Kerry Miller of BUSINESSWEEK recently interviewed me for this story, and I thought the questions were really interesting. They are posted here unedited by Miller, and conducted only as informal background research, but nonetheless, I liked them. Which means: you get to read them.
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A painter turns one of his large-scale works into a series of wallets/tote bags/greeting cards/etc. He's happy that that more people are being exposed to his work and that he now has money to buy groceries, but he still feels a slight twinge of guilt. Should he?
There's a lot of research still to be done on whether or not all "exposure" actually amounts to "sales," so if a painter who sells tote bags feels guilt about his merchandising, perhaps he shouldn't be putting his work out there in that way. That's the thing about integrity: if deep in your gut you think you might be whoring yourself out, you are.
And here's the other thing about integrity: tote bags? Come on. No one on earth, anywhere, needs another tote bag in her or his life. If you are making tote bags, you are definitely whoring yourself out.
[How] do you think the craft movement influenced old stereotypes about the starving artist?
Craft and art have never been the same thing. There are people that cross those lines, sure, but there's some really interesting art being created right now that has nothing whatsoever to do with creating items for sale or hipster craft fairs or any of that. Also, there are many starving artists still creating work that just hasn't been deemed marketable. Truly creative, change-making work is rarely funded, but particularly less often right now than any time in US history I'm aware of. The so-called craft movement is absolutely not a source of funding for change-making work. It's simply business as usual.
Do you see an important distinction between the artist whose art is displayed in the gallery vs. the artisan/designer whose work is for sale in the gallery shop?
In the ideal world, there's quite a bit of difference, yes. That difference, at least on the production side, comes down to intent. People who create items for sale in a gallery shop have commercial aims, and create products. Many people who create work that is eventually collected by museums aim to express something, and often it is something critical or at least reflective about contemporary culture, although often not displayed until long after that critical essence has been subsumed into our general historical understanding. The gift shop won't sell that—and if they do, I'd be wary of the supposedly critical message being promoted.
I understand that the commercial drive in our culture has caused us to want to overlook that line between gift shop and museum, but mostly because we want to feel we've not sold out if we have to make work for the gift shop because it's not getting into the museum. And I understand there's an elitism there, but to be brutally frank: not every piece of art made deserves to be placed in the museum. That's apparently what the Internet is for.
The important question is who gets to make those decisions about what gets placed where, and right now, both the gift shop and the museum favor a certain kind of work: art that has a commercial appeal and that downplays or eliminates dissent or criticality. Work that fosters a buying environment. Frankly, that's why big-box stores and other major corporations sponsor art institutions. These corporations are not in other ways supportive of the availability of a wide range of media, and certainly would prefer to see the ubiquity of their own brand over, say, a proliferation of independent craft fairs across the US. Yet they want to infiltrate culture. They want to be thought of as agenda-setters and trend markers: of course they do, they're stores. However, it's extremely unlikely, for example, that any of them would sponsor a truly innovative photography exhibition containing images of sweatshop laborers toiling away making the products they sell on their shelves.
Meaning, if we find few differences in reality between the work in the gift shop and the work collected in the museum, it may not be because the gift shop's standards have risen; it may be that the museum's have lowered.
An artist knows that in order to make a living from her work, she has to market and sell it. Still, the words "marketing" and "sales" skeeve her out. She rationalizes that as long as she stays true to herself, or something like that, it's okay. Do you agree?
First of all, any artist who believes that "art" and "product" are the same isn't being terribly creative.
And, you know, I don't agree with anything stated in this question. If this hypothetical artist is planning on making a living selling her work, that is, on creating items that people purchase and that then do anything from decorate a home to perform a function, then yes: she needs to sell those items to survive. And to sell, she needs to market. But guess what? She went into this knowing in advance that she would rely on those sales. That's the kind of art she decided to make. She can't complain now that she has to do that work. I mean, the trouble here may be in having defined herself as an artist as opposed to a business person, a manufacturer.
But assuming that all art needs to be sold, or can be packaged in that way, ignores a lot of art history, and it also ignores the very real possibility of creating a life as an artist that does not rely on objects. I'm not saying it's an easy way to make a living—it would be a lot easier if funders, grantmakers, universities, etc. acknowledged that the hypercommercial drive in the US promotes object making and compensated for it by supporting other modes of work—but some of the most brilliant artists today are doing it.
How do you feel about artist-as-brand, when it's the artist herself doing the branding? Is there a right and wrong way to do it?
I do not care anything about this. I feel that it is a boring, outmoded statement and I have nothing to learn from it about contemporary culture that I can't learn from a bottle of Downy.
I also think that one troubling aspect of our hypercommercialized culture is that we agree to use marketing terms to define everything and perceive in them therefore commercial intent. The argument that Naomi Klein is a brand for example: that's dumb. Naomi Klein is a brilliant writer, and makes very few overtures in support of anything that is not her ideas made accessible. It is a part of the logic of branding that we believe branding to be inescapable. In fact, it is quite escapable. Sorry, marketers, not everyone is a marketer.
Are artists kidding themselves by believing that the shifting border between art and commerce is good/neutral?
To be clear, I don't believe the border is actually shifting: I believe people are ignoring it, admittedly at this point out of a sense of self-preservation. Like the line in journalism between advertising and editorial—that's not disappearing because people are forgetting where it is, it's disappearing because people are being paid to ignore it. And I believe it happens to be in the best interests of the unseen forces of hypercommercialism to ignore it, and I think artists, in particular, are dooming themselves when they get on board.
One key element of this is that previously noted assumption that exposure equals sales in all cases. A lot of artists—most particularly I think of bloggers who hope to eventually write professionally by posting work for free on the Internet—seem to think that this will put their work in the eyes of an audience who then will grow to love them so much that they will perceive value in what they do. We've already seen that, in fact, this is not usually true: in most cases, that audience will simply find another free provider of content. Ask any newspaper journalist in town who's recently been fired. They are kind of easy to find right now. And, unfortunately, this is happening now also with culture in general: people who expect to make a living creating culture—good, smart people, even those that have until now been making a living creating culture—aren't able to. Because it is expected to be provided for free. Which isn't a supportive or long-term strategy for national growth, democracy, or cultural vitality.
What is your advice to artists who want to make a living from their work without sacrificing their artistic integrity? Is this is a silly question to be asking, or an important one?
All questions of integrity right now are vital to the future of democracy. Which I believe is still something the US claims to provide. Maybe my sources are wrong. But democracy is not a consumer issue, and integrity would be a really stupid hot new marketing trend. The issues of making a living and retaining integrity need to be kept completely separate. Not because you can't have one without the other, but because one is far more important than the other. It's just that you get to decide which one.
