To celebrate the third printing of I like your work: art and etiquette, now available here, we’ll be posting excerpts from the book during the next two weeks.
Of all social forms, I find proper introductions to be the most difficult. The combination of unarticulated expectations, conventions, and motives creates great potential for unparalleled awkwardness. Within the art world, this form is made even more complex by the ambivalence with which the art community views professionalization. In less rarefied social contexts, simple devices, such as the name-tag, are used to ease the difficulty of introductions. Featuring the bearer’s name, corporate or group affiliation, and a generically indiscriminate greeting, the nametag is perfect for situations in which nobody knows anyone, and everyone has a reason to meet. At a business-networking event, getting to know unfamiliar people is the sole reason for attendance. Consequently, introductions tend towards transparency, straightforwardness, and functionality—in contrast to the complex and ambiguous encounters typical of art world openings and parties.
Many people I know have a particular manner of making introductions and even preferences for how they themselves are introduced. For example, certain friends insist on no introductions beyond their first name. With great faith in social predestination, they believe that innate affinity and mutual interest will either create a dialogue spontaneously or allow a given interaction to end quickly of its own accord. I remember from my years in Berlin an oft-expressed rule: avoid introducing oneself by full name or discussion of work, as it is crass and professional. While I admired the principle of this stance, it sometimes led to absurd situations. Once after playing pool for several hours with a group of friends and new acquaintances, I was dismayed to discover that a member of our group was a well-known artist whose work I had admired for years. Of course, by then it was too late and too awkward to even mention this fact.
Among artists in New York, I’ve more often experienced formal introductions by first and last name, paired with carefully chosen references to each party’s best-known or recent work. On the one hand, such introductions can be inclusive by encouraging fluid interactions and mingling distinct social circles. However, even when sincerely made, these introductions often veer towards comic effusion in their valiant attempt to engender an instant conversational connection: “This is so-and-so, they are the most amazing whatever in New York. You must have seen that project last year, it was so well-received, no?” While potentially providing a basis for meaningful discussion, such introductions are tricky: they involve acquainting people who ought to already know each other’s work, but by virtue of the necessity of an introduction, most likely do not.
Finally, a familiar form in the art world is the goal-oriented introduction, in which one attempts to facilitate social contact on behalf of a single party. Such situations are functional and professional, but, in order to be effective, must observe the protocols of more informal encounters. The set-up is simpler because desire in these cases is purely one-sided: as a means to an end, one person wants to meet another, who likely has no prior knowledge of them. For example, I’d like to introduce my friend, an artist without representation, to a gallerist with whom I’ve worked in the past. Here the onus is most clearly on the introducer, who attempts to reveal a relevant piece of information that will pique the interest of the targeted party. Perhaps my own social awkwardness is to blame, but I’ve routinely seen this stratagem fail, most often with the mark either ignoring the introduced party or exiting the situation entirely for the drink table or restroom.
Given the impossibility that I’ll ever be introduced to or introduce anyone appropriately, I may have to hope for the next best thing: an unregulated, alcoholically-lubricated world of social contact, in which introductions are neither needed nor desired—where everyone wears their hearts (and name-tags) on their sleeves, allowing conversation to sometimes ebb and often flow.