Building a Brand: Part 2

Jonathan LeVine: the Evolution of a Generation

By Cheree Franco

When he first moved to Chelsea, Jonathan remembers “riding the bubble like everybody else.” Other galleries would show artists with illustrative, urban aesthetics, but no New York gallery was as true to the aesthetic, and no one had Jonathan LeVine’s stable of artists. It didn’t take long for his aesthetic to become an east-coast phenomena. Brooklyn, SoHo and the Lower East Side were already permeated with street art, and over the next few years, dozens of low-budget galleries with similar objectives opened. Many of them folded quickly—pushing underground art is financially tricky. But Jonathan had an informal decade of experience. He busied himself safeguarding the future of his aesthetic, networking with galleries in South America, Europe and the West Coast through cross-promotion and exhibition, building exposure for his artists and enlarging the community. Artists were his investment—he helped some of them craft careers from essentially ground up.

These days Jonathan waits until an artist has a following. “Now that it costs so much to run my business, it's difficult to take on any more really emerging artists. It costs too much to develop them,” he says frankly. Even so, the decision comes down to aesthetics. “I never choose an artist because they’re going to make money. I have to like an artist. I basically have to love the artist. I would never do this for any other reason. It’s not lucrative enough,” he insists.

Art is a business, and as such, Jonathan is a manager. So he has a strategy: “Be committed, persevere, regroup and have a strong team. The way I run my gallery, my staff is completely involved in the decision-making process. The flipside of that, if things don’t work out, they have to own it. And if you’re not willing to clean the bathroom, you don’t work for me. I’ll go clean the toilet, I’m not too good to do it. I’ve done that job before.”

In addition to supporting his staff, Jonathan works to protect his artists. “I have a lot of money in the artists, I have to do what’s best for them. Like yeah, I can get more money for this painting, but how’s that going to affect the artist long term? You’re not trying to make the short sale,” he says adamantly.

And despite the fact that he operates on the fringes of the mainstream market, he understands the hierarchy of Art as Institution. Galleries will be a mainstay, Jonathan thinks, even in the era of self-marketing, because “artists can sell their own work to an extent but when you get to a certain price, the art world is like any business. It needs something to give it product-value. Without the gallery, without that institution behind you, you’re not going to get that legitimacy. A museum’s not going to walk up to an artist based on how they’re presenting themselves,” he explains.

A self-described “brawler”—“I’m smarter than people give me credit for, and I’m going to keep bashing away”—Jonathan considers himself a bit indestructible. He sees the recession as opportunity, albeit opportunity encased in challenge. “Certain artists that used to sell well, don’t. Sometime we have to work twice as hard for the same amount of money,” he discloses. Last year, for the first time ever, the LeVine gallery generated the same amount as the prior year—“which is great, that I can say that in this economy, but it’s the first time the business didn't see any growth,” Jonathan clarifies. “But, I hate to say it, I’m glad the economy went crappy. It knocks out the bullshit. In the long run, what ends up happening is, you continue doing what you’re doing. A lot of galleries that I would consider far more critically important that I am have closed. I plan to be left standing.”

Part 1 of this profile is HERE.

The next portion, part 3, is HERE.

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