GALLERY OWNER TALKS ABOUT ARTIST REALITIES

Chicago gallery owner Eva Cohon was in Cape Girardeau Wednesday to tell university art students and townspeople who are artists what the real art world is all about.

It is, she says, "a business."

That reality dictates the types of art and which artists are exhibited.

"Either you do what the economy wants you to do or you go out of business," she says.

Cohon spoke to an audience of about 60 people at the University Museum. She was invited to the university by Ron Clayton, a Southeast art professor whose work is shown at her gallery.

Cohon, a native of Benton, Ill., conducts business in the serious-minded River North area of Chicago. The Eva Cohon Gallery is one of the most well-established contemporary art galleries in Chicago.

She offered both encouragement and a reality check for talented students who might be dreaming of becoming the next Picasso or even Norman Rockwell.

"Will you make a living painting?" she asked. "Probably not. Very few people do. But you're going to get something wonderful anyway."

One reality of the art world, she said, is that people buy paintings to hang, usually in their houses over a couch or buffet or bed. "Paint a size people can hang," she said.

A collector turned dealer, Cohon provided a step-by-step guide for getting work shown, and said not-for-profit galleries are a most important venue for students and emerging artists. Very few upscale galleries are willing to take a chance on an unknown, she said.

She warned against resumes that expound on the artist's evolution. "Nobody wants to read it," she said.

She is a believer in the best training, saying, "Most fine artists are rooted in good life drawing and good realistic painting. From that it evolves." She also advises attending graduate school, which she said provides "refinement of the talent."

Galleries and artists generally split the price of paintings 50/50. From its half the gallery pays the cost of the opening reception -- often $2,000 -- and rent, utilities and salaries. The notion that galleries make a lot of money off the artists is wrong, she said. "We don't."

Sculptors usually receive 60 percent of the purchase price because of the time and expense of the materials involved.

But, she said, sculpture is the hardest kind of art to sell. "People fill their walls first."

Above all, young artists shouldn't become discouraged, she said.

"Plan to be disappointed a lot," she said. "You may go to 50 galleries before to find one to show your work."

She has one cardinal rule for deciding whether to show an artist's work in her gallery: "I must love the work enough to own it," she said.