Replies: 16 Comments
on Wednesday, May 31st, Olivier Bijon said
Hello,
Difficult to create and sell at the same time. They are both time comsuming. As an artist I need a lot of creative time to become creative. Meaning if I go for a show or just simply on holliday, back to my studio it will take me a few paintings before I feel back on track. I am always looking for something "new", working as many hours as many days as my family leave to me. A creative satisfaction will come just like that but always after a long period of complete dedication to my work. So the best for me will be to find an old fashion dealer, somebody who like my work and do the marketing job, make the money. Then I can do fully what i dedicated to a couple of years ago, after a long time carrer in the art business: painting, simple:just painting. That's what I do, choose to do. Come on dealers, don't be affraid of the world, do you part, take some calculated risks, do what you choose to do, follow your instinct. Like me try not to be influenced too much. I am not a commercial painter. With my pin up totem I am not politically correct, but they have my trust, I like them. That's what matter for me.
See you in the world,
Olivier a painter from Toronto
on Friday, May 26th, Paul Dorrell said
Lile and Rachel,
Actually I agree with both of you. To try to create for the marketplace is unwise, and lacks artistic integrity. The passion MUST come first; I think that's a given. The discussion really isn't about that. It's about the elitist view as I've described it, which only a minority of professors are guilty of. But the damage their point of view inflicts on millions of young artists is enormous, and in the end destructive. I know, because all too often I encounter those artists in later years, when they're at the end of their rope. This isn't about creating commercial work; it's about correcting a backward attitude. And in the end, that's about dignity.
on Thursday, May 18th, Lile said
Rachel, thanks for your comments about this. It is good to hear that art teachers are thinking beyond the market place and are trying to help artists understand that art is more than $.
It really is about the sharing of ones soul and that is priceless.
There was a class I took in school though that has helped me throughout my life as an artist... it was about learning how to manage finances and do simple things such as maintaining a check book. So prehaps having a class that is specifically about marketing art work could exist along side the classes about creating art. Since the two would be separate, it could help inspire artists on both fronts... creating art and making a living from creating one's art.
-lile
www.art.net
on Thursday, May 18th, Rachel said
I don't agree with this article. I have attended 4 art schools over the past 20 years, and now teach at a local university. I believe that most Professors, like myself, are only trying to convey that your work should not be focused on creating only for the marketplace, i.e. that the actual artwork is only made for selling. I know this can be an abstract concept to convey and understand, and my feeling is that many Professor may not take the dialogue far enough. It is OK to sell your work, that is not an issue at all. We have to earn an income and we do that by selling work. It's more about creating what your passionate about, what's inside of you, what drives you. It's an inspirational conversation more or less. Making the art comes first and then let the buyers come to you. With marketing, promotion, and general business practices, you can create work and sell it, without necessarily "selling out."
on Monday, May 15th, hyacinthebaron said
There are art teachers, there are art students and then there are artists.
I have always believed in the open studio work in progress concept. In fact I will be participating in just such an event in November and will be opening my studio and gallery at the Baron Conservancy in Wonder Valley.
It is always enlightening to artists but also to potential collectors and confirmed collectors to be allowed into the 'inner Sanctum" of an artist.
It is a tight balancing act however for the artist who must maintain the "mystique" of their artistic personna at the same time they are sharing some secrets of their trade and revealing tricks and such that make them who they are. It is one of the reasons I have always insisted on my own gallery and with a studio in the back. My practice had always been to only allow a collector to visit me in the studio after they had bought a piece of mine.
The internet has changed all that. That is okay for me because while I am still painting and creating and concieving new projects the main thrust of my career now is to archive my works.
I am not sure if allowing everyone and anyone to be totally privvy to the artists techniques pre purchase will induce sales.
My clients always loved the "secret studio". But what they saw in the gallery had a bit, no actually a lot of theatre and drama with the lighting just so and the isolation of a painting being proudly displayed as if it were a masterpiece. This allowed my collectors to envision a work in their place of honor at home or business.
on Monday, May 15th, Lile Elam said
I too believe that it is important for an artist to be able to support themselves by producing and selling their art if they so desire. Everyone should be able to prosper doing the things they love to do.
Today artists now have a great advantage of being able to share their art on the Internet and World Wide Web. This especially helps those who have yet to be represented in a gallery or artist collective.
I manage a world wide art site called Art.Net and one of the main benefits of being a webmaster there (as well as an artist) is that I spend alot of time discovering what artists are doing on the web. Many do sell their art within their websites as well as become known by showing their art via the Web.
I do find that alot of artists showing on the web fall into the unfortunate situation of thinking that they can only show art that has not been sold. This way of thinking puts pressure on the artist to constantly remove sold pieces from their online portfolios. Seeing what an artist has done and what they currently are doing offers a great insight into the artists and their work. So I hope that this trend will tend to be less practiced.
I think it's also important for art to be experienced (at least initially) in a non-commercial setting. This gives the viewer a chance to enjoy the work just for art's sake. If someone is interested in purchasing the work, then a way to view the purchasing info should be easily accessable. Contact info for the artist is really important as well.
Now that creating, maintaining and hosting a personal website is so much easier, many artists are jumping into the virtual world. Artists are also joining artists collectives on the web which helps to give their websites and the work found there even more exposure. This is why online artist collectives and galleries are so helpful and important to have (just as it is in the physical world.) Search engines are mighty helpful too in discovering artists and their work.
I find that artist blogs are of great value as well. Sharing what one is currently doing is inspiring. It also is a great way to share ideas and helpful info. I would love to see more artists blogs that actually talk about how art is created... sharing the actual methods and ways art is produced. To see an art piece and then read how it was actually created is awesome to experience. This blog is great to see and the conversation and discussions about real artist issues is very helpful.
Recently I visited an artist's studio in the physical world during an open studios event. It was wonderful to see where the artist actually creates her work. Being able to see the supplies, books, computers/printer and works in progress was also inspiring. It would be great if we could experience this on the web as well. I know it helped me to see someone so
organized and productive in the art of creating art!
Finally, it is great that artists now have a way to represent themselves personally to a world wide audience. This can be such an empowering experience. And by sharing this way, all of us get to see what the current artists of our day are doing all around the earth. And prehaps it will help us to buy and sell more art too!
-lile
Webmaster/Artist
Art.Net
www.art.net
on Sunday, May 14th, jose freitas cruz said
Paul, were it that more of your kind were around.
on Saturday, May 13th, Paul Dorrell said
Brad,
Here's how I would have handled it as a dealer. You spent $500 on materials? Likely that would have made the piece, for an emerging artist, worth $1500 retail. How? Because when you triple materials, then the dealer gets his/her percentage, you make your profit, and the remainder is reinvested in materials.
You did the right thing in telling that dude to take a hike. But is it really a game? Sure, like most things in life. Except when I play it, I play so everyone wins: artist, collector, dealer. Then we all have lunch together after the acquisition is made. That's my way of playing the game. More fun too.
on Saturday, May 13th, walt said
Ah, the differences between how it was and how it is. Do you think Manet did the same thing to Monet when he bought the first piece Monet sold? I can tell you that Monet lived for one year from the price of that first sale. Shortly after Pollacks first show with Peggy Guggenheim he was able to buy a house. Yes, young artists are expected to bend over and take it these days. A game? The game that curator was playing is a recent one. One that had begun about 30 years ago. It's all about padding their pocket at your expense and cultivating clients. The gallerist makes a living but the artist is expected to starve. It's always amazing to me how capitalits are the only ones who feel they have the right to a profit from their labors. Everybody else pays full price.
Yes there is a certain amount one must do early on to catch on. The second thing I learned, after the fact that no one wanted to pay for art at all if you were willing to give it to them for free, was that you never set your price as low as the real costs. Always triple it. Then double that so you actually make a profit. Because you need to pay for your gallerists fees as well as your real costs (including marketing costs). And one third is for taxes. So your curator was actually gonna sell that work for $1000 (or maybe more) while he expected you not to even make your money back, losing on your taxes and time. So if it is a game then that's how you play it. Of course you probably should have asked around $3,000. Now think about it. Isn't that about the right price now that you look back at it so many years later? Framers mark up their frames by 7 times or more. That's why they get more for their work than we do for ours. (Anybody ever notice that framers make more money than most painters?) I mean think about it...how many of those sculptures could you have made in a year? And that's the real way to figure prices. How many of these can you make in a year and how many would you have to sell to make a serious living, say around $50,000? Really more like $150,000 a year before taxes and expenses.
Brad, the only real mistake you made was telling the curator too much.
on Saturday, May 13th, Brad Michael Moore said
My first offer for a 3-D artwork came from a curator, who often worked with the State Art School Program I attended. He suggested this... "You’ve make a great sculpture, it's expensive –you say your materials alone are $500.00, and you took 50 hours to complete the work… I will sell the work to collectors I know - for $500.00."
I was a 40 year old student. I felt my maturity, my potential, and my genre’, made the toil and vision of my work worth at least a token over my cost. He disagreed. The work is still mine today. I was blacklisted as a "Difficult & Hot-headed Man - not willing to play the game." That's the first I had heard that making art was a game... I went elsewhere and found my own path. I'm not sorry - just less wealthy - nor am I able to do the kinds of projects I believe I could've done (be doing, still). Do I have regrets - no. I'm not in a corner, I'm in wide-open spaces.
on Friday, May 12th, Paul Dorrell said
Man, this is one incredible group of observations. It's apparent I hit a nerve with this thing--one that needed hitting. It's also apparent that several of you are more qualified to be writing the column than I, just don't tell anyone I admitted it.
on Friday, May 12th, walt said
This semester I took over a class for a friend who is on sabbaitcal. I'd originally helped invision the course but felt he would do a better job teaching it. He simply has that marketing knack and the gift of gab that I have to work so hard at. The course is predicated upon real clients bringing real jobs for a small payment for students to compete for. Magazine articles, covers, posters and borchures for charities and other kinds of projects. My colleague has set the class up well with regular clients who have begun to understand a little better how students tick and what they can expect from them both good and bad. It was a real pleasure to see how the students began with the attitude that this was a fluff class only to realize that if they wanted that $100 check and a printed piece of their illustration for their portfolio they were really in competition with the best kids in the class. 1st semester one girl won every project. Second semester the challenge was on and I saw kids not only improve their sense of marketing but actually improve their work as well. Even the kids who didn't win began to understand a lot of the things faculty had told them about the quote un-quote real world through this experience. I've since suggested that this course, which is an elective course, be made into the second semester of the Junior level core curriculum.
In our final portfolio course we make them do a series of interviews each semester. By requiring the interviews kids cannot allow themselves to think "oh, I'll clean up my act later when I have time." They have to do it now before their interviews. It causes them to wake up. Of course I'm dealing with Illustrators not Fine Artists. And while I don't make the quality differenciations some make there are differences in the very nature of the field. Everyone coming into it understand from the beginning that it is a "commercial" field so the idea of some kind of disfunctial purity goes by the wayside pretty quickly.
on Friday, May 12th, Andrew said
Artists have to sell their work. If you're a professional in any field, then there's no shame in getting paid for what you do. I have seen every degree of ability in the sale of art, from students who knew before their first outing in the real world what they had to do to sell, to very professional, gifted and skilled artists in their seventies who just didn't have a clue. I've seen the cutthroats backstabbing to get ahead, and the pure who get there through their virtue. It's the other half of an artist's job, and the better you do it, the easier it becomes to produce higher quality art. Walt, the idea of encompassing a certain amount of business know how into an art student's training is something that has been around for a while, but has problems getting students enthusiasm because its a problem they don't yet have to face. Everything in art is so immediate, it sort of takes a different mind set to prepare for a future environment you haven't yet experienced. I train apprentices, one at a time, using them to help me produce my own work, and then letting them use my studio, supplies and tools to produce theirs. I assist them with problems they may run into. But I also take them to meetings with gallerists and clients, truckers, craters, and customs agents. To live the total experience is something you just can't do in a university setting, and that might be why its so hard to get a program working well there. Particularly if it isn't considered the primary responsability of an art school. Maybe a game designed to cover all these aspects to get them interested? Maybe a project where they design this game themselves?
on Friday, May 12th, jose freitas cruz said
I couldn’t agree more Paul, no artist should feel guilt or shame for promoting his work himself or managing his own career. In the 21st century this doesn't make any sense any more. What Walt commented is pretty much common practice here [Portugal] and only helps to deepen the divide between the few who can afford the luxury of being represented and promoted and those of us who battle on our own terms to make our work known: we are frowned upon [by the establishment and its chosen stars] for being diligent, and belittled when we speak of the achievements that have allowed us to make a living so far. As you very well say Paul, so many of those who have found others to handle the nitty-gritties display so little generosity.
on Friday, May 12th, hyacinthebaron said
As a successful artist/owner of a very elegant gallery showing my own works exclusively I sometimes liked to drop in to college art classes. I did so by forgetting my career and personna and just letting it all hang out.
I draw very well, especially from life and I can capture images quickly while the model is moving.
Many of my best drawings are in museums and private collections. The long standing art professor came by to critique my drawings. Everyone gathered round as they all recognized me and appreciated my drawing skills.
The professor had no idea. "Hmm, not bad. You almost draw as well as me."
After all,as a tenured professor he was given regular shows, critiqued by an inner circle of academicians and part of an insular world where success remained within that circle.
I did not complete some task he set ( I wasn't there for the credit really) and so he failed me in his course for not meeting his criteria. And thisafter a quite successful professional career.
I may have been one of the lucky ones who got away and out on my own very early.
on Friday, May 12th, walt said
Paul,
this mindset is one that goes back to the late 30's and early 40's and is based in Marxist ideology. A little reading about the Spanish Civil War, Picasso's Guernica and various communist groups in the U.S. is an enlightening bit of research. There was a great controversy just before and after the 2nd world war that began to divide the fine arts from the commercial arts. The fine arts were defined as "pure" while the commercial arts were "prostituted" and therefore "impure". I had a number of professors who held to this mindset. I was an Illustration major at the time and often recall hearing crits in which work was labeled "mere illustration" because the imagery was too much about making an object look like that object...a slavish copy hence an illustration during a time when abstraction and pecifically non-objective abstraction reined supreme. I was a student in the 70's but had been up on what was going on through the late 60's before going to art school and was very sensitive to both sides of the issue. To have ones work labeled "mere illustration" was a dibilitating insult. Once a professor felt that way about your work it was quite hard to regain their respect. You were simply not a serious artist anymore no matter how passionet you may be, no matter how skilled you may be no matter how interesting your ideas...you were out.
But as each new generation of students came through, some becoming professors themselves, the underlying politics became more and more vague. The history of the terminology was lost and then it simply became the rules of the game that one did not question.
It took me quite some time to avoid teaching those ways of thinking (even though I had been a working illustrator and designer before getting my first teaching job.)which had come to stand for excellence in my mind. And excellence is the basis of teaching art. If you shoot for anything less then you are teaching mediocrity or worse. So it became a circular trap that became quite hard to break.
I now teach illustration. For 7 years I was the chair of the department. I realized that our students were not prepared to get jobs in what has become an extremely competitive field. Not unprepared artistically but professionally. They didn't know how to market themselves, they didn't understand that they'd have to pay taxes on their sales, they didn't understand that they had copyrights that could be worth more than the actual piece of art they had created. So our department built a Professional Practices course that not only began to direct students towards these professional issues but it also influenced other departments to do the same, including the Fine Arts dept. Now the entire art college mixes marketing and professional issues with concepts and techniques. And we're not alone. Many of the independent colleges of art in this country have been moving in that same direction in recent years. Often beginning in the commercial areas then spreading out through the fine art depts.
However I can't say the same about University programs who often still hold to what they consider to be a more intellectual way of proceeding...that to spend too much time on anything but the intellectual content of the work their students do is somehow an impure way of thinking. But I would venture to suggest that this mindset too will eventually go the way of the dinosaur. There is absolutely no reason why an artist can't take themselves, their art and the business of selling their art seriously. The changes are all around. Even 'mere illustrators' are beign exhibited in serious galleries these days and some are bringing down hefty sums for their work. Its a brave new world.
Throughout the course of my book tour, whether speaking in New York, Seattle or Oxford, Mississippi, one common refrain ran true: I constantly met artists who felt guilty about attempting to market, and sell, their work. Where on earth does the guilt come from? Invariably they tell me that it was formed in college, partly from their fellow-students, but mostly from certain professors.
