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Great write-up, thanks! Although I disagree on one point: > “you’ll never make it as an artist, because you don’t have to make it as an artist”. Basically, fe

Great write-up, thanks! Although I disagree on one point: > “you’ll never make it as an artist, because you don’t have to make it as an artist”. Basically, feed yourself with your craft, and you’ll soon learn whether you’ve got the stones for it. If you only do art and live off it, you then need to sell it. Which means you need to adapt to your customers' taste, if you want to eat. This all makes you more of a businessman than an artist. (Update: slightly off-topic: I think this also probably is the root of today's copyright controversy. If you don't make money from your art, you don't need to go to great lengths just to make sure no one steals it.) Related, a quote from Francis Ford Coppola on the matter of art and money: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3491678 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3491678.

nickler 15y ago
Well said, and an interesting point made. The lines are blurring between art and business, and some would go so far as to call the startup process an art form, albeit a shaky analogy. Art, purely, is somewhat misappropriated here, when I think the better word for my intentions was 'craft'.
carbocation 15y ago
> If you only do art and live off it, you then need to sell it. Which means you need to adapt to your customers' taste, if you want to eat. Not that I wholly disagree, but Gustav Klimt's Hygeia is a pretty nice counterexample to this notion: http://klimtpaintings.blogspot.com/2010/09/hygeia.html http://klimtpaintings.blogspot.com/2010/09/hygeia.html
- zitterbewegung 15y ago
  How is it? It seems like it agreed with the taste of his customers.
  - Retric 15y ago
    The assumption that the artist needs to change his taste to meet the demands of his audience breaks down when he likes the same things as his audience. It's still 'authentic' he did not 'sell out' etc etc.
    - jasonlotito 15y ago
      You're arguing about wording. The premise is that the artist cannot create what he wants; rather, he must create what his audience wants. If what he wants happens to be what his audience wants, it's a happy coincidence. In truth, one could argue that the artists tastes were changed before, molded and adapted to where it is today. The artists with a larger audience merely adopted earlier.
      - Retric 15y ago
        But, you don't need to sell to everyone. Just find a group of people willing to support whatever your tastes dictate you create. When your interests don't seem to mesh you can always create a pen name to sell keep differentiated fan groups separate.
        goblin89 15y ago
        As for me, I'm all for it, especially since today's technology makes this possible! However, I'm still against the extreme measures mentioned by OP, like dropping any other income and feeding yourself with your work. In such situation it becomes hard to distinguish whether you really just found your target audience, or you needed to subconsciously alter your taste to suit their taste because you were running out of money. Apart from that, it's just that the prospect of living off the support of few people—who are free stop paying any moment—seems a bit risky to me personally (I know I'd abandon any authenticity and start making what people want in this case).
      - goblin89 15y ago
        Admittedly, artists create for the audience in the end, and many a great work exists thanks to someone's desire to be famous. However, there's probably a line between that and selling art. But then I'm sure there are examples of people who struggled to make living from their art, and yet did not surrender to everyone's taste. It's hard to judge either way.
  - carbocation 15y ago
    My understanding is that this work was widely reviled by those in the medicine faculty. They saw themselves as modern healers; he represented them with prescientific imagery that they considered grotesque. (The images he chose for the faculty of law were a more extreme example.)

nickler 15y ago

Well said, and an interesting point made. The lines are blurring between art and business, and some would go so far as to call the startup process an art form, albeit a shaky analogy. Art, purely, is somewhat misappropriated here, when I think the better word for my intentions was 'craft'.

carbocation 15y ago

> If you only do art and live off it, you then need to sell it. Which means you need to adapt to your customers' taste, if you want to eat. Not that I wholly disagree, but Gustav Klimt's Hygeia is a pretty nice counterexample to this notion: http://klimtpaintings.blogspot.com/2010/09/hygeia.html http://klimtpaintings.blogspot.com/2010/09/hygeia.html

zitterbewegung 15y ago
How is it? It seems like it agreed with the taste of his customers.
- Retric 15y ago
  The assumption that the artist needs to change his taste to meet the demands of his audience breaks down when he likes the same things as his audience. It's still 'authentic' he did not 'sell out' etc etc.
  - jasonlotito 15y ago
    You're arguing about wording. The premise is that the artist cannot create what he wants; rather, he must create what his audience wants. If what he wants happens to be what his audience wants, it's a happy coincidence. In truth, one could argue that the artists tastes were changed before, molded and adapted to where it is today. The artists with a larger audience merely adopted earlier.
    - Retric 15y ago
      But, you don't need to sell to everyone. Just find a group of people willing to support whatever your tastes dictate you create. When your interests don't seem to mesh you can always create a pen name to sell keep differentiated fan groups separate.
      - goblin89 15y ago
        As for me, I'm all for it, especially since today's technology makes this possible! However, I'm still against the extreme measures mentioned by OP, like dropping any other income and feeding yourself with your work. In such situation it becomes hard to distinguish whether you really just found your target audience, or you needed to subconsciously alter your taste to suit their taste because you were running out of money. Apart from that, it's just that the prospect of living off the support of few people—who are free stop paying any moment—seems a bit risky to me personally (I know I'd abandon any authenticity and start making what people want in this case).
    - goblin89 15y ago
      Admittedly, artists create for the audience in the end, and many a great work exists thanks to someone's desire to be famous. However, there's probably a line between that and selling art. But then I'm sure there are examples of people who struggled to make living from their art, and yet did not surrender to everyone's taste. It's hard to judge either way.
- carbocation 15y ago
  My understanding is that this work was widely reviled by those in the medicine faculty. They saw themselves as modern healers; he represented them with prescientific imagery that they considered grotesque. (The images he chose for the faculty of law were a more extreme example.)