Kitch Sells
I think there’s too much art. There are lots of artists creating lots of art. I heard today of a student who made bookmarks which she sold on the street in Florence (Italy) to earn her way through art school. Ostensibly she made kitchy art to sell to tourists and serious art to sell to who knows who.
I don’t know who buys serious art. I sold a piece once to a priest from LA. I never met the kind friar, but I know he was a serious person. I was proud of him for buying work by a little-known artist. It takes someone special to do that.
There is a lot of really great art out there. I would even say a glut of great art. I think artists who aren’t selling should stop trying. Many artists I know have day jobs driving taxis or working in old folks homes. This is wholly legitimate and it indicates not the artists’ worthiness as an artist, but rather peoples’ worthiness as art appreciators. Rejection is hard for a sensitive soul. Art appreciators on the other hand think nothing of dismissing good work with a flip of the wrist. It’s easy. No trouble at all.
Buskers
Did you see the article (I think it was in the NYTimes) about the violin virtuoso (Joshua somebody, if memory [partly] serves) who played for an hour at a subway stop in Washington DC? He regularly commands tens of thousands of dollars per concert appearance. But he made less than $100 in an hour or so or of busking. THAT is a comment not on an artist, but on art appreciation in our society. In the same way visual artists who have menial jobs to support serious work should not be valued (self-valued I suppose I mean) by their income or job-grandeur. Someday perhaps (and this is a big perhaps) somebody will dig some “hobby” out of an attic and find a treasure. I’ve seen several galleries lately that have been showing the work of naive or insane or native American artists who only recently have been “discovered” to great acclaim. Now that they’re dead.
Don’t get me wrong. I believe there is a lot of valid, worthy and serious work being shown. But I’m pretty sure there is a lot of serious work not being shown as well.
Even the Art Industry Needs Content Writers
I have a friend from art school who told me she stopped doing art in favor of writing content for magazines of the art industry. She simply didn’t know how to store the ever accumulating piles of paintings and drawings. And it’s true. What do you do with stacks of stuff that nobody is interested in or that you don’t have time to find somebody interested? Can you imagine what would have happened if Van Gogh would have stopped painting and gone back to preaching or gotten a job as a street sweeper?
It happens all the time.
Attic Art
As for me, I make art for my children. For some of them it validates their own proclivities. For some of them it’s something to find in the attic fifty years from now.
J.