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The problem here is that I don’t trust the author on being able to tell who is the “best artist”. Clearly he has opinions. But for example in point 3, he says h

The problem here is that I don’t trust the author on being able to tell who is the “best artist”. Clearly he has opinions. But for example in point 3, he says he can predict which exhibition will be great based on how easy it is to work with the artist. He predicts that some exhibition will be crap and he is right! Which sounds impressive until you notice that he is not measuring his judgement against something objective, but just against his judgement. He decides something will be crap and then he feels crap about it once he sees it. Did others, who did not know that the artist was slow to email back also feel that those exhibitions were mediocre and the others not? Who knows? All we have is this one man’s opinion. Maybe others thought differently. Even more so in his point 6. He writes “What you see in the biographies of great artists, great writers, great anything is that they are good at figuring out where the vectors align.” Which is just plainly and absolutely not true. There were plenty of people who we now recognise as “great artist” who absolutely could not figure out where the “incentive vectors align”. Thus they lived in abject poverty, or needed to support themselves from something other than their art. But if your definition of “great art” is that it is commercially succesfull then of course what you will find that the “great artist” are all like good businesman. But that doesn’t tell you about what it take to be an artist, just only what you value.

l5870uoo9y 2y ago
> The problem here is that I don’t trust the author on being able to tell who is the “best artist”. A prerequisite to be considered a great artist is that the artist master a "craft" to perfection be it painting, drawing, sculpting, or something complete different like Burial who created one of the most important electronic album using the basic audio-editing software Sound Forge.
- djtango 2y ago
  Is art really about craft anymore? There's certainly an element of it but it's gotten very meta and abstract these days. What is the craft in a dirty bath tub or a robot endlessly sweeping liquid? Better yet what's the craft in a white canvas: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_invisible_artworks https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_invisible_artworks I'm actually not denying there's art here, sometimes I "get it" but the art of today has gotten very conceptual and meta. I see similar issues with music - where the need to be accessible vs original are pit against each other. Da Vinci, Monet, Turner, Picasso - the art is fairly accessible. Mozart, Beethoven, Debussy, Holst ditto. But who will be remembered as being accessible and "serious" from our generation in music? Probably John Williams - a film composer primarily. I'm not dissing composers, one of my favourites of all time is Nobuo Uematsu but I am not sure what is art anymore. I wonder if art can only emerge with hindsight. What did it feel like to be in the present when people like Chopin and Liszt were in their heyday while Delacroix and Moreau were painting. Or when Ravel and Debussy were writing impressionistic music alongside Monet and Manet painting
  - Arkhaine_kupo 2y ago
    > Is art really about craft anymore? It never was, but it is still important as it always has been. > There's certainly an element of it but it's gotten very meta and abstract these days. Art is about many things. I agree that a lot of art can be esoteric nowadays, mostly because its in conversation with specific things, so it can feel like an inside joke, or a private conversation you are not privy to. If I make an art piece critiquing an article from The Economist and you never read business news then my piece will be unparseable for you, regardless of quality. Many art pieces are in response to other art movements, or to niche communities, or to conversations happening in the art world etc. If you jump into a modern art gallery and someone is replying to the art that was in Art Basel Miami, which was a repsonse to internet art, which in itself was a response to figurative early .... and then you go to this art gallery and you cant get a painting because its talking to someone that is not you. > where the need to be accessible vs original are pit against each other. I dont think thats true. There are certainly artists that manage to break new ground while being accesible, while other prime originality over mainstream appeal. That is an artistic choice to be made, in the same way retreading comfortable ground or releasing a Christman Carol album is. > Da Vinci, Monet, Turner, Picasso - the art is fairly accessible. Trying to understand the last supper without knowledge of Christianity would make Da Vinci fairly hard. Monet was a counter culture leader against The Salon in France which prized craft, and execution over more ground breaking attempts like impressionism, so hardly accesible when his entire life was a fight against the culture of the time. Picasso can be called many things, but accesible is not one that comes to mind. Gernika can be considered striking, but cubism, his portraits of women (and their significance), his pottery... there is plenty of his work that needs analysis and is plain ugly on first watch. > But who will be remembered as being accessible and "serious" from our generation in music? There will be plenty. Kendrick Lamar won a Pulitzer for his lyrics, to give a simple example his song Swimming Pools about the many faces of alcoholism and its raveging effects on the black community is both a popular song as well as really well written narratively. From the 90s you could easily pull Nirvana for offering grunge as an alternative to the hyper corporate, pro capitalism, runaway train that american political and social life was engaged in, while having incredibly catchy songs. If you wanna go further back Bob Dylan and The Beatles are absolute masters of catchy tunes and powerful lyrics. You said what felt to be in the present with List? Well you had Lisztomania, an absolute uproar of women turning up to see him. This was mocked/replicated by the beatles with Beatlemania. You could argue the Boy band, Justin Bieber phenomenom was that same effect although the musicality, and the corporate interference shows a darker more manufactured side to the art. And in terms of art you have incredible art of every type right now, never has art been more accesible or easy to produce. What we are missing is search tools, surfacing interesting works and specially people curating what stuff is good from the muck. But if a tree falls in a forest, it still makes sound and rn there are countless artists dropping trees you just need to perk your ears up
bradley13 2y ago
I have worked a little bit with "artists". Too many of them are caught up in their vision, and apparently incapable of dealing with reality. Too many of them believe that their vision is so, so unique that everyone else should sort out any problems. There's one guy where I live, whom I tried to help out several times. I would invest lots of effort handling the practical stuff: flyers, text, web site, etc. Little thanks, because it was his due. Then he would have a new idea, change direction, and it was all for nothing.
- specialist 2y ago
  True. Part of Gage Art Academy's mission is to create working artists. Students learn about (and struggle with) how to get paid. Stuff like how to price their works, balancing one's own artistic expression with making stuff that sells, how to pull off an exhibit, etc. https://gageacademy.org/ https://gageacademy.org/
irjustin 2y ago
> But if your definition of “great art” is that it is commercially succesfull then of course what you will find that the “great artist” are all like good businesman. While the author doesn't explicitly define what is "great", I 100% believed that what it is defined as. That "great" is being commercially successful. The article is premised around running a non-profit art gallery in a struggling municipality. That he did a good job by "helping grow the revenues"[0]. He needed money for his new baby and couldn't afford to lose a job[1] It is a modern day art gallery. These things are businesses first - to support their own operations and then to help artist support themselves and their work. So yes, "great" art IS art that sells. Now, what sells is highly highly subjective, and a very large part of that sales process is making the customer _feel good_ about their purchase. And I think this is where you disagree - that there is a higher, objective reality around good vs great art. And for so much art, there really isn't. [0] "I started was the inflection point when the revenue, which had been shrinking or muddling for 5 years, began growing again" [1] "since I knew I couldn’t afford to quit anytime soon with the baby and all"
- TheOtherHobbes 2y ago
  By your definition, super-successful kitsch-meisters like Thomas Kinkade are great artists. That's quite a niche view. In fact art is an overlap of many different kinds of markets selling to many different kinds of customers - from people buying phone wallpapers online, to tourists buying souvenirs on holiday, to oligarchs laundering money through prestige purchases. And many others. A community gallery is going to intersect with a couple of those, but not all of them. Sustainable funding is a goal, but maximising income isn't. Financial success doesn't sane wash narcissistic entitlement, of which there is plenty outside of the arts.
  - krisoft 2y ago
    > By your definition, super-successful kitsch-meisters like Thomas Kinkade are great artists. And Vincent van Gogh is not. Or was not a great artist, then he died and become a great artist somehow suddenly after his death. (at least by that definition, which just to make it clear, I don't agree with.)
fenomas 2y ago
> in point 3, he says he can predict which exhibition will be great based on how easy it is to work with the artist I strongly assumed that bit was about him predicting whether each exhibition would be "great" from the gallery's perspective - in terms of attendance or revenue or whatever metrics they used. It's not spelled out, but since the whole piece is about him focusing on the business and ops side of things, that bit probably was as well.
magicalhippo 2y ago
> He writes “What you see in the biographies of great artists, great writers, great anything is that they are good at figuring out where the vectors align.” Which is just plainly and absolutely not true I take it the author means "great" as in "successful".
- llamaimperative 2y ago
  It is not true in that case either, or at least “successful” is still poorly defined. It’s defined implicitly in this blog as commercially successful within the timeframe I had to sell their art. Which is a perfectly defensible definition, but should be explicit so people know what argument they’re hearing.
  - magicalhippo 2y ago
    > commercially successful within the timeframe I had to sell their art That's what I meant with successful. Not sure what other variations there would be, though I'm not a native speaker.
    - llamaimperative 2y ago
      For example, to receive prestigious awards would also fit under "successful," regardless of monetary components. To be recognized after death as one of the Masters would be successful.
      - magicalhippo 2y ago
        The author is talking about the artistry being aligned with market forces in the paragraph preceding the quote. I don't really see how either of those definitions fit in that context.
        llamaimperative 2y ago
        Sure, but now you're just circularly defining it back to what was initially pointed out: this is implicitly a very specific definition of greatness, ergo yeah, you replace the word with "successful" and it's implicitly a very specific definition of successful.
ValentinA23 2y ago
https://www.zmescience.com/science/physicist-shows-that-to-be-successful-in-art-you-need-a-good-network/ https://www.zmescience.com/science/physicist-shows-that-to-b... Albert-László Barabás, a physicist, created a network map that can predict an artist's future success based on their early network connections. His work outlines two key "laws of success": - Performance drives success, but when performance can’t be measured, networks drive success. This highlights the importance of networks when objective measures of quality are difficult to establish. - Performance is bounded, but success is unbounded. This indicates that small differences in quality can lead to large disparities in success due to the amplifying power of social networks Barabási's model can predict an artist's career success with surprising accuracy based on the venues of their first five exhibitions. This model underscores the importance of early connections and the venues where an artist exhibits their work, which can significantly influence their long-term success4.
- jonnycomputer 2y ago
  This is great to think about. Glad I ran across this comment.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- blitzar 2y ago
  I guess this is why a sucessful genius can tape a banana to a wall while a run of the mill worker can only restore Notre Dame to its original state.
  - llamaimperative 2y ago
    No that is more about money laundering
    - lancesells 2y ago
      It's more about people with a lot of money hoping to sell it for a greater return, while maybe also having shit taste in art. In five years it'll be at an auction and sell to some other person with too much money in hopes of making a profit on it later on.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
dfxm12 2y ago
I think the author's definition of "best artist" is "artist who made my job easiest". I have no reason to distrust the author about this, but, on the other hand, this information is simply not useful.
westondeboer 2y ago
I have worked for an artist for about 20 years. He releases a print every week, I could not tell you which one is going to sell well or not.
Aunche 2y ago
> There were plenty of people who we now recognise as “great artist” who absolutely could not figure out where the “incentive vectors align”. Thus they lived in abject poverty, or needed to support themselves from something other than their art. I don't think this is particularly true anymore. Most of the canonical artists of the past century were successful during their lifetimes. The ones who weren't either died tragically young (e.g. Basquiat), or didn't care for exposure much at all (e.g. Hilma af Kint).
- robenkleene 2y ago
  I agree with this. I'd be curious if you have any hypothesis about why exactly that is? Personally, I can think of three possible reasons but I'm not convinced by any of them: 1. It's became harder to distinguish quality. Artist training has been streamlined, so technical excellence (which is easier to evaluate) isn't novel anymore. So that means determining quality of art now depends on more difficult to evaluate criteria. 2. Art moves faster now, so it's harder to have an influence on the art world (one of the ways an artist becomes famous) posthumously, because by then the art world has probably moved on from the state where the art would have impact. 3. We're just better at discovering artists. E.g., low-barrier to entry for digital distribution means it's easier for artists to find an audience. Any thoughts?
  - Aunche 2y ago
    I think #2 and #3 are definitely factors. As for #1, I think basic art education may be streamlined, but art education in general not necessarily as developed as it was in the past. Sfumato, for example, is a technique that would be difficult to learn in an art school due to how long it takes oil to dry, but straightforward in a master apprentice relationship. Bernini grew up as the son of a marble sculptor when and where that was considered the highest form of art, so it's unlikely that anyone born today could be raised breathing marble dust like how he was. I think that photography and digital technology killed the importance of technique more than anything else. Even with realist painting, having photographic references allows you to "cheat" your way into good enough results with unrefined skills to the extent that only painting nerds care about the difference, it makes more sense to focus on other things, which like you said are more difficult to evaluate.

l5870uoo9y 2y ago

> The problem here is that I don’t trust the author on being able to tell who is the “best artist”. A prerequisite to be considered a great artist is that the artist master a "craft" to perfection be it painting, drawing, sculpting, or something complete different like Burial who created one of the most important electronic album using the basic audio-editing software Sound Forge.

djtango 2y ago
Is art really about craft anymore? There's certainly an element of it but it's gotten very meta and abstract these days. What is the craft in a dirty bath tub or a robot endlessly sweeping liquid? Better yet what's the craft in a white canvas: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_invisible_artworks https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_invisible_artworks I'm actually not denying there's art here, sometimes I "get it" but the art of today has gotten very conceptual and meta. I see similar issues with music - where the need to be accessible vs original are pit against each other. Da Vinci, Monet, Turner, Picasso - the art is fairly accessible. Mozart, Beethoven, Debussy, Holst ditto. But who will be remembered as being accessible and "serious" from our generation in music? Probably John Williams - a film composer primarily. I'm not dissing composers, one of my favourites of all time is Nobuo Uematsu but I am not sure what is art anymore. I wonder if art can only emerge with hindsight. What did it feel like to be in the present when people like Chopin and Liszt were in their heyday while Delacroix and Moreau were painting. Or when Ravel and Debussy were writing impressionistic music alongside Monet and Manet painting
- Arkhaine_kupo 2y ago
  > Is art really about craft anymore? It never was, but it is still important as it always has been. > There's certainly an element of it but it's gotten very meta and abstract these days. Art is about many things. I agree that a lot of art can be esoteric nowadays, mostly because its in conversation with specific things, so it can feel like an inside joke, or a private conversation you are not privy to. If I make an art piece critiquing an article from The Economist and you never read business news then my piece will be unparseable for you, regardless of quality. Many art pieces are in response to other art movements, or to niche communities, or to conversations happening in the art world etc. If you jump into a modern art gallery and someone is replying to the art that was in Art Basel Miami, which was a repsonse to internet art, which in itself was a response to figurative early .... and then you go to this art gallery and you cant get a painting because its talking to someone that is not you. > where the need to be accessible vs original are pit against each other. I dont think thats true. There are certainly artists that manage to break new ground while being accesible, while other prime originality over mainstream appeal. That is an artistic choice to be made, in the same way retreading comfortable ground or releasing a Christman Carol album is. > Da Vinci, Monet, Turner, Picasso - the art is fairly accessible. Trying to understand the last supper without knowledge of Christianity would make Da Vinci fairly hard. Monet was a counter culture leader against The Salon in France which prized craft, and execution over more ground breaking attempts like impressionism, so hardly accesible when his entire life was a fight against the culture of the time. Picasso can be called many things, but accesible is not one that comes to mind. Gernika can be considered striking, but cubism, his portraits of women (and their significance), his pottery... there is plenty of his work that needs analysis and is plain ugly on first watch. > But who will be remembered as being accessible and "serious" from our generation in music? There will be plenty. Kendrick Lamar won a Pulitzer for his lyrics, to give a simple example his song Swimming Pools about the many faces of alcoholism and its raveging effects on the black community is both a popular song as well as really well written narratively. From the 90s you could easily pull Nirvana for offering grunge as an alternative to the hyper corporate, pro capitalism, runaway train that american political and social life was engaged in, while having incredibly catchy songs. If you wanna go further back Bob Dylan and The Beatles are absolute masters of catchy tunes and powerful lyrics. You said what felt to be in the present with List? Well you had Lisztomania, an absolute uproar of women turning up to see him. This was mocked/replicated by the beatles with Beatlemania. You could argue the Boy band, Justin Bieber phenomenom was that same effect although the musicality, and the corporate interference shows a darker more manufactured side to the art. And in terms of art you have incredible art of every type right now, never has art been more accesible or easy to produce. What we are missing is search tools, surfacing interesting works and specially people curating what stuff is good from the muck. But if a tree falls in a forest, it still makes sound and rn there are countless artists dropping trees you just need to perk your ears up

bradley13 2y ago

I have worked a little bit with "artists". Too many of them are caught up in their vision, and apparently incapable of dealing with reality. Too many of them believe that their vision is so, so unique that everyone else should sort out any problems. There's one guy where I live, whom I tried to help out several times. I would invest lots of effort handling the practical stuff: flyers, text, web site, etc. Little thanks, because it was his due. Then he would have a new idea, change direction, and it was all for nothing.

specialist 2y ago
True. Part of Gage Art Academy's mission is to create working artists. Students learn about (and struggle with) how to get paid. Stuff like how to price their works, balancing one's own artistic expression with making stuff that sells, how to pull off an exhibit, etc. https://gageacademy.org/ https://gageacademy.org/

irjustin 2y ago

> But if your definition of “great art” is that it is commercially succesfull then of course what you will find that the “great artist” are all like good businesman. While the author doesn't explicitly define what is "great", I 100% believed that what it is defined as. That "great" is being commercially successful. The article is premised around running a non-profit art gallery in a struggling municipality. That he did a good job by "helping grow the revenues"[0]. He needed money for his new baby and couldn't afford to lose a job[1] It is a modern day art gallery. These things are businesses first - to support their own operations and then to help artist support themselves and their work. So yes, "great" art IS art that sells. Now, what sells is highly highly subjective, and a very large part of that sales process is making the customer _feel good_ about their purchase. And I think this is where you disagree - that there is a higher, objective reality around good vs great art. And for so much art, there really isn't. [0] "I started was the inflection point when the revenue, which had been shrinking or muddling for 5 years, began growing again" [1] "since I knew I couldn’t afford to quit anytime soon with the baby and all"

TheOtherHobbes 2y ago
By your definition, super-successful kitsch-meisters like Thomas Kinkade are great artists. That's quite a niche view. In fact art is an overlap of many different kinds of markets selling to many different kinds of customers - from people buying phone wallpapers online, to tourists buying souvenirs on holiday, to oligarchs laundering money through prestige purchases. And many others. A community gallery is going to intersect with a couple of those, but not all of them. Sustainable funding is a goal, but maximising income isn't. Financial success doesn't sane wash narcissistic entitlement, of which there is plenty outside of the arts.
- krisoft 2y ago
  > By your definition, super-successful kitsch-meisters like Thomas Kinkade are great artists. And Vincent van Gogh is not. Or was not a great artist, then he died and become a great artist somehow suddenly after his death. (at least by that definition, which just to make it clear, I don't agree with.)

fenomas 2y ago

> in point 3, he says he can predict which exhibition will be great based on how easy it is to work with the artist I strongly assumed that bit was about him predicting whether each exhibition would be "great" from the gallery's perspective - in terms of attendance or revenue or whatever metrics they used. It's not spelled out, but since the whole piece is about him focusing on the business and ops side of things, that bit probably was as well.

magicalhippo 2y ago

> He writes “What you see in the biographies of great artists, great writers, great anything is that they are good at figuring out where the vectors align.” Which is just plainly and absolutely not true I take it the author means "great" as in "successful".

llamaimperative 2y ago
It is not true in that case either, or at least “successful” is still poorly defined. It’s defined implicitly in this blog as commercially successful within the timeframe I had to sell their art. Which is a perfectly defensible definition, but should be explicit so people know what argument they’re hearing.
- magicalhippo 2y ago
  > commercially successful within the timeframe I had to sell their art That's what I meant with successful. Not sure what other variations there would be, though I'm not a native speaker.
  - llamaimperative 2y ago
    For example, to receive prestigious awards would also fit under "successful," regardless of monetary components. To be recognized after death as one of the Masters would be successful.
    - magicalhippo 2y ago
      The author is talking about the artistry being aligned with market forces in the paragraph preceding the quote. I don't really see how either of those definitions fit in that context.
      - llamaimperative 2y ago
        Sure, but now you're just circularly defining it back to what was initially pointed out: this is implicitly a very specific definition of greatness, ergo yeah, you replace the word with "successful" and it's implicitly a very specific definition of successful.

ValentinA23 2y ago

https://www.zmescience.com/science/physicist-shows-that-to-be-successful-in-art-you-need-a-good-network/ https://www.zmescience.com/science/physicist-shows-that-to-b... Albert-László Barabás, a physicist, created a network map that can predict an artist's future success based on their early network connections. His work outlines two key "laws of success": - Performance drives success, but when performance can’t be measured, networks drive success. This highlights the importance of networks when objective measures of quality are difficult to establish. - Performance is bounded, but success is unbounded. This indicates that small differences in quality can lead to large disparities in success due to the amplifying power of social networks Barabási's model can predict an artist's career success with surprising accuracy based on the venues of their first five exhibitions. This model underscores the importance of early connections and the venues where an artist exhibits their work, which can significantly influence their long-term success4.

jonnycomputer 2y ago
This is great to think about. Glad I ran across this comment.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
blitzar 2y ago
I guess this is why a sucessful genius can tape a banana to a wall while a run of the mill worker can only restore Notre Dame to its original state.
- llamaimperative 2y ago
  No that is more about money laundering
  - lancesells 2y ago
    It's more about people with a lot of money hoping to sell it for a greater return, while maybe also having shit taste in art. In five years it'll be at an auction and sell to some other person with too much money in hopes of making a profit on it later on.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

dfxm12 2y ago

I think the author's definition of "best artist" is "artist who made my job easiest". I have no reason to distrust the author about this, but, on the other hand, this information is simply not useful.

westondeboer 2y ago

I have worked for an artist for about 20 years. He releases a print every week, I could not tell you which one is going to sell well or not.

Aunche 2y ago

> There were plenty of people who we now recognise as “great artist” who absolutely could not figure out where the “incentive vectors align”. Thus they lived in abject poverty, or needed to support themselves from something other than their art. I don't think this is particularly true anymore. Most of the canonical artists of the past century were successful during their lifetimes. The ones who weren't either died tragically young (e.g. Basquiat), or didn't care for exposure much at all (e.g. Hilma af Kint).

robenkleene 2y ago
I agree with this. I'd be curious if you have any hypothesis about why exactly that is? Personally, I can think of three possible reasons but I'm not convinced by any of them: 1. It's became harder to distinguish quality. Artist training has been streamlined, so technical excellence (which is easier to evaluate) isn't novel anymore. So that means determining quality of art now depends on more difficult to evaluate criteria. 2. Art moves faster now, so it's harder to have an influence on the art world (one of the ways an artist becomes famous) posthumously, because by then the art world has probably moved on from the state where the art would have impact. 3. We're just better at discovering artists. E.g., low-barrier to entry for digital distribution means it's easier for artists to find an audience. Any thoughts?
- Aunche 2y ago
  I think #2 and #3 are definitely factors. As for #1, I think basic art education may be streamlined, but art education in general not necessarily as developed as it was in the past. Sfumato, for example, is a technique that would be difficult to learn in an art school due to how long it takes oil to dry, but straightforward in a master apprentice relationship. Bernini grew up as the son of a marble sculptor when and where that was considered the highest form of art, so it's unlikely that anyone born today could be raised breathing marble dust like how he was. I think that photography and digital technology killed the importance of technique more than anything else. Even with realist painting, having photographic references allows you to "cheat" your way into good enough results with unrefined skills to the extent that only painting nerds care about the difference, it makes more sense to focus on other things, which like you said are more difficult to evaluate.