Friends at decor-artuk recently posted a helpful entry on marketing for artists. A short exchange between us followed, and I’d like to continue my bit here – everyone is welcome to join in, of course.
As my oil paintings mount up here (and they are the first work in several years which I feel are worthy of exhibiting), I will soon be re-entering the marketing fray in some way or another.
So just a reminder that my ‘anti-marketing’ posts aren’t about not selling one’s work, they are about the other sides of art which are getting lost in the marketing discussion. These facets of art/the arts are essential to human spiritual and cultural life, I feel. So I’ll continute to write about them here, perhaps reminding us why we chose to be artists in the first place.
When a work of art, piece of music, phrase of literature, etc connects straight to my soul I get launched out of my small life with its everyday cares. I get reconnected to the best in myself, and reminded of why I am here- even if I can’t express it in words. It is just a profound reassurance that life is fine as it is, warts and all, the larger wheel is turning in a beauty and order which is unfathomable to a human mind, and my small life is somehow held and counted in it. Those mysteries are what art touches.
A past post, Art’s worth, explores the issue further, with Rob Riemen, a Dutch publisher and writer who spoke eloquently of how art was a solace to him after a series of devastating personal losses.
In Kristina’s (decor-artuk) reply to me she says, ’… it does seem that art has lost a lot of it’s true characteristics; it has become like everything around us – you can sell it and you can buy it, it’s that simple’. (See the full comment here. )
Yes, Kristina I think , you are perfectly right. This made me feel my age, because being part of an earlier generation than most of the avidly marketing 30 somethings, I feel that loss keenly.
For one instant I even wondered whether in advocating a more ethical, and connected art I was becoming dated, an art veteran holding on to a disappearing age. But actually I think what we see emerging in all kinds of wonderful quirky forms outside the established art world -this is the future of art.
Read the rest of this entry »
Dealing with creative ‘post partum’ depression
March 21, 2012
I’ve come to the end of a year’s worth of rewarding free-lance projects and have landed in the familiar murky place of ‘what now?’. No matter how many times I experience this, it feels horrible. It is the flip side of the creative high (which is the feeling of being connected, engaged and doing something that matters). Instead, facing another unstructured day, I feel afloat, low energy, and unable to find meaning in anything I am doing. (What makes it worse, is I know how lucky I am to have a series of days to fill in as I like. Those of you dreaming of having this should know that it can sometimes feel like an impossible responsibility to fill in unstructured time meaningfully).
I know from experience that one has to hold tight and navigate these periods- ie while I’m down here, might as well look around. And, that they do pass.
Luckily another genuine aid in these times is Eric Maisel’s beyond-excellent book, The van Gogh Blues, where he correctly identifies these kinds of artistic depressions as meaning crises. For example, if you know your life’s path is to paint, but none of your paintings sell, this can bring about a meaning crisis. Maisel gives clear advice on how to combat these sorts of dilemmas. I also really love how he knows and acknowledges that creativity is a hard calling a lot of the time.
Here is a slightly paraphrased quote from the book:
The entire explanation for the birth of a novel, symphony, painting, scientific theory is that someone has nominated himself as a real worker in that field- has said, I can do this, ignores all cultural, social, religious and even psychological injunctions against becoming a fervent creator..
Poverty is simply a terrible inconvenience.
Failures are simply nasty facts of existence. Marketplace and institutional realities are simple factors to be braved and challenges to be met.
This is the heroism required of you: to reckon with the facts of your existence, to make hard choices, and to keep meaning afloat even as you struggle.
-Otto Rank, Art & Artists, quoted in E. Maisel’s The van Gogh Blues’
Continued in next post
Dealing with creative ‘post partum’ depression 2
March 21, 2012
One of the more helpful sections in Maisel’s book is the one dealing with meaning. Since artists’ depressions are often meaning crises, it is important to understand how this works.
Slightly paraphrased in Maisel’s words,
Making meaning is simply doing good on earth while you can according to your own lights and despite everything. Being proud of your work, and proud of the person you are trying to be.
So even when we are successfully working on realizing our creative goals, how do we maintain intention when meaninglessness threatens? For instance, when the ego gets bruised by rejection, when someone else gets an opportunity we coveted, or we face a string of professional failures?
That’s where a practiced response of self compassion (and not negative self talk) comes in. Maisel calls it ‘breathing through the moment’ and going on anyway.
It is a lot of work, and it works best if one is committed to doing a little bit every day, rather than large heroic gestures. Then you create the resiliency needed to bounce back.
‘You must restore meaning immediately after each blow to meaning’. I would add here, that the blows are not only external, they can originate internally as the result of the end-of-project blues, or writer’s/painter’s block, or other sudden losing of motivation for a long-term project.
When I am asking ‘Why do this, what it is worth, who cares’?, the above suggestions help me get back on track and realize no one else cares, that’s not why I do it. It is my life that I want to create in a meaningful way. And it gets progressively easier to get back to that original commitment and start taking small steps from there.
Maisel puts it this way:
continued in next postA self friendlier way would look for the opportunity to please yourself, help yourself, live your life plan, act righteously, make meaning and find joy. The beauty resides in you alone.
I am the beauty in life. You combat belittling, being ignored, being called a failure, feeling
powerless with this sentence, ‘I am the beauty in life.’
Dealing with creative ‘post partum’ depression 3
March 21, 2012
Maisel doesn’t beat around the bush, he understands that when artists land in a meaning crisis, they are up against the big questions.
Given my limited understanding of the nature of the universe, how shall I organise what I believe to be true into a personal creed that provides me with a sturdy rationale for living?
and-
On what core operating principles can I base a meaningful life?
Once these are determined, the task is to structure your life in such a way you can keep creating meaning:
Creators have trouble maintaining meaning, one way they do it is to create.
Which is why it sometimes feels like such a drama when the creative energy runs dry for a period.
A creator’s time spent not creating can feel like a living death if he hasn’t figured out how to force his ‘other time’to mean.
It turns out that it is fiendishly hard to carry out the intention of living your life plan, creating worthy work and making every day feel meaningful.’
The remedy is to practice extreme self support and care, confronting addictions (which are often creative’s way of dealing with massive amounts of unchanneled creative energy), and taking actions. The last one, taking even a small action I think is the most effective.
Yesterday, my funk turned right around by doing something very simple: In recent weeks, I’d moved all my oil painting stuff down to the former harpsichord painting space. This gave me more room and order when painting downstairs, was more social, and remedied the overclutter of my upstairs studio.
Well, I was miserable painting down there! When I faced that and simply moved my oil painting supplies back up to my studio where I felt more comfortable(albeit crowded), protected (the downstairs space has a huge glass window facing out onto the road), warmer, and had my music again, I started painting right away and was happy.
Thanks from ArtCalling
January 1, 2012
I like practical, connected, and meaningful art. I am excited and inspired by the arts in healing and community art. For the last years I’ve been committed to finding alternative paths for myself and other artists so that we have choices outside the traditional ways of exhibiting and exploiting art. I have done a lot of thinking about right livelihood in relation to art, so will be airing some of those ideas here.
Over the years my thinking has been inspired by other artists, writers and friends, and I look forward to sharing some of those sources.
Dear friends, with the above words in march 2007, I started this blog.
Looking through the past 5 years’ posts I’ve stuck pretty much to the original intent. The main themes have stayed roughly the same.
Through airing ideas here and the dialogue that has followed, ideas have developed and gained clarity. Especially those concerning new ways to think about art and; the challenges of art and market.
I’ve shared my oil pastels, older oil paintings, and new craft work. Have shared my dreams and goals, my ups and downs, and generally let a little slice of my life show here.
I want to thank all of you who have been popping in here from time to time and especially those who’ve taken the time to comment. My life has been enriched by your thoughtful remarks and the contact with like minded-souls as well as those with other views.
Alpha, Michael monocle, Thea, Rachel and Phil have been the most active commentors. Thanks so much folks.
13,037 people visited in 2011. Most of you are from the states, with the UK and Holland close behind.
The top referring sites in 2011 were:
Thank you.
Making is connecting II, make it yourself
December 12, 2011
Another important point David Gauntlett makes concerns the democratisation of art.
Make it yourself/ourselves
He sees our choices of media, art and culture up until now limited to either the mass market channels (TV, newspapers,magazines) OR, more distinctive but elite ones (such as the artworld’s system of ‘star’ artists and international galleries).
But now, in the ‘middle ground’ between mass populist culture on one hand and exclusive elitism on the other,the ’make it yourself’ ethic is emerging as a viable alternative with its own products such as YouTube videos, photo sites, craft fairs, guerilla gardening and interventions, eco-art, etc.
Previously, to get your work out in the world, you had to be an artist where ‘having the right education, sponsors and jargon are necessary markers of worthiness’. Galleries, art and literary societies, publishing companies etc., all have their own gatekeepers. Creative people without the right credentials were/are denied the channels for sharing their work.
But now, anyone can get their work out there without worrying if the credentials are worthy. Regarding the internet:
The relevant filters now operate after, not before publication. (Clay Shirky)
Continued in next post.
Business is not war unless you declare it to be
November 27, 2011
I recently received a link to an article which contained some useful information but the underlying assumptions were disturbing to me.
The article is basically a long pep talk for artists and designers whom, the author cites, seem to regularly get taken advantage of by their clients, and rarely make serious money.
There is good advice in there, but I have a real problem with the basic tone, which is so aggressive, it comes close to cancelling out any of the useful points. What disturbs me about this is the arena in which this young man has chosen to operate. It frames business as war where only the powerful can win and the weak (or good soldiers as he calls them) always get taken advantage of. The business concepts on which the arguments are based assume the worst about human nature so that all the tactics presented are about self-preservation and intimidating others before they get a chance to intimidate you.
The author spends a lot of time explaining how to force others to meet your needs, and how to demand respect.
Well, respect can’t be ‘demanded’, it needs to be earned. And nowhere in his 15 page article did I find a word about respecting your client- her intelligence, his creativity, her ability and desire to create a good working situation for you.
Words such as fight, attack and escalate are used regularly throughout the article.
Business as self-preservation and getting ahead at all costs, and being able to dropping the right influential names, and mentioning one’s 5-6 figure monthly salary, are presented as The definition of success. It is a paradigm which is unfortunately so widespread that most people can’t even see that this is a choice.
My experience is that if you live in a world defined by these parameters, this is exactly what you will get; you’ll feel pressured to always maintain a warrior stance in order to survive. And you won’t be able to see kindness and generosity, even when it is right under your nose, because you won’t be looking for it.
There were a few things I did like about the article, scroll down to see next post.
In the commerce of gifts
September 30, 2011
This is the 4th post inspired by Lewis Hyde’s book,’The Gift’
When artists work to serve the demands of the market, they make commodities. Even though these products are made with the hands, because they are purely products of commerce, they carry no (or limited) spiritual and emotional worth, and serve no bonding function for the community.
When artists work to serve their gifts, they create gifts that flow back into society and transform it.
The artist receives an inspiration and as he labors to bring that vision into reality, he enters what Hyde calls a ‘gifted state’. This could be compared to ‘flow’, and is a condition where you go beyond your own ego and feel as if something larger than your self were helping birth the work.
‘Out of what the soul has offered him, the artist makes the work. And the finished work is a return gift carried back into the world’s (or community’s or tribe’s) soul’.
A work of art that enters us to feed the soul lets us experience that gifted state. We feel gifted for awhile, and depending on our own abilities, we respond by creating new work (it doesn’t have to be art, but inspired by the artist we may find we can suddenly make sense of our own experience). The greatest art offers us fresh images that light up our imaginations and open up alternatives for our own lives.
I’ve finished reading ‘The Gift’, and Hyde ends with the thought that perhaps gift - and market commerce are not as irreconcilable as he first thought. In his Afterword to the 25th anniversary edition of the book, he says that perhaps they can coexist if artists carefully interact with the market while still serving their gifts. Scroll down for the next post which deals with 3 ways modern artists have resolved the problem of livelihood.
Living from our art
September 30, 2011
this is the 5th post based on Lewis Hyde’s book, ‘The Gift’
Hyde cites 3 ways modern artists have resolved the problems of livelihood:
1 Getting a second job. In this situation, artists become their own patrons by using the income from the job to support their less remunerative work. Hyde calls this having ’one foot in the gift economy, one in the market economy’.
2 Patrons. In this case, it is the patron who participates in the market economy to support the artist working with his gift.
3 The artist becomes an entrepreneur, living from the income generated by his artwork.
In this third case, Hyde says the boundary between gift and market economy blurs. The artist must, on one hand, be able to disengage from the work and think of it as a commodity. He must be able to reckon its value in terms of current trends, know what the market will bear, demand fair value, and promote the work. ‘And he must, on the other hand, be able to forget all that and turn to serve his gifts on their own terms. If he cannot do the former, he won’t sell his art, and if he can’t do the latter, he may have no art to sell or only commercial art, work that has been created in response to the demands of the market not in response to the demands of the gift’.
In other words, if you are going to sell your work and preserve the gift element, you need to make your work in that protected gift sphere without any thought of market at all. And only when you are satisfied that you ‘know the work to be the faithful realization of your gift’ should you turn to see if it has currency in that other economy. Sometimes is does, sometimes is does not’.
The gift is larger than the market
September 24, 2011
Nicholas Roerich
This is the 3rd post based on Lewis Hyde’s book, ‘The Gift’.
Another insight brought by reading Hyde’s ‘The Gift’ is that we artists, by identifying solely with the market limit the circulation of the gift. I mean, that by painting with the idea of selling that painting solely in order to make an income we are limiting the nourishment and gifts that painting could bring us.
In Hyde’s discussion of gift exchange in tribal societies, there is always a greater force involved in the cycle of giving and receiving of gifts, it might be the gods, the ancestors, the spirits of the forest or rivers, or the greater community.
He then makes the connection to an artist ‘labouring ‘with a gift. When we are deeply into our work, something happens- time evaporates, problems recede, all that exists is this sense of being at one with the work and with the world. This state is known in modern times as ‘flow’. At those times art reaches beyond the personal ego and touches something universal which is then embodied in the artwork.
For anyone who has experienced this, there seems to be a magic to it, as if ‘it wasn’t me who did the work’. The feeling is as if we have opened and received a gift.
What Hyde has made me think about is this: if, through my art making I have been blessed to touch on such a gift, then there is something bigger than me at work here. That means that if I work consciously with this gift element and am grateful and humble in its presence, I let this all expand beyond my own personal ego boundaries. It isn’t mine alone, and it doesn’t need to nourish me any more beyond the experience of the making.
If I don’t demand from my creative gift work that it also earn my living, I am not limiting it to being a mere product.I release it into the larger domain, and from that domain I will in turn be nourished.
I have experienced this countless times, when working on non remunerative art, suddenly a windfall will appear from an entirely unrelated area. As if by putting clear and true energy out there in one form it almost always comes back in another.
Russian artists Nicholas Roerich said something to the effect of , ‘Create, create, create, and don’t worry about the bread for the morrow, in creating you will nourish and be nourished’.
I’m not saying it is easy or instant. It is never easy. But by using this philosophy as a point of departure for making art, I come into a state of trust rather than one of worry, stress, scarcity and competition.
