Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Tim
Speaker 1: Steneveek on Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 2: So you might have missed this just before the New Year,
Speaker 2: but our own Bluebird Pursuits team came out with the
Speaker 2: best museum Exhibitions of twenty twenty three, which span more
Speaker 2: than four hundred years of material with virtually every artistic medium, painting, sculpture,
Speaker 2: photography included, all of it. We're talking Vermier in the Netherlands,
Speaker 2: I think, in the Reis Museum, oh, very nice, Boscat
Speaker 2: in Switzerland, Mark Rothko in Paris and more. I mean
Speaker 2: there's a lot of stuff going on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but what about more contemporary artists, those who are
Speaker 1: alive in creating art today. We thought it would be
Speaker 1: great to check in on that world in the business
Speaker 1: of art. For that, we go to Marine ton Gee,
Speaker 1: the founder and CEO at MTA Art. It's a talent
Speaker 1: and creative agency that represents contemporary artists around the world.
Speaker 1: She joins us this afternoon Slash Evening for her on
Speaker 1: Zoom from London. She says, the author of an upcoming book,
Speaker 1: The Visual Detox, How to consume media without letting it
Speaker 1: consume you.
Speaker 2: Which I've been teasing because she's got some views on
Speaker 2: social media.
Speaker 3: Marine.
Speaker 2: Welcome, Welcome, So good to have you here with Tim
Speaker 2: and myself here on Bloomberg Business Week. Before we get
Speaker 2: into it, tell us a little bit more about your company,
Speaker 2: what you do, the kind of clients you're working with
Speaker 2: or are artists you're working with, and then maybe clients
Speaker 2: that you kind of put them together because you've been
Speaker 2: around almost four ten years here now I think about
Speaker 2: nine years.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's been fifteen years in the sector and the
Speaker 3: company is almost nine years old. So if you think
Speaker 3: of the way talents are represented in music from in sports,
Speaker 3: they will have the top talent agencies. Most of them
Speaker 3: will be in Los Angeles. In fact, w and me
Speaker 3: UTAOCA will have shaped the carriers the most incredible talents.
Speaker 3: We were in a very traditional sector where the core
Speaker 3: relationships with the talents were setting the artworks, but there
Speaker 3: was nothing else attempts of building up the carriers, developing
Speaker 3: new avenue streams, enlarging the agencies. And that's why I
Speaker 3: mention where we stood the opportunity to build the first
Speaker 3: talent agency and start creating not just the selle of works,
Speaker 3: but expanding onto building public art project, brand collaboration, digital projects,
Speaker 3: attainment deals, full visual artists, which was very very much
Speaker 3: brand new at the time.
Speaker 1: Is that that's so different than how traditional artists is represented. No,
Speaker 1: I mean there's like a gallery that sells art.
Speaker 2: Why is it so?
Speaker 1: Why? Yeah, talk to me about the transition to the
Speaker 1: new way that.
Speaker 3: The traditional relationship is with the objects and I figure
Speaker 3: relationship is with the talent. And it's the idea that
Speaker 3: you can in a same way you can take a
Speaker 3: bet on an entrepreneur or a musician or an actor,
Speaker 3: you're basically betting that talent. We're thinking that you can
Speaker 3: do the exact same in our sector. And and also
Speaker 3: the fact that if you're looking at you know, you
Speaker 3: mentioned some of the music exhibition, but some of the
Speaker 3: top artists nowadays don't just do traditional artworks on wars
Speaker 3: like a night where we will be doing your movie
Speaker 3: deal and also your collaborations and same with Jeff coun
Speaker 3: Sam with Kusama. So the definition of what it means
Speaker 3: to be successful as an artists also expended for the
Speaker 3: past ten years, which is enabled for a business like
Speaker 3: ours to strive.
Speaker 2: So talk to us. So then about what you hope
Speaker 2: to do when you're working with an artist, and I
Speaker 2: love the idea that you're working maybe with unknowns. I
Speaker 2: remember sitting with Eli Browne, a well known art collector.
Speaker 2: You mentioned Jeff Koons and others, and he loved young
Speaker 2: I think you know, younger artists that before they were unknown,
Speaker 2: and he liked supporting them and cultivating them. And it
Speaker 2: sounds like that's something that you guys certainly work a
Speaker 2: lot in.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So I feel, first of all, it's good to
Speaker 3: be aware that the talent diversity in the sector is
Speaker 3: pretty low. So we wanted to make sure to contribute
Speaker 3: to the studio costs of the artists and put a
Speaker 3: team behind them so that we could enable people not
Speaker 3: from the ones we could afford it, but at large
Speaker 3: to become a talent in the sector. And that's very
Speaker 3: much why we were very passionate about that. After this,
Speaker 3: I would say, there's a real like, you know, Raven
Speaker 3: Dick Clark is about to launch the Projects in Alabama
Speaker 3: that The New York Times have just released. It will
Speaker 3: be the largest cupture part of dedicated to permanent works
Speaker 3: of art. Aren't Slavery and Reassessing Slavery? She's twenty seven.
Speaker 3: That contract is two point two million, and that's for
Speaker 3: twenty seven years or this game change. And we wanted
Speaker 3: to be a place where you didn't have to wait
Speaker 3: fifty plus and you could come from all types of
Speaker 3: backgrounds and lend deals that will be game changing and
Speaker 3: could ultimately launch you in doing as many incredible projects
Speaker 3: as you want to do.
Speaker 1: What advice would you have for just regular people who
Speaker 1: want to understand the world better and they just see
Speaker 1: it as such an inaccessible place, like how does somebody
Speaker 1: know you know what art they should buy? Is it
Speaker 1: just a you know when they're you know? The things
Speaker 1: that get the headlines are the huge auctions from Christie's
Speaker 1: and more.
Speaker 3: I think it's you know, there's first of all the
Speaker 3: idea of taste, the super your taste, which has been
Speaker 3: because for many, many decades you will only be teaching
Speaker 3: the upper middle class, upper class and I speak for
Speaker 3: more of a British side, but there will be an
Speaker 3: idea that this will be you only teach a few
Speaker 3: people to know about arts. So I think first of
Speaker 3: all is to develop knowledge into it. And you mentioned
Speaker 3: the book for me, like you live in a visual world,
Speaker 3: you consume five hundred to six Holaday measures a day.
Speaker 3: Unless you're blind, you're very much immersed into a visual world.
Speaker 3: So first of all, getting the legible about this visual
Speaker 3: world is really important, and art is a part of
Speaker 3: the visual world. And second to know that there has
Speaker 3: been so many psychology called and a financial barrier there's
Speaker 3: been put in place for you to think it's not
Speaker 3: for you. And in the same way that I think
Speaker 3: some of the financial markets feels very inaccessible in their
Speaker 3: language in how to become literate about them, I think
Speaker 3: the art world feels the same way. Not coming from
Speaker 3: partially that background, I can say that you can definitely
Speaker 3: set educate. You can read a lot. So there's now
Speaker 3: loads of different media like the art newspaper, like an
Speaker 3: art net and news is that are very good on
Speaker 3: educational resource. But also there's more and more books being
Speaker 3: published on what do zon markets actually looks like and
Speaker 3: how do you navigate it? So knowledge, getting knowledge if
Speaker 3: first the foremost.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and especially when I think about a younger or
Speaker 2: an artist that's just starting out, like if you are
Speaker 2: smart and do the research and kind of understand the
Speaker 2: markets and maybe understand an individual their work, you can
Speaker 2: make it. If you want to invest, you can start
Speaker 2: in an unknown more easily and just be a little
Speaker 2: bit patient. Hey, you mentioned your new book. It's upcoming.
Speaker 2: I think it's out in the summer. I do want
Speaker 2: to ask you about that. Tim and I watching a
Speaker 2: Ted talk that you guys, that you did specifically a
Speaker 2: few years ago. Your book is The Visual Detox, How
Speaker 2: to consume media without letting it consume you. You liken social
Speaker 2: media to eating junk food, and I would kind of
Speaker 2: agree in many ways. There's a lot of stuff out
Speaker 2: there and it doesn't necessarily make you feel good or
Speaker 2: it's good for you, and there's a lot of misinformation
Speaker 2: this book. What is your goal with it?
Speaker 3: I think it's like the fish in the water. We
Speaker 3: are in a visual world, and we don't realize we
Speaker 3: are in a visual world in a sense that sixty
Speaker 3: five percent of us are visual learners. We actually learn
Speaker 3: through visuals much better than through text. We get bombarded
Speaker 3: all day longer, whether it's on the streets, whether it's
Speaker 3: through the digital with images. But we haven't been taught.
Speaker 3: We have been given vailable visual education, and we haven't
Speaker 3: been taught how to get around this visual world. So
Speaker 3: it's to first and foremost, try to comprehend it, like,
Speaker 3: what is this visual world? What do we get bombarded
Speaker 3: all day long? How do we really want to get
Speaker 3: bombarded with? Mainly the type of narrative we get bombarded with.
Speaker 3: How do we get involved? How do we get to
Speaker 3: develop visual critical thinking? I mean, if you think of
Speaker 3: the rise of AI, that visual critical thinking is give
Speaker 3: me so key, especially misinformation being on the rise. So
Speaker 3: then second is that visual critical thinking and those toolkits
Speaker 3: to develop a bit and then to be more participative
Speaker 3: to shape it as the world that you actually, you know,
Speaker 3: want to see more of and being a weather actually
Speaker 3: you can contribute to that visual language or that visual
Speaker 3: world around you. There's a feel again in the same
Speaker 3: way as your question towards the world that you can't
Speaker 3: really contribute to it. You're just having to kind of
Speaker 3: be on the receiving end of those hundreds of images,
Speaker 3: our ideas that you can contribute to it and you
Speaker 3: can shape it.
Speaker 2: All right, We're gonna, unfortunately have to leave it on
Speaker 2: that sae so hard.
Speaker 1: It's so hard to live in that world where you're
Speaker 1: like you need to rely on social media for your job. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is certainly Marine does too, but also feel like it.
Speaker 1: It's also like a it's also like junk food, truly
Speaker 1: that on the weekends I have to turn it all.
Speaker 2: Off, everything in moderation. Yeah, you know, and I certainly do. Marine.
Speaker 2: I know the book. It's either going to come out.
Speaker 2: I saw Summer but later. But hopefully you will come
Speaker 2: back once it is out and we can talk a
Speaker 2: little bit more about that, because I think it's a
Speaker 2: very provocative and relevant conversation, Marine Tongay. She is founder
Speaker 2: and chief executive officer of MTR, joining us on Zoom
Speaker 2: from London.