Monday, February 27, 2017

Editor-in-Chief Bice Curiger on the end of Parkett




Parkett Editor-in-Chief Bice Curiger spoke with Brian Boucher of Artnews last week to discuss the recent announcement that their next issue would be their last. She cites costly art fairs, the decline in brick and mortar bookstores, and the fact that “young kids think everything has to be free" as contributing to the demise of the important periodical/edition publisher:

"Bookshops are dying. It’s a fact. We see that every day. Bookshops were very important for Parkett, because especially the early issues were more like books than periodicals. An old issue was not like an old newspaper. If you looked up books on [Gerhard] Richter, you would find the Parkett issue. But people have become used to reading much more online, and finding things there free of charge. Every newspaper has this problem.

We introduced the editions to be less dependent on subscriptions and advertisement. That was very exciting. It was not just to make money, it was also to explore very democratic means to offer artworks with a smaller price.

But it became increasingly difficult to survive because we no longer find it possible to have a good presence in art fairs. In the past, we would publish an advertisement for the fair and get a booth in return where we could show our editions. But now fairs have commercialized every inch."

Read the full interview, at Artnews, here

For examples of some of the artists' multiples and editions published by Parkett in their 33-year history, visit Tumblr, here: http://artistsbooksandmultiples.tumblr.com/tagged/parkett.

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