Gallery Owner

Would you like to read the usual word play and mucking about – or are you actually interested in making some serious money? Well, since I’m writing this weeks before you’ll read it, I’m going to have to decide for you. I’m going with the latter. Sorry if you were rooting otherwise. Now please sit up, listen up and pay attention at the back.

The advice I’m about to dispense is risky but if it comes off you’ll be chortling like The Laughing Cavalier in that picture by Dutch Baroque artist Frans Hals. Here goes. Ready? OK: to become a successful gallery owner I am suggesting you do the art yourself. You probably thinking I’m taking the Pissaro but I mean it. Anything you see in a swish gallery will attract interest, no one knows what’s good anyway and this will be far cheaper than buying in a job lot of Old Masters. For tips on creating instant art watch old footage of Jackson Pollock at work. Just imagine you’re at playgroup again: do handprints, headprints, drop the paint from a great height, pee on it if necessary – people love that sh** (though don’t don’t sh** on it). If you think you won’t be able to pull the wool over people’s eyes, think again: look at the crap Tracey Emin and Damien Hurst churn out: slicing up cows? All the people I’ve ever slept with? Gimme a break.

Next, for each piece, think of a preposterously extortionate price – then double it, and add a nought on the end for good measure. If it’s expensive it MUST be good. Next: pay a writer (me) to come in and say nice things about your art. Remember: art is 100% subjective so it can never be definitively described as total bobbins, even if it is. Now pay attention, here comes the science bit: find the poshest gallery space that money can rent in Mayfair, Hampstead or Holland Park and then, er, rent it. That’s vital – don’t actually forget to rent it, that would be an unforgivable oversight. Next – and in many ways this is just as important – make sure you hang everything at head height. People don’t buy navel-high art. Now get some of those big bronze statue things in: they tend to go for a fortune, they’ll look really impressive in the window AND unlike your more recent work, they won’t fade. Finally, when you’re all set, get loads of wine (drunk punters are buying punters), smuggle in a few forged vans Gogh (I know a man) and buy one of those signs that says OPEN on one side and CLOSED on the other.

I thank you.