The Great Dan Tenev

Before, as my friend Professor of Painting Vladimir Ivanov says, painters were either good or bad. Now they are either known or unknown. Damian Hirst is the most famous and expensive living artist in the world nowadays. Perhaps, coming after our Christo. The difference between them is that Christo is a painter. You think, may be, we are discussing painters. False. We are discussing sales technology, and even that is not so exactly correct

We are discussing “Who is Who in the world of art” within information society.

Back in 1991 I encountered that problem. The great, still unknown to me painter Nedko Boutzev had arranged a presentation of Contemporary Bulgarian Art in the USA. His list contained 17 people. The exposition was in an emblematic American university. The event was organized by a foundation, which had previously presented in the same university the art of South Africa, Argentina and Cuba of course. That was in Cuba where the beautiful president of the foundation and Nedko happened to be fellow students at the Academy of Havana. Connections work over there as well.

At my home at the time we were talking about the exhibition’s organization and I was greatly impressed that a boss as big as her has not yet turned 30. We are a small foundation, she told me, we are financed by a foundation operating by continents. I also could not understand, a stupid idea in my opinion, why we should present a nationally significant concept in a somewhat university. You don’t get the point, Nedko was lecturing me. Outside university, it’s pure business. You see, an investor wants to invest in a certain area of contemporary art. He addresses the relevant agent. The agent brings to his attention a few artists with ideas, exposed in the university gallery, artists similar to the market conceptions of the investor. They choose one, sit down facing the painting and together with the PR agency identify the target group of customers of the paintings, which do not yet exist even in the artist’s head. Several years of hard work to develop the market, from one side and the cultivating of the artist’s personality, from the other, so that he can be the holder and the image of the trade mark. 

He is the trade mark. A series of exhibitions of unparalleled success take place in the public space. Everything is sold out. Everybody has won a lot; the investor has managed a turnaround in cash flow. Even Art in America has highlighted it!

Our professors speak foreign languages and start promoting their new vision in front of the students. Our provincial artists abandon their own ideas and start “copy” to keep up-to-date. Our Arts Institute rearranges the list of Bulgarian artists to comply with the new trend.  Our imitators start appearing at the forefront of our rankings.

In the meantime, Dan Tenev lives in poverty in Merichlery and writes digital lines on the ridges of the garbage dumps past Dimitrovgrad. His works can be seen from a satellite. Search “land art” and you will get the American comments to Dancho’s works. A great artist! He is paying it off with his life. 

Nedko has also paid it off. His advertisement company was serving Sliven municipality. His employees from the beginning have accumulated 18 years of experience in the company. The mayor, Lechkov, was replaced. The big bosses like each other. Lechkov had worked with Nedko. Nedko had a bank loan to repay. A wife, kids, family….it works like that. 

I don’t know where he is right now. I wrote him an email. He did not answer.