Everyone’s An (Art) Critic: Controlling Your Context

There’s a wonderful scene in Netflix’s new series Daredevil where Wilson Fisk finds himself enthralled by an enormous abstract painting in an art gallery.  Noticing his interest, the gallery curator walks over and gives him a brief, elegant crash course in modern abstractionism.  “People always ask me,” she says, “how can we charge so much for what amounts to gradations of white.  I tell them it’s not about the artist’s name or the skill required not even about the art itself.  All that matters is ‘How does it make you feel?’”

After a brief pause, Fisk turns around and faces the camera.  “It makes me feel alone,” he says, his words practically dripping with unknowable anguish.  It’s not until much later in the show that you discover the painting triggers a very specific, visceral memory that acts as the key to understanding his character, his motivations, and why he runs his empire the way he does.

In other words: the painting is the content, and the memory is the context.  Taken together, these two devices work to form the fine line Fisk walks toward establishing his emotional response to the piece.

Art, on its most basic level, exists as a fusion of content and context–content being what’s actually contained in the piece itself (paint, props, etc.), and context being all the surrounding variables.

Between the two, content is much simpler to understand, and what the general public typically responds to first.  Looking at a J.M.W. Turner piece, for example, one may mention simply how beautiful the painting, how reds and oranges blend with each other to recreate the majesty of a seaside sunset, his paint strokes weaving wispy, ethereal shapes into the background that may or may not be physical figures (in Ulysses Deriding Polyphemus, for example, one can just see behind the hazy mountain a silhouette of the just-blinded cyclops).

Context is slightly more abstract, if only because it encompases so much–and since it operates outside the realm of the physical piece, general viewers tend to overlook its significance.

Andy Warhol was the master of manipulating context.  A pioneer of the pop art movement of the 1950s and 60s, he used his experience as an advertising illustrator to produce straight, even deadpan, recreations of images that he saw represented modern consumer culture, including: Coke bottles, bananas, dollar bills, headshots of Marilyn Monroe, and (most famously) Campbells’ Soup cans.  His wide embrace of mainstream consumerism (and its subsequent inclusion into the realm of “high art”) was highly controversial for the time, but to see why one must look not just at the art itself but how and where it was presented.

Warhol wasn’t an idiot.  He didn’t expect his audience to be enthralled by a painting of a Campbells’ Soup can alone.  Rather, he wanted them to consider the significance of placing something so mundane is a gallery surrounded by traditional art.  Is it belittling art?  Is it a statement about finding the sublime in the monotonous?  What if that soup can was hung in a grid pattern with 99 other soup cans?  How about if you saw it hanging in a grocery store rather than an art exhibit?  To Warhol, controlling the context of his pieces meant controlling the message–and the infinite variations on what that message could be fascinated him.

Real Estate agents are no different from Warhol.  When interacting with your client, to accomplish your goals you’re going to need to have a firm grasp on both your content and context.

Content is the easy part.  You’re an agent.  Knowing your content should be your job.  What I want to do is get you thinking about where and how you present it.  Thinking about context could be the deciding factor in closing a deal, and most agents forget to even consider it.

Where do you meet with your client?  A coffee shop?  Their house?  Your office?  A bench in Central Park?  There’s no wrong answer to this question necessarily, but your response should always be based on what what you believe the needs of your client to be.  For someone looking for an aggressive agent to sell their home fast, perhaps staging your first meeting in your office where the environment is entirely in your control (everything from the temperature to the coffee mugs).  A shy client unsure of what they might respond better to an agent willing to step outside their office and connect on a personal level.

But context incorporates so much more than just the environment.  What medium will you choose to present your content?  Do just want to send an email, or should you put it online as well?  If it’s in print, is it in a folder?  What kind of paper is it printed on?  Will your client be more receptive in the early morning or late evening?  Think about the situation of your client.  What’s their background?  Why are they deciding to sell or buy?  If your clients have children, would they be comfortable answering answering questions about their interests?  Sales is an art form, whether art critics choose to acknowledge it or not.  And you, as the artist, should consider the context of your work just as much as the work itself.

Nothing ever exists in a bubble.  Accept that everything surrounding you plays a part in determining the outcome of your actions.  But as helpless as that makes the artist sound, don’t think of this as a limitation.  Instead, use this knowledge to your advantage and control what variables you can to crystalize your message.  It’s your masterpiece–it deserves to be presented precisely the way you want it to be.

The things you learn from superhero shows…