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