So much of the work of being an art dealer goes unseen and unappreciated. The openings and exhibits are but the culmination of a trajectory which begins, where? With the dealers? I don’t think so; I think it’s something larger than them because the majority of the art dealers that I know have not chosen the profession for themselves, but rather have been chosen by it. That is, at some point in their lives, some thing happened to them and that thing, whatever it was, compelled them—often against their will and almost always against their better judgment—to engage in a profession that is really very tough.

That thing can be almost anything. It could be the convergence of plot points in someone’s life, or the rise of an artistic movement. And it doesn’t have to be some grand thing, either. It could be the need to make a name for oneself, or, in the case of Robert Brown, who, in the nearly three decades he has been a commercial art dealer, promoter, and entrepreneur, has been motivated by his desire to contribute something to the common good. It’s a modest desire, but one which has resulted in some very considerable good. It’s what first compelled Robert to become an art dealer, what took hold of him, and what increasingly influences the way we live now.

Working as a lawyer in Geneva, Switzerland, when his office was closed, Robert—or Bob to those who know him—found himself at something of a crossroads. Thinking he might return to Baltimore to pursue a master’s degree in international studies at Johns Hopkins University, he was approached by an artist and friend who wanted Bob to market and sell his sculptures. Bob paused and thought about it. He had never really studied art, and he certainly knew nothing about selling it, but his friend, a South African, was persistent. He had seen something in Bob and he was sure of it.

So Bob began to read, at first reviews in newspapers and articles in magazines. Then he started going to the museums and commercial art galleries in Geneva and then to those in London and Paris. It was as if a whole new world was coming into view, and Bob was moving towards it. Bob once described to me watching patrons viewing art in a museum. From one image to the next, they walked by steadily, rarely slowing to really see and appreciate the art. They were simply looking at it and then moving on. That was what Bob had been doing for the first part of his life: looking at art but not really seeing it.

Looking but not really seeing. How much of our lives can be accurately characterized in exactly that way? We look at one another, look at our homes and possessions; we look at our televisions and at the worlds which are constructed by and through them. It’s easy to look; it’s easy and passive and dead. But seeing, now that is a far different thing from looking. Seeing is active and difficult and rewarding and alive. Even if we often need help to do it well, there are those who can assist us. Good artists can help us. Good dealers, too. Finding good artists, working with them, sometimes even helping them to achieve their best work, dealers do all these things so that we might just see!

Back in Europe, Bob was beginning to see. And the more he saw, the more he wanted—no, needed!—to see and to understand art. It was then that he realized that he was “hooked” on art and that for him art had become an “obsession.” Obsession, it’s a strong word and one which often connotes a variety of life-altering conditions. In Bob’s case, his obsession with art was not only life altering, but also life making. In 1978, Bob moved from Europe to New York City, where he opened Robert Brown Gallery, and then from New York City to Washington, DC, where he has lived and worked since 1981.

Specializing in 20th century and contemporary prints, paintings, and sculpture, Robert Brown Gallery was one of Washington’s first galleries to exhibit quality art from around the world. Drawing upon the work of artists such as Rimma and Valerie Gerlovin, Felim Egan, Anton Henning, Kit-Keung Kan, Oleg Kudryashov, and Fifo Stricker, among many others, Robert Brown Gallery, quietly, but passionately, created an important forum for intelligent global perspectives, and did it in a town notable, sadly, for its lack of interest in any but its own.

Especially compelling among Brown’s artists are William Kentridge and Andy Goldsworthy. Kentridge, a South African, documents the space between the collapse of post-apartheid South Africa and now. His work can be regional, fanciful, symbolic, and universal. But all of it has at least one thing in common: the power to ask us to stop for a moment, to put off our public selves and offices, our notions of authority and fantasies of power. They challenge us to strip off even our own compunction at what we have made of ourselves and of others. See, they say, the uncommodified humanity and gaze upon that reality, ourselves, all of us, as we truly are; confront it; take in its full and diverse measure; now imagine: who do you want to be and how?

The latter half of that question (the how?) is something Andy Goldsworthy addresses in his highly innovative work. In his photographs, he explores our human concerns with temporal and spatial themes—but always in a vocabulary that is derived from nature. Using stones, snow, water, icicles, Goldsworthy creates “natural” works of art which have the powerful effect of celebrating the creative impulse while mocking both human industry and the ways in which we inhabit the world.

Also of note is Brown’s assemblage of Chinese advertising posters. Printed between 1912 and 1935, these posters illuminate an amazing period in Chinese history: that brief period of commercial activity between the collapse of dynastic China and the rise of the Republic of China. They illuminate aspects of the West’s economic ambitions, its attempts to cultivate markets in China, and its conceptions of the “other” in what were probably one-sided west meets east formulations.

Individually, Brown’s artists speak of personal, regional, and national themes; collectively, they speak a precursor global language in which we all figure prominently. This language, this new language, is the prefiguring of a global, human consciousness. It is exhilarating, rich, and varied. It is what hooked Brown in Geneva, and it is what he has become and sought to articulate through the artists he has exhibited in his gallery. Their works are simultaneously unique and fresh and yet still connected to the larger art traditions which preceded them. Finding these artists and exhibiting their work is Brown’s contribution to the common good. It represents, also, an amazing professional accomplishment, and one that has exerted a pronounced influence on our current and emerging cosmopolitan life.


John A. Haslem, Jr. PhD
artlinePlus art critic