With her husband, Quent, Linda Cordair operates the Quent Cordair Fine Art gallery, which aspires to help create “a rebirth of comprehensibility, beauty, romanticism and stylization to contemporary subject matter.” In addition to selling works of art, Linda also consults with businesses on placing artworks in office buildings and other places accessible to the public. Here she discusses that work.
Ari Armstrong: Briefly, what is the importance to a business of placing great works of art in or around their buildings?
Linda Cordair: Thanks for the opportunity to discuss this topic, Ari. Art is as important in the business world as it is in one’s personal world, and for the same reasons. In a business space, the artwork helps shape the company’s unique style, spirit, and character, and convey that character to employees, partners, clients, and prospective clients in much the same way that one’s business attire conveys one’s personal style and professionalism.
The artwork chosen for a business space can convey a devotion to important and distinctive values, helping distinguish the business from its competition, or it can convey a mere reflection of what is commonly accepted in the mainstream, or it can project a preference for the trendy and avant-garde, with little or no regard for how well or poorly the imagery may nourish the souls and minds of those who experience it. Artwork can help set and maintain a positive, optimistic, and ambitious perspective for those working in the space, or it can lend to a boring or draining atmosphere, or it can be markedly detrimental.
Having no or little art in a business space can project a lack of regard for the spiritual and psychological needs of those who work in or visit the space, or a lack of permanence and dependability, or a lack of sufficient financial resources to tend to such basic environmental necessities. Visiting a workplace without art can create the same sense one gets when visiting a space that is not adequately and comfortably heated, cooled, or lighted. . . .
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