I'm not sure if you heard, but the Academy Awards were on Sunday night. I actually heard about it because I'm not in a coma.
Three days before that, a little something called Linsanity hit South Florida, where I live. Apparently our guy beat their guy. I am not a sports fan, and I haven't watched a basketball game since I was eight years old, and yet I can't escape being Linundated.
One week ago, sadly, Whitney Houston was laid to rest. You may have seen it mentioned on the news.
I get it. We love our celebrities! What I don't always understand is how we pick them.
I make a living as an artist, so you can imagine my surprise when I asked five of my closest friends to name five famous living artists, and the longest list I received had just three names. Second place was one name. The other three could name none. These are the close friends of an artist!
Throughout our most recent centuries, visual artists were highly regarded and celebrated along with musicians, poets, and other gifted individuals who shared their talents. Yes, we always hear the stories of the Van Gogh types who never achieved fame or recognition until they had passed on, but they are actually the exception, not the rule. Even as recently as the 1980s, visual artists were reaching a level of celebrity and recognition.
Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, and Robert Mapplethorpe are all names I remember hearing as I was growing up. I would be hard pressed to find a 12-year-old who could name a living artist today.
I don't believe it is a coincidence that the shift in focus and appreciation for more traditional art forms and artists coincided with the birth of personal computing, the Internet, and (what I call) ADD-TV programming. We receive information in a faster, more homogenized way than ever.
Today's celebrities are people whose talents can be seen and appreciated on an electronic device. Thank God for the Kindle and the iPad, or else books may have become extinct. Authors are only slightly more famous than artists, but at least they make it to the talk show circuit!
For the art community, the future may look a bit bleak. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, "Earnings for self-employed artists also vary widely. Many do not make enough money just from selling their art. Many artists will need to have a second job in order to support themselves financially."
This just in.
In order to survive, art needs to reinvent itself, just like every other industry had to do twenty years ago. More importantly, artists need to reinvent themselves as well. We are living in a digital era and the vast majority of artists are still working with an analog medium.
Andy Warhol said it best: "Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art."
There is still, and will always be, a great value in tactile artwork. There is no better way to complete a home or business than with original art. Art can be very powerful and moving. It is also sometimes purely aesthetically pleasing.
The artist of the future will find a way to meet their end user halfway, between the canvas and the iPad. The galleries of the future will concern themselves far more with creating a good user experience, and far less about age-old values that have actually been dead for decades.
Thanks to the commercials during the Super Bowl, I can recognize the guys who created Words with Friends. Maybe soon they will recognize me.
I don't think this is a conscious shift in American culture, not that there always hasn't been proponents of anti-elitism here.
This shift seems more of a thoughtless shift, where our society has moved from slower paced works of enormous expenditures of time and talent to arts able to be assembled quickly, with enough thought to at least not seem trite, and able to be packaged into our digital lifestyles. Those which aren't able to be fit into this new box of requirements are simply going by the way side.
There simply hasn't been an appreciation for the arts here like there has been in other countries. If it's not given airtime or tv time or what have you here, it's irrelevant culturally. And with shows like American Idol being so popular, few youth want to spend any additional brain cells on music which isn't American Idol or pop radio friendly. It always has been a struggle for art to have itself recognized, perhaps none more than now.
Thankfully, there is still a strong counter culture here, and while artists may not be able to make a living just on art alone here, there are people who still acknowledge the importance of art in expressing things we can't express, in evoking atmosphere and meaning, and in challenging us to be better and take note of things which can help us be better people.
Tara McPherson
http://www.thecottoncandymachine.com/artist/tara-mcpherson/
Travis Louie
http://www.travislouie.com/
Natalia Fabia
http://www.nataliafabia.com/
Lee Harvey Roswell
http://leeharveyroswell.com/
Sylvia Ji
http://www.sylviaji.com/
Todd Slater
http://www.toddslater.net/
Kris Lewis
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Kris-Lewis/23952192498
Molly Crabapple
http://mollycrabapple.com/
And that's just a small handful of my favorites. I know these artists are selling their work. And I have a feeling they're living like rock stars. But I guess it depends on what you consider a rock star. And an artist for that matter. But the great thing about being an artist and a rock star- as long as you think you are, that's all that matters.
Anyone can make digital 'art' with their cellphone camera after all.
Why are artists so special?
You also have to keep in mind that in the past 'art' was our version of 'pop culture'.
Any German can join a Verein or participate with them – as an American I've had my work funded by them. So there are more opportunities to show and more chances of selling to an educated population that understands and reveres art and wants to have original artwork in their home.
I do not think that is a call to compromise integrity. It was intended to be a call to create more awareness of art on a larger scale. I am blessed to be in this industry, so I am able to see so many exciting creations, in endlessly different formats. I am so inspired by the artists I meet, the articles I read, the exhibits I attend… It is merely my hope that the great work being done in our field can be celebrated and recognized on a grander scale.
Also, I was not listing my inspirations at all in my article. I was listing artists who had names I recognized as a child. I’m not saying that fame equals talent. I’m just saying that fame equals awareness. I would like to see some of the great artists of our time getting a little more spotlight. They deserve it, and our society would be richer for knowing them and having a broader appreciation for the full spectrum of art, and not the very limited exposure most people have today.
Provocative art makes you think, and they don't want any of that foolishness around.