fkdennis32的部落格

There is another interesting phenomenon that seems to be accelerating nowadays. This is when an artist follows a trend or imitates a style just to get market share and sales. This behavior is usually cloaked in other compromising behavior so that it gets to be a real burlesque.

One striking example that comes to mind is the case of a well-trained, reasonably talented artist who
turns out paintings that appear to be a form of folk art. This artist is able to turn out rough work, looking to be done by an untrained, naive outsider and is sold as such on the web and in some galleries.

Although the artist is making some sales there is in my opinion a problem. The problem is that the artist is not untrained, naive, or an outsider despite the childish, quirky appearance of his paintings. In fact, after a brief conversation with the artist I realized he was intelligent, sophisticated, very aware of sales
and marketing strategies.

I asked several questions about his work and sales practices. He was perfectly content to do what he was doing, saw no ambiguity in his presentation, and was basically concerned only with sales to apparently uninformed buyers who believed they were discovering the wonder of naive, folk art.

Interestingly one dealer of his work seemed unaware that there was any problem. How the public ultimately responds to this artist and dealer is of interest to me. But whatever the result, this kind of art-salesmanship says little for the artist, seller, or buyer.

It reminds me of making, selling and buying fake Rolex watches. Some people know it's a fake but want to pass it off, others know it's a fake and want to say fakes are in style, fun. The worst situation in my mind is that the buyer doesn't know it's a fake, and no one mentions that it's a fake to the buyer.

Your position on creating and selling art will develop over time, but you will need to be genuine with yourself about it. The more genuine you are the less problems you will have with yourself and others.

This is not to say that an artist can't indulge in two different media or styles. Famous artists worldwide do this with only minor concerns by others. Many artists do respond to some degree to being perceived as unfocused or unresolved in the quality of their work, or the perception that their vision is weak or ambiguous. This is part of the reason that artists only show parts of their work, only work in one medium
at a time, or let a PR person help them create a public persona.

Public Relations people generally believe that the appearance of fewer questionable circumstances is desirable, and if some questionable thing must be seen or talked about, then it should have some miraculously positive spin applied to it.

Pollock's suffering and alcoholism was partly explained as a heroic struggle to meet and deal with the "unconscious" mind. At the time this was partly true and Pollock referenced this dynamic in explanations of his revolutionary work. But this spin was also played on the trend in society at that time that the
public was just beginning to hear and understand Freud's theories as related to Psychoanalysis - which included his construct of the unconscious.