Art and money
Or the starving artist
Apologies for missing the last couple of weeks. Life got busy and to add to that I was having problems with substack, who I use to make this newsletter. Turned out Substack doesn’t like the browser I was using so i’ve gone back to Google for this. Anyway, to business.
As often happens there are a confluence of things that have come together. I’ve been rereading Make Art, Make Money, which is about Jim Henson and his approach to making a living by making art. Then, early this week, my wife, Karen, and I were on a 500 mile plus road trip coming back from Stockton on Tees. We got to talking about me wanting to make art and she asked about making money from it.
Now i’ve never subscribed to the Victorian idea of the starving artist in a garret waiting for his muse to help him create his masterpiece. Most of the great classical artwork in museums was created as one side of a business agreement. Art and commerce have been bedfellows for a very long time.
But no artist wants commerce to be the driving force behind their creations. Henson had a three step plan, suggested by his agent, that makes sense to me.
1 make your art. Do nit think about commerce.
Make Money from your art. For Henson this meant merchandising, Tickle Me Elmo and Kermit puppets and Miss Piggy dolls. For me it may look like prints and coasters and bookmarks and cloth bags.
Take the money you make and plough it back into your art.
This may sound obvious but it’s not to most artists. We have been conditioned to believe in the victorian ideas of the purity of art, following your muse and remaining divorced from commerce even this was not a reality for the most known of victorian artists. If you want your art to be seen and, even better, purchased you have to consider the viewer.
The majority of artists we know have achieved that dance between art and commerce and even Van Gogh, who sold virtually nothing during his lifetime, tried his damnedest to find that balance.
Nowadays we gave more options. Our art is not.just a single item to try and sell. Now it is an IP, an intellectual property that we can easily reproduce on mugs and coaster and shopping bags and prints and t-shirts and much more. And this is the question facing me now. How can I use my art to make an income and what am I willing to do?
Sonething to ponder.
Pete
Hi Pete - We cant afford $80 a year, but would like to give some support. The best way seems to be a small support and forwarding the link to others we know who may be interested. We hope the sudden trip up north did not leave you too drained. Life for the Bangs has been tough.
I am enjoying Audubon's On the Wings of the World - another good recommendation from you. Audubon would have made a good animator.
Most of the artists I know have always doodled or drawn or modelled or painted etc. It's a bit like other things. My main driver is creating through construction - anything from dams to homes to bird boxes, and this has spread to three of our four boys. It would never occur to me to make money from my art - but who knows, perhaps your encouragement will change that, and I may contribute to the images the book in me may call for, perhaps a family contribution.
Tolkien was typical of the late-Victorian educated class who were often taught poetry or how to draw and paint - though fewer to sculpt and craft. A few sold their works. Tolkien never seemed to want to make money from his art, but his early editions of The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings relied on his art to amplify his writing. He also used his sketches to facilitate his writing.
I imagine that we need to produce quite a lot of "art" before we can aspire to be artists and then to believe enough to expect to earn a living from it. You could. In my own case my whole life's work has been around building stuff and I have earned a living from it. My O-Level art was a picture of a suspension bridge in perspective and silhouette! So my own experience is that if we have a driving passion, we can expect to succeed in it and to live off it - though the size of our "commission" will depend upon the receptivity of our audience - in my case, and like most "artists", variable.
I am sure there are many more artists, like Van Gogh, that receive no commissions, even though they aspire such.
My brother in law did a fine art degree and eventually became a curator and writer describing art and artists. He has an excellent eye and good vocabulary - if a little dry. Art is his passion, but craft is his gift along with creative entrepreneurial flair. He made enough money, from a non-art related idea, to do a world trip and meet his future beloved in the process, but his talent is in composition, photography and lithographic prints. When in South Africa he paid his way through university by selling copper plate limited editions of an ancient map of Africa, and hundreds of printed canvas bags, causing his beloved's hands to bleed in the making. His money disappears as soon as earned - another common artistic tendency! Though not restricted to us.
Pete - your often used comic book style strongly suggests this is a good place to start. Also you have many passionate thoughts about life the universe and everything. I would start with that - children's or adult stuff as the mood dictates. Sell on Amazon - there are piles of horse manure on Amazon and a truly gifted production would be well received - perhaps leading to contacts in the publishing world. I have met many movers and shakers in construction and management and most of the successful ones were trained in the arts. What I take from this is that creativity produces saleable ideas.
God bless
Ian