How visual artists can use digital to build a business around their art

Marine Tanguy:

So the sector sees art as a dead object that is almost as luxury items, and is very much devoted to the creator in some ways. The way he perceived talent in the music, film and acting sectors felt much more fluid, it felt human, it felt you could extrapolate many things from just a single person. Your actress was not just doing a top movie, she was also having an amazing brand campaign, she would have a very powerful communication strategy, there was so much more to her than just what she was doing. And I just felt like you could do this with visual artists and I didn’t know how much the private sector but sportive used to be really underappreciated up until the ’80s, ’90s.

…underappreciated talents. They are people you want to sign, people you want to be the carrier of. And I felt this was the visual artists really loved, deserved the same thing. And also because I have very strong liberal and left wing political views, I felt therefore we would have to build a new stream of revenues behind talents, which meant that all types of talents could become talents in an overtly privileged sector. Also that I would have to bring new agencies through bringing new types of revenues to my talents. So it was really very satisfying moments, because the economics and the social values just aligned in a way that just I didn’t expect them to make sense because my sector is very high network driven, and my views are much more left wing.

So I never expected them to come hand to hand, and actually the solution fund behind the agency got the economics and the social values to completely meet and to be the strengths of one another, which felt amazing. And subsequently also became the first B-Corp company in the art world in the UK on the back of this. So I think we continue the stories through that.

Marine Tanguy:

Traditionally it’s drastically evolved. Obviously in the ’80s, ’90s you would be lucky to be exhibiting on the wall. And that will be the only way you will be perceived in the world. Because that was the only way someone could interact with your work, that if you were displayed on the walls of a gallery, on the walls of a museum. Of course my generation of artists has had it I think in a much better way because suddenly with social media you could tell your story and you could be seen by much larger audiences even if you didn’t have access to a wall.

Which meant you could include countries that would before this not included, you could include backgrounds that before this were not included. So then the communication side I think really changed everything. And I think not to forget as well, that PR agencies in the sector are very expensive. So it also democratises access and how you could tell your own story, which I think is very powerful. I think that we really make a difference if we… I look at every artist as a 360 strategy, I think every single one of them wants something completely different than what the agent would want. So we complete tailoring to them.

But I think to give you major achievements which nobody else can do in the sector. So we closed the Sean Mouse in Paris, which is 800 metres long with the efforts of 30 companies, the mayor of Paris and we had this 800 metres, basically the longest public art painting in the world with artists safe. Safe when you had this was 29, just made it to the full 30 under 30 then had this. No galleries in the sector could have gotten this. And it’s a completely new type of deal where you have back to the inspiration of CAA, but you have partnerships and packaging behind talents, where here you can have a media partnership, you have 30 companies financing it, you have a public office like the Mayor of Paris backing. So we will package very powerful deals which suddenly enable a much larger audience but also a much bigger ambition than I think these talents used to have.

Marine Tanguy:

I think yes or no. I think social media was powerful again, your story was told by other people. You couldn’t tell you your story in the first place. So that’s a game changer. And I think even someone like me, so 90% of the sector comes from a very privileged background. The fact that I don’t buy I could tell my story and get people to back me is I think an example of what social media can bring in a time like this. The revenue I think is what… I agree that audiences don’t do everything. But in the case of the public art project I gave as an example. And my first boss was Banksy and JR, the audience became their strengths. It became their worth as well and their values. So they can have a Cannes Festival or cities committing to doing projects with them in the case of JR because of the audience that they have. So I think audiences are incredibly powerful. And in all talent sectors they are really, it’s thanks to the audience that the talents have their power as well.

Marine Tanguy:

Yes, I think the way we built them, there’s four different arms in how we built them. There’s the traditional arm, which is setting that works, getting museums to back them. Then you have the communication arms, making sure everyone knows they’re the next rising star that will just ever be seen as such. The third arm is the public art. So a public art deal can be up to half a million and million plus. So this is not just organising an event, it is breaking ultimately a partnership of a city or government or multiple public bodies, which is very financially viable for artists at that level.

And that’s the reason why we are able to get artists from very prestigious traditional models because they can’t get this anywhere else. Then you have the brand collaborations which were also very new for the past few years, where suddenly we did a partnership with a Californian company and over 1 million projects with three artists and them that we had put on all their bottles, sold within just three months in the UK supermarkets. So the idea of generally bringing up to the shelves of supermarkets, which is completely disrupting because the same artists will be exhibiting at Christie’s and selling for 1000s of pounds per works. I think it was back to, I have been raised by a traditional sector professionally to start with, so in a sense of about six years in the traditional sector.

So I’m able to have a partnership with Christie’s which we’ve had. I’m able to understand how collectors work. I’m able to develop networks that will back the artists, but equally I never wanted to just be in the luxury side of things for them. I wanted to make sure we could position mainstream deals, which I believe in the long term will be much more valuable revenue wise and reputation wise than the luxury ones. And that’s what started happening because the audiences are much larger because suddenly they become much larger role models. People that you look up to, people that you’re inspired by, are actually much more game-changing for their careers than just a pure luxury market.

Marine Tanguy:

I think I’m excited. I’m not excited about the art world. I’m excited about the visual sector in which the urban realm, the advertising sector belongs to. And I want to share my visual talents in that visual sector. I think you right now have never consumed so many visuals in your entire life than in the past 10 years. We’re doing visuals constantly, they’re everywhere, they’re on the ads digitally, and artists have so few shares of those visuals. And the advertising sector knows it’s the key to get to your brain, and two seconds if they use visuals they will get you to think something much faster than if they speak or they put a word to it. And yet visual artists barely tap any revenue from this. They don’t get any shares or any voice really within the sector and they still confine to something that’s really conservative, a bit broken because almost two galleries were only making money before COVID. And just outdated and not like language is very outdated as objects in the luxury space.

Marine Tanguy:

So when I built the business it was essential, first we were one of the few businesses to be profitable from day one. And that was essentially in a sector where most of my competitors are acquiring social status or are non regarding to whether or not they’re making money. And that was the same way in which we therefore wanted our artists to be very sustainable financially. I think again, economics for us is very much the vehicle to change. So they have to be empowered economically and we have to be doing well economically because that is what we believe to be also the change within, otherwise the sector that’s very stuck in. So I think revenue streams are really equal from public art projects to art sales, to brand collaborations, to communication deals.

So Delphine Diallo, one of my Brooklyn based photographers, just got the Chanel Number Five contract to rethink the impact that Chanel Number Five had. So reshaping the idea of the perfume and retaking the idea that I don’t know how much you know about Chanel Number Five, but the funder, Gabrielle Chanel was very disruptive in her time. She was collaborating with tonnes of artists when she launched it and going back to those principles. So that will be also bringing that equally we booked on multiple editorial shoots with Candelas at the same time and the Gap Groove too. Equally she had a 12-metre exhibition in Central London for 10 months that was supported and paid for by the crony states and Westminster in Central London. She was also in advertisements that were screaming in the centre of Los Angeles.

Meanwhile studying art and just recently been seen at an auction run by Ex Sotheby’s[inaudible] and therefore the art newspapers. So that’s the example, that’s all us connecting the dots. It’s a bit like when you get on the websites of William Morris, they have their name and then these are all connected dots. Our brains are the same, you just have a name of an artist and then you just connect the dots everywhere and you just make sure that every single person, a key person in your network that would be relevant to them is connected and revenue’s being derived at every angle of this if that makes sense.

Marine Tanguy:

Very good reading, very good research.

Marine Tanguy:

Yeah. So the thinking was twofold. I didn’t have parents who are business people. My mom is a primary teacher, my dad a sports teacher. So I was trying to think, how can I build foundations where my business is safe for the years to come and I can have what I love. Meanwhile I obviously have something that I can scale with this. So my thinking was I need to have somehow a business that is cash flow based, but also asset-based. So then I can basically be interest safe. And as I wanted to scale. So the cashflow was all the revenue streams I gave you.

The assets were like, what my artists need is constant support and constant financial support. If I find a way through the cashflow to be able to back them every month from their studio and production costs, in exchange they will give me a work per year. If they dump me after a few years because we’ve done a great job because something else happened, which I don’t wish for, because that’s the worst case scenario, but let’s say they become major and they dump me, I didn’t want to be in a position where business wise this is something that would impact me.

I want to be in a position where that’s only going to be sad emotionally but professionally we can celebrate it. So that’s what the value of our whole corporate collection was built on. So we have 267 works right now that we own from artists we’ve backed, from artists we have now seen the markets really rising since. So for instance I can see which were the first AI artwork ever sold at Christie’s in 2018 for half a million, we would have a work of this. So we have a collection that basically keeps on growing in terms of value. And it means that I can resell any of these works till we support the rest of the artists if something was to go terribly wrong. If not it means we just have an exponential corporate collection that is incredibly valid in the contemporary landscape. Then we can decide next what we want to do with this. Ironically this has also become a source of revenue, but that was definitely non-planned because we’ve had lots of people who wanted to borrow from that collection, but this is where the-

Marine Tanguy:

Yeah. So we’ve had a lot of these inquiries. I don’t believe in rental of art as a business, because I think the logistics and the admin are too expensive to put this business forward.

Marine Tanguy:

But I think because we own the assets and because we already insured them, and therefore the logistics is minimal, we’ve actually been able to derive a lot of revenue from it completely by accident, because that was never part of the thinking, But so UBP which is one of the few large scale privately owned bank for instance will be borrowing the corporate connection on a regular basis.

Marine Tanguy:

Yeah. So we’ve been as a company for the past five years. We’ve had exponential growth the past year, also because I’ve had three entrepreneurs selling their companies to join me, which has made a huge difference. But yeah, it’s like an early stage. I think we’ve borrowed CAA as a model, B-Corp because we’re definitely left wing and the early stage understanding of backing brains which to an extent CAA does anyway, they’re back brains. So I think we can have an inspiration from the three angles, but I think early stage VCs definitely see themselves in what we do in terms of how we act, how we recruit, how we back. But ultimately it’s about believing in backing people. That just basically just being confident in spotting the right personality, spotting the right talent and benefiting from having spotting that person and being trusted for that value as well.

Marine Tanguy:

It feels like a cooking recipe. Because it just feels like we’ve put everything then suddenly it happened and it worked out, which is really nice.

Marine Tanguy:

Yeah. So I think, and you will know that yourself from having a podcast as well. It all depends on really which audiences you want to be seen by and what story you want to tell and what reputation you want to build. So they all are building quite separately. You have many more tools that you used to have. Social media is very important in terms of access to audiences, access to potential partners and buyers as well. In reality, as we all know, nothing beats the New York Times article, the mainstream press is still incredibly relevant.

And you can have all the social media following in the world if you’re not backed by people from your sector, there’s going to be a stop at some point from how much you can do from that. So I think all other agents and maybe that’s the reason that I’ve lost my voice, but you spend your life generally just meeting people, making sure the right stories are heard at the right time by the right journalist, making sure that therefore there will be a pitch to those people, the story will be written in the way you want it to be written.

And that the artists would therefore start having more credibility. I always think about how we can give them credibility, visibility and revenue. Marketing is sitting between credibility and visibility. You want to enlarge the agencies, but you also want everyone at the top to take them seriously and you need those. I think it’s positive because when I started social media I was very poorly seen. And even those large audiences were actually poorly seen, they were seen as cheapening your brand and speaking to the masses was obviously the very wrong idea, which was similar to the few sectors where you could say that openly was looking mainstream. And I think obviously now they’ve realised this was a terrible mistake, which it is.

And I think it’s already perceived as you have to do this more but there’s still a form of snobbism on if you have to look like you work hard at it, this is still being, you’re still being looked on at from a sector where ultimately most people don’t have to look at… Well they don’t have to look like they work hard at all because most of them don’t have to work very hard. So it’s, it’s, there’s still a difference of background between the guys who have to really hustle and craft and the guys who don’t have to do that. And social media is usually used by people who have to hustle because they don’t come from the right background then they need the larger audiences to support them. Whereas I think the more privileged backgrounds still tend to be slow to get it and be a bit of a snob about it to that extent still.

Marine Tanguy:

I don’t know because I’ve always been keen as a bunny and tried way too hard. And I’m sure it has been judged upon for years. I was told I was too ambitious, I was told so many things, personally as an entrepreneur, obviously not as an artist that I don’t think I care that much about all these things. I know the sector would still do, but the sector is changing drastically as we speak. And I think I’m now at a stage in my life where I would be happily playing all communication strategies if my artists can’t get what they want. I don’t mind. I really believe in what they do and I think they deserve it. So my team will be fitting that, it doesn’t matter, we’ll just do it.

Of course not and even as morally compromising, but making sure that any communication angle is executed. And the way that hustle is looked down upon. I think, again, that’s a choice. I figure if you’re someone that wants to be seen and praised purely by the traditional markets, then yes, you can look like you hustle too much. Is that the future of the sector? I’m not sure. Do you even want to be praised by people who ultimately disdain most people who are like you is a question that I’m not sure. I personally, in some way that you were saying about self-made, but I guess I’ve never really… My role models were never people who were part of that. As much as I respect them now and work with them, I think it’s not who I aspire to be either.

You do at some point have to make a decision which goes with building a reputation with who might love you, who might like you, who might dislike you, but who… and with the guys that might dislike you, who you need to turn around, because it’s essential you do, because you need them, and who you are okay to just let it go because I might never like you, and that’s okay as well. So I think that always comes with communication strategy. All my artists are ultimately pushing pretty strong messaging, pretty strong personalities. They’re not going to be loved by everyone. I think they understand that this is most likely the agencies that will help them get there I think as the sector is really changing and what we put on integrating it. It’s smarter to just accept that more than this one, and then we can just work and get as many more people as needed over time as well. So that over time it evens out to almost everyone backing them if that makes sense.

Marine Tanguy:

For me I think the conception you put forward was basically constructed, so that patron of the arts could exist. You always need victims so that you can have veterans and visa-versa, they co-exist. And ultimately, especially in Anglo-Saxon countries, you had an upper-class, an aristocracy who wanted to be seen as a patron of the arts. If they’re equal, they can’t be patrons, because if the person doesn’t need them, that obviously they can’t be saying so saviours, right? That just defeats the whole Hollywood story about it. So all the stories were created so that it would reflect well on the guys and would then save them as poor artists. Because if someone is, again, an equal to you they don’t have to be playing that role, my artists are not poor artists. They’re smarter than us and they drive us and we’re equal in many ways.

We’re completely a team in the way we work together. And I don’t think I’m above them and I don’t think any of my team thinks we’re above them. And we don’t save them either. We just think we’re lucky to be working with someone who is really talented and vice-versa. So it’s a really clever construction to make sure that you can have almost this hierarchy, all clever confections, right? That preserves hierarchy most of the time politically. So I think in reality, Picasso when you read his letters was incredibly financially savvy. Leonardo da Vinci, very financially savvy, Michelangelo, very financially savvy. Obviously Andy Warhol as we all know was also a businessman. So it’s just not true and it’s been repeated over time that it was not true. The first artworks really were commissioned by the church, which acted almost as a business because you even had contracts where they had to agree upon principles of what the artworks would actually look like.

So it was like a business consultancy in a way. So I just never believe in the more of this. And I think it’s, I said so much as a construction to make sure that they stay lower. Because the less rights and artists have in our sector, the better. They don’t have royalties. Most of the sectors have much better royalties. There’s a legal right to have royalties, but no one applies it. There’s also they’re poorly credited when most of the works are going up. They just have really short contracts as well. It’s perfect. The least knowledgeable someone is, the lower they are, the more you can control them. So if you keep preserving the idea of poor little artist would do nothing outside of his craft or her craft then that’s perfect because you can manipulate the hell out of that person.

In reality, I think first of all, I don’t think anyone can be born out of fresh air. Even when you are born out of fresh air purely, you’re still connected to society around you and that incredibly impacts you. So you cannot, art for art’s sake which is a philosophy that has majorly influenced the thinking you were pushing forwards is actually a French philosophy from the 19th century… The French dropped this philosophy and the English kept it. And it’s just one of those beautiful philosophical ideological ideas, but realistically for you to leave out some of the societies, literally impossible, unless just as yourself try to be a desert, but even then you might want to build something, you might want to be connected. It’s just not feasible in its practicalities.

So I think to then put it back to the arts, the arts is a response, the arts, the materials, everything is being created by the sight in which your artist lives in. And all of this is conditioned by the place that you’re born in. So therefore my hope is actually that as now the sector is more open and more international and more diverse, that the artist of that generation who will be successful will show that diversity, they will be coming from everywhere, discussing things that I hope will be vague and not have a single way to look at the world because that would show that the world is much more open from the visual sector perspective. So I don’t think that it will be the same movement in the same way that you had with the impressionist movement. And I would hope it’s an explosion of individualities, cultures, backgrounds, diversities, ultimately plenty of times but very strong yeah, very strong complementarities in terms of the art as well.

Marine Tanguy:

I think it’s interesting because I’m 12 years in and my friends are either VCs or in musical film. We always speak about what are the talents that we love and what are the people that we really remember having had a meeting with. And ultimately they’re all very similar types of people. They’re just an inherent vision drive and cohesiveness, even though it might be a unique logic that’s only logical to that person, it somehow makes complete sense as you encounter that person. A mix of an enormous amount of talent and an ambition that you feel like if I’m not getting on that train, the train is leaving anyway. So I will just be missing out on an incredible ride.

And I think most talented people will share that personality, and that is the reason why the company said that we would only invest in art, but we invest in artists because… I remember that first meeting with all my talents, and now we have a selection committee, it’s not me who’s heading this, but you see it. And you sit with other talents, it’s really a flame, and it’s very romantic to describe it as that, but you feel like if you throw 10 things in the face of that person, they will still be standing. There’s a real strength in there, in the determination that they have.

And that is as again, being romantic about it, I feel that is what’s seductive about people, because you want to be on a ride with someone that’s going to overcome everything and through talents and through being smart and through being inspiring, because I think there’s very few reasons to why life is worth living then actually having those great stories and on the top of this being on very exciting rides for it. So that’s basically what an artist does, and you can pick it up. It’s confidence that’s not arrogance. It’s just real strength to know they’re going to be doing this for the next 40 years. Then you can choose or not to be a part of it, but you know it will happen.

Marine Tanguy:

There’s a sentence that Michael Ovitz said 10 years ago now that really resonated in me when he said I collect brains. And I loved when he said this, because I always felt like a great collector of brains, obviously alive people, but still-

Marine Tanguy:

I don’t want to feel like I’m morbid, although I’m obviously a very avid reader, but still actual living people. I think when he said this it was quite interesting because he said this and I still remember because I was in his house and there was a library and there was the way he was speaking about talents. And it was really going on the hunt for the smartest people he could find. And it’s interesting because I think if you look at these carriers and look at what CAA was able to achieve, one time they were able to win a contract against McCann Focal Care. The advertising agency had a ridiculously large team. They were still very small. And they still won it because the ideas were great, the brains were smart. And I think in a room you can always sense this.

And I have a strong belief in that and I’ve been in many rooms now where we’ve been tiny, my artists have been more, sometimes younger or sometimes less established and somebody else, all this is changing. But smart and driven and able to convince the crowd that they can do that. And it’s just quite magical because I think if you believe in the power of brains, I think there’s very little that will stop you from that and I think also it makes life very interesting because you keep on putting brains together and ultimately you see amazing things happen out of them. So I think it felt very liberating when he said this, because I think I was coming at it when the art world underpays people, underpays the interns, doesn’t recruit brains.

We lose most of our brains to sectors that pay people better. And we look at artworks as such dead objects that I think when he said this I was just like, “I’m willing to pay a team member a high price. I’m willing to pay an artist every month.” Because I generally believe that the value is not in the object but is in the brain. And I think because it’s the opposite. It’s really back to the early stage VC is people who believe in backing people and they think the value is more in that than anything else that has been built, because you can see that that person could build most things from this. So it’s definitely my philosophy. I know there’s all different ways to look at this, but it’s quite liberating because it has really worked out to be trusting in good brains so far.

Marine Tanguy:

Well, I think first of all it’s tough, as you know yourself, if it gets just… It’s definitely difficult to stand out. I think therefore the best way to stand out is to be technically as innovative as you can, conceptually have a story that’s as unique as you can as well. And then match it with a very good way to approach someone just when you send your story to, I don’t know. Like I see artists doing this copy and pasting emails or not really doing a real approach. I think just really sit down and think, I want to join. I may not have everything that’s yet required, but I really think this is right and let me explain why. Plus I’m sure that this is really the company I want to join. This is the reason why. But it also comes to the fact that technically and conceptually just research and make sure that you are truly adding value to a sector.

It’s a bit like going back to companies, but if 40 companies are already doing the same, you might not be adding much value as you’re creating the 41st one. But to some if an artist, because we look at portfolios all day, we’re really trying to pick people who are bringing something very new. And visually you can always bring things out and conceptually it’s the same. So just make sure that you go in depth with that because the next rising stars are usually always people who add value to their sector, who bring some fine arts through a different lens, a different angle, a different context that this sector hasn’t seen before.

Marine Tanguy:

The thing is I don’t think we’ll care that much I think from our end. Is the answer. I think if I was a buyer or if I was a potential partner for them, I’m sure very sleek websites and sleek Instagram will matter when it comes to whether or not we want to work with an artist. And we want to represent a talent. That’s just, we don’t care. I have some artists we’re still only communicating through WhatsApp with me. They send everything from invoices, lengthy contracts to vision through WhatsApp. And Jennifer Vistra was one of our first ones to do everything through Facebook Messenger, which is so deeply irritating because she’s the only one who does this. So I think this is not what we’re looking for. It’s what we’re just really looking at… Because every single application is reviewed, is looked at. So we’re just really looking for someone that’s going to be so unique and yeah, such a discovery I think that you really feel, well, I haven’t seen visually or technically something like this before, this is such a great story. That person sounds really interesting, and would love to meet them.

Marine Tanguy:

Ultimately. Having good press or having social media will put that person on our radar, but then the rest is still valid so we still want to know what personality, so of course it’s like being in the right room. You put yourself on the radar to somebody else, which is great, but you still have to prove your worth at that point as you enter the room. So I’ll never text someone because they’ve got a great amount of photos or the right press. I would just really, first of all, take them and the team will be feeling the same way, whether we think we can back that person, whether we 300% believe in that person because it’s impossible as always to back them. And because I also generally feel this potential for them putting out there. So it’s I think-

Marine Tanguy:

Exactly. I think it’s great to be put… Also again, usually if they have large audiences I would hope that they’re making a great living out of what they do, which makes me very happy, whatever the next conversation is, and I think that’s fantastic. I think autonomy is really good. But after that, who is going to be relevant or not for the next generation is a different conversation, which is really what we are excited about. This is who we want to work with, this is who our collectors or partners want us to be working with. And that’s a slightly different conversation. But when it comes to… I would just be very happy for the artists.

I’ve been in that position many times actually recently where I’m happy the person does well, but I just don’t find them groundbreaking. And we would either work from time to time on the book’s basis or project to project basis. But I would only want to take someone that generates 300% comments or somebody else from my team is 200% because obviously we’ve got now a large enough team that if somebody else is really convinced, they should take that person on board. But otherwise it’s a waste of time for the talent if that person enters and it’s just because we think we can make money or they have photos, it’s not going to work. You need a real belief system that you can move mountains for this person.

Marine Tanguy:

I think it all depends. Again, they’re so different in what they want. Recently-

Marine Tanguy:

It’s interesting because I’ve never really thought about that question. I think the happiest moments I have with my artists is when I see how much it inspires people and when they shift narratives I get very happy when the artist triggers a new way to look at something. And I see people appreciating this. So I think probably historical recognition for them is something that I value very highly. Therefore having people just valuing or being inspired by them, seeing them as role models in the way I see them as role models is what I value most. I see money as a vehicle. So I’m always very conscious because especially as a woman where you have so few businesses led by women who actually make you money, you’re so few in the sector who actually are viable.

So I built everything so that money wise we’d never have to worry. And ultimately this is going up, but I’m not building a company for financial reasons. I’m building it because I generally get excited for every single one of them to be inspiring tonnes of people. And yeah, when I also see people reflecting the way they look at things, thanks to the art, I get really excited when I hear about the impact they have on people’s lives. I get really happy. And ultimately it’s funny, there’s a Netflix series I’ve wanted to speak about called 10% of the minutes and it was created by a French guy, who is about to come to the Anglo-Saxon world, is in the role of life of agents. And the guy who created it was the agent of pretty much everyone in the film sector in Europe.

Was saying he used to wake up everyday with the guilt and anxiety hadn’t done enough for his talents. I wake up with anxiety, because I generally believe I’m working with people who are very talented. So I generally believe that they deserve a very large recognition. So I guess my happiness and my wish for them is that it’s just to get to that recognition, to get to change the things that they wanted to change and to have people looking up to them as role models. That’s generally as basic as is, I already get to live it a tiny bit on a daily basis. I’m sure I can’t wait to sing on a much bigger basis but that’s very much the highlights of my job, but that’s why I wake up everyday with anxiety, because I think that these are better every time.

Marine Tanguy:

I’m a sucker for great stories, and I love good visual stories. And I hope that the visual stories we will get to support would change things over the long term. But yeah, the business has completely led so that our sector can change more progressively. And I think I’m very lucky that my senior team has made their fourth… Three entrepreneurs decided to separately sell their own companies to join us, and because I think the vision that we have is that we have in common of really shifting the way the visual sector goes about representing talents, integrating art in all contexts is just looking at visual arts or visual language differently. And I think again getting every time the objective financially our way to set that the change can happen, but I think none of us are truly passionate fully on the financial side of things.

All of us are just on the fact that this can constantly enable more and more shifts in the impact we want to make. And I think that’s the reason why it was able to attract people like that, which is really exciting. But yeah, it’s really fun. It’s generally a 40 years commitment to come. Just there’s no… It’s like all of us feel quite chill about it. So if it gets now coming on to… It’s a very long road, but we are at a level, not to name drop, but I was very lucky last week to start my week with the founder of WPP, the ex-founder of WPP, Sebastian Sorell. And I’m at a stage now where I’m listening to great brains. I think the visual sectors could be completely disrupted and change and be a sector.

And now I just want to build the path of businesses I’ve seen being built, but plug in the B-Corp values and the shift that’s so dear to us and succeed at that. And I think the answers are exactly the same, all of them is they succeed, carry such incredible narratives that not only would they be a success, but they would also be able to bring a narrative that’s usually brand new for the sector. So it’s just, it’s really a war of ideas. And I think all of us are much more ideas led than we are business led. And in fact my degree was in philosophy, it wasn’t in business.

Marine Tanguy:

Well. Okay. I just have it anyway, so I can’t hang on, I don’t have one.

Marine Tanguy:

So if you apply at artist plural, as the word at mtart.agency then again the section committee will review it. I promise that every single one is being reviewed. And in fact, because all of us are inbox zero obsessed with the senior team.

Marine Tanguy:

I’m not sure this is very healthy, but I can’t do without an inbox zero as I could really value the… Because obviously that’s the reason why we are not focused together because we respond to emails all the time. I still can’t make up my mind if I finish it. But I am an inbox zero though. But therefore I think as you know yourself from inbox zero, so all those guys within five minutes, they respond to your email with something to say about it. You would be surprised that the right senior team is actually looking at your email at midnight. So I think just really be careful about this. We don’t have a company where juniors are being dispatched to look at staff.

The senior team is very involved and it means that at midnight if one of them suddenly has a ping email on top of the selection committee they might actually look through it. So I figure you should be thinking of that as your email. Don’t do generate email, don’t do copy paste, then rebuild a story that that person might find relevant at that time of the night I think is the advice I will be giving. I find so many emails to be so, yeah, just you can see they haven’t thought partially about who they’re speaking to. And I’ll say that an artist may not need to do this most of the time, but I think when you’re trying to obtain something, just try as much as to think who am I actually speaking to and what are they trying to review when I’m emailing them?

Marine Tanguy:

That’s really nice. I don’t want to do anything that’s actually commercial at that point. This is incredibly controversial therefore, because I know this book has got very divisive praise or not, but when I was building MTArt I was reading the famous Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, which is why my baby is called Atlas as well. And I think I did agree to everything that Ayn Rand said, I think it’s impossible to do that anyway. But it’s 1,200 pages of someone that generally tried to rethink 360 of a political, economical and social model that was different. Super pioneering, and very ambitious. And whether or not you agreed with her I think to just actually read it because most people haven’t read it from A to Z and see the commitment and see how she constructed it.

I think if you’re in the process of building something I figure it is really helpful because there’s no angle she hasn’t looked at as she was trying to build it. And I think the point of that is not to be, do you agree or not? That’s irrelevant, is almost thinking can I build a system like this and that way she also built a system like this. And I think it’s one of the few books where someone has aimed to build an entire new system. And of course it’s full of flaws because that’s always going to be the case. But I’ve never read a book that was that impactful. And I’m sad that every dinner I go to, people criticise it but haven’t read it. So I think that the advice is to really read it properly. And then have your hate if you want to have your hate, but just because I figure it will challenge your brain off as you read it. And even if you then decide to dislike it, it will still make your brain think of things in a different way.

Marine Tanguy:

Definitely. Again, I’m left wing, so I’m not of the right wing that has been using it on that basis. And I definitely found lots of left-wing points because she obviously left Russia to immigrate to the States. There’s tonnes of parts that are integrated. I think it’s just more how incredibly ambitious someone can just reimagine a system. And that’s the reason why entrepreneurs love that because when you’re building something, you have to almost rethink an entire system and you have Jonathan, and she’s the definition of disruption because she’s very anti a traditional sector.

She’s very anti anyone who is not adding value in that sense, but I think it’s in business really interesting because you also see all the resistance and resilience required to disrupt any sector through that. And again, I think this is not to be applied to every part of life, but I think specifically if you’re trying to build something up, she’s quite something I think, and I think Fountainhead, which is much smaller, is usually read instead, which is not good. Atlas Shrugged is the only one you’re actually meant to read which is much better than Fountainhead.

Marine Tanguy:

You’ve reviewed many, so that’s a real compliment coming from you.

Marine Tanguy:

I’m sorry I was —

Marine Tanguy:

I hope so. Well you take care, thank you for having me.

Marine Tanguy:

Bye-bye.