first. These days too many people jump the gun and they aren’t having fun anymore. They’ve gone from “Maybe I will be (a great artist) someday” to all the Wannabes of today. Just come to Chelsea on Thursdays and you’ll see a lot of them walking about the openings.
These kids just don’t have a real reason to get out of bed in the morning. You’ve got to be inspired to be a real artist. Making art simply to make money is a surefire way not to be inspired.
How has the gallery business changed as a result of these differences?
Back in the 60s and 70s, it was incumbent upon the galleries to develop an idea of what “good” art was. We were the filters of the art world.
But then the auctions houses started moving into the retail business and that changed everything, so eventually it became a free-for-all, and the distinction between good and great art began to dissipate.
Over the years, collectors lost any sense of taste and they became vacuum cleaners, buying up everything they could get and storing the work in warehouses, so that they became the Costcos of art essentially.
In turn, many of the museums and art houses formed an unholy alliance with collectors, and many of the galleries were priced out of the market.
Has the recession changed this at all?
Absolutely. Until recently, the prices of prints were outrageous. No one could keep up. Many of the Europeans were taking advantage of the exchange rate and were essentially seeing the work being sold as one-third off the normal price.
Thankfully, with the recession that has all changed, and last year I was able to acquire a winter’s bounty of pictures that I could not have purchased in the years before. A lot of collectors are in trouble, especially those that were hurt by Bernie Madoff, so their works are selling for pennies on the dollar.
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