I’ve come to call it the Business Bitters–that mouth puckering contrast to the sweet taste of creative flow.

The story is simple and timeless: artist paints or sculpts or weaves or throws or composes, experiencing a kind of…ecstasy. The result is a work of art that has first moved the artist, and then – if the skill, artist voice, and materials are up to the job – reaches out to move someone else.

In the beginning, the artist is joyous when one person is moved enough to tell the artist how they love the work.

As time passes, and more creative flow produces more work, eventually the artist’s expectations shift from a verbal stroking of her or his artistic voice to a definitive nod from a collector’s wallet.

Once this shift happens, there is no turning back: the gift of words, without a corresponding exchange of money, slowly pivots from mild irritation to outright frustration.

And here is where the story starts to show the true color of its underbelly: dark, foreboding, brooding, and painfully blind to a common, shared reality–that an exchange of money is the material core of a business transaction.

The “underbelly” I’m speaking about is not this reality, but an artist’s relationship to this reality… or should I say, non-relationship to this reality.

As much as some artists want the affirmation that comes with a sale, they make choice after choice that denies them a rational relationship with the business of art. For these artists, all they can taste is Business Bitters.

Imagine, for a moment, what this would look like if you had the same attitude toward bread on your table.

You want bread. You love bread, especially fresh baked and warm from the oven. But you don’t want to sully the experience with money. You want the bread to drop from the sky, already dripping with butter.

Goodness sakes, no, you can’t imagine paying somebody for this heavenly experience–that would be sacrilegious. That would steal the very flavor from each bite.

Pretty silly, yes?

And  yet, that is the same attitude artist after artist has about their art career. They will pay for art supplies. They might even pay to have a studio of their own. But that’s where the buck stops, literally.

When it comes to the business side of their art career, suddenly they want that loaf to just drop out of the sky.

Here’s a prime example: one artist I spoke to just spent $20,000 on building the perfect studio, but dug her cute little heels into the ground when it came to spending a couple thousand on improving how she markets her art. The excuse? (Which, of course, cleverly disguises itself as a reason.)  She felt too stressed out over how much the studio had cost.

Never mind that learning how to market her art effectively would help her recoup that studio cost.

Never mind the incongruity between expecting collectors to dig into their pockets for your art while you are unwilling to do the same thing to help move your career forward.

Never mind that there is no business in the world that can sustain itself without some level of upfront investment.

Heck… just brush those pesky flies away from your face!  You’re an artist!

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Here’s a straight forward investment that doesn’t cost thousands of dollars, and is backed up with the experience of your peers. Check out what other artists – who are not afraid to invest in themselves, roll up their sleeves and go to work – have to say.

Henri Matisse "Blue Nude"

Too often, creativity is equated with the wide open prairies of freedom where we’ve been conditioned to believe that unlimited roaming is what calls forth our creative impulses.

It reminds me of liberal parenting, that knee jerk reaction to authoritarian parenting where children were seen and not heard, and you spared the rod only to…

spoil the child. Liberal parenting, the new darling of the older parent generation, holds that limits are literal, and not reflective of a natural boundary that keeps us safe.

I mean, think about it for a moment: without the boundary of our skin, our organs would spill out of our bodies. Without the boundary of rivers, towns are flooded and destroyed. Without the boundary of “no,”  yes becomes tyrannical instead of gracious. 

In fact, I’ll go so far as to say that unlimited freedom is a fiction of the frightened, those who feel that restrictions are handcuffs, a jail sentence of sorts. What I imagine is that the very idea of a restriction goads some artists into breaking free, allowing creativity and inspiration to spill out.

While others find that the tighter the reins, the higher their creativity prances.

I remember a museum in Amsterdam showcasing objects made by prisoners in concentration camps who literally had nothing. The stunning beauty of a small handmade, hand painted hair comb, among dozens and dozens of other objects of art, stopped me in my tracks. Here were limits unimagined by most of us turning out flames of creative hope.

“In art, truth and reality begin when one no longer understands what one is doing or what one knows, and when there remains an energy that is all the stronger for being constrained, controlled and compressed.”
— Henri Matisse

What limits do you dare to put on yourself today. On your art?

How will you embrace the creativity paradox: within boundaries, creative acts know no bounds.

Why do you make art?

Blue Cat by Lori Wolfson

I mean, if all the outside rewards and possibilities of recognition and praise and money were removed from the picture, what would be left?

Do you ever think about what is at the core – the heart – of this need we have to make pictures?

Do you ever wonder?

To me it’s quite mysterious; I wonder all the time.

But, what about you?  What moves your hand and eye?

It all started on Twitter

I know, I know…not another Social Media site! Except, Twitter is a hotbed of information and connection that just doesn’t quit. It’s also, once you get the hang of it, a much faster way to spread yourself around the globe.

And yesterday I saw a tweet that made my hair stand on end: Facebook CEO changes the TOS (Terms of Service).

Now, let me be perfectly clear: this just happened! And it’s the reason why staying ahead of the curve online is critical. You just never know when the next shoe will drop.

When Facebook stated that it will no longer allow users to delete their data when they leave the service, the crowd roared and CEO Mark Zuckerberg was forced to post a response justifying FB’s “right” to do anything it wants with any of content or images you post on FB.

Back during my smARTist Telesummit, artists were already asking about the legal safety of their images if posted on Facebook, and the expert’s response was that FB needed permission that would allow them to have you post your images on their servers, but that you, the artist, still retained all copyrights.

So, ok, no big deal. Just a lot of legalese that sites are required to post to cover their bums.

Not so fast

But that was then. Now it’s a whole different ball game.

CEO Zuckerman has inserted a new clause in the TOS that says FB can do anything at all with your content and images, and you have no say in the matter.

What really concerned everyone is that they took out the following lines, which were in the earlier TOS:

“You may remove your User Content from the Site at any time. If you choose to remove your User Content, the license granted above will automatically expire, however you acknowledge that the Company may retain archived copies of your User Content.”

Now they claim:

“The following sections will survive any termination of your use of the Facebook Service: Prohibited Conduct, User Content, Your Privacy Practices, Gift Credits, Ownership; Proprietary Rights, Licenses, Submissions, User Disputes; Complaints, Indemnity, General Disclaimers, Limitation on Liability, Termination and Changes to the Facebook Service, Arbitration, Governing Law; Venue and Jurisdiction and Other.”

In other words: your hands are legally bound and you can do nothing to stop FB from using your material any way they choose.

But, as many have pointed out, including the CEO, they aren’t about to abuse this clause and actually use your images in a way that you would not want, because that would violate your trust in FB.

But the question is: do you really want to trust a Big Company?

I suggest you read these other blogs, especially this one where I comment (about 38 comments down the line) and right after me is a salient comment by Rana posted Feb. 16th at 3:24 pm PST 

I sent all of this material onto our smARTist resident arts lawyer, Leonard DuBoff. His response was that this would take a good deal of research and expert analysis, and would I like to hire his firm to do this.

Which told me that there’s nothing cut and dried about this. And I’m not sure any of us have anything more going for us than our guts. For now, I’m staying in Facebook.

I’m banking on Zuckerman listening to the uproar and altering the TOS. I even tried to start a Twitter hashtag movement #facebookrevolt, but the response has been less than deafening.

tough in their own way, I’m just trying to keep perspective.

However, even if we do not suffer more than others, we do tend to feel things deeply.  This, combined with our inordinate sensitivities, seems to make the suffering more intense.  Couple that with the usual insecurities, spells of depression, and years of rejection, and baby you’ve got one suffering artist.

Or to quote good old Scott Fitzgerald: “…There are open wounds, shrunk sometimes to the size of a pinprick, but wounds still.  The marks of suffering are more comparable to the loss of a finger, or of the sight of an eye…”

Will you suffer?

As surely as you eat, drink and breathe.  Will your work benefit from it?  If you choose.  Is this a necessary condition of being an artist?  I don’t know about ‘necessary,’ but I can say that it’s a common condition of our existence.

All right, so we suffer.  But by God, we know how to live too.  And by “we” I don’t mean just artists, but anyone who lives sensually, and through the power of their creativity-whether in the art world or the corporate world.

Is there a gift here?

Few people are given the gift to live life with true intensity. Few people are able to feel fully alive between the spells of suffering.  The sense of suffering is merely part of the price exacted for the qualities that make up your talent. And since you have to pay to play, I suggest that you to do so willingly.  The alternative is to live an unenlightened existence.

And I ask you, isn’t that a common enough condition already?  And aren’t you glad it isn’t yours?

And I was struck, as I often am, by an academic’s perspective on being an artist. Which is not to say that Dean Storr is not part of the real art world. Far from it. He has extensive experience with curating (at the Museum of Modern Art, for one), exhibiting as a painter, he’s a respected art critic and a writer on the theory and practice of art.

The interview zeroed in on his plans for graduate and undergraduate students at Yale, yet I found that he had much to say that was… meaningful and useful beyond the Ivory Tower.

Alone… or in concert?

He alluded to the sweeping changes that technology and the Internet have perpetuated on the world of artists, suggesting that the time of the lone artist taking her wares to Sunday market is outdated. That artists need to participate collectively in new (as of yet, unknown) forms, and that this collective force is what will characterize and lead the future of art.

As part of a historical lineage

He spoke passionately about how crucial it is for all artists to be aware of the artists’ shoulders they stand upon. That not being aware of history–both past and current, local and international–is to diminish your creative capacity, not to mention limiting your ability to become original.

As part of a continuum 

Storr was clear that no matter which direction you ultimately choose–artist, collector, curator, gallery owner, critic, teacher (or all)–that you need to become familiar with the major roles of the art world, for each one views art from an angle that is connected to the whole. 

But his remarks also seemed remarkable disconnected from the lives his students will find themselves living once they graduate. Lives sustained in-between the world of ideas and making a living, which he failed to mention even once in the entire interview.

He made a pronouncement that artists should never consider art as a profession, but ‘just’ a vocation. And rolled his eyes at what he characterized as the current emphasis on art marketing.

So I looked up the words “vocation” and “profession.” 

Vocation, profession, or career

• Profession: An occupation requiring training in the liberal arts or sciences
• Vocation: same as above, plus: An urge or predisposition to undertake a certain kind of work: a calling
• Career: A chosen pursuit; the general course or progression of one’s life

Looking these over, I can see the immediate need for another.

• Provocareer: the training (self taught or otherwise), ignited by the ‘urge’ to create and fueled by the freedom to choose over the course of your lifetime

Before the first smARTist Telesummit in 2007, I rarely heard anyone refer to artists as having a career. That term has historically been reserved for lawyers, doctors, and candlestick makers. Heck, art didn’t qualify as a ‘business’ until the 1970s when lee Caplin wrote the first edition of The Business of Art.

By the third edition in 1998, art was a $40 billion industry, with approximately 1.5 million jobs, and $3.5 billion paid to Uncle Sam in taxes. (Which reminds me, one of our January smARTist presenters, a CPA for artists, is presenting “Watch Your Wallet: Strategic Tax Planning for the Visual Artists.”) 

Since paradox is often a driving force behind creative innovation, this directive may simply be a practical underpinning to grease our creative skids.

Or, on the emotional level, since resistance appears unfriendly and implacable, while embrace radiates connection, we might ask ourselves…when we put our arms around that which is unfriendly, what’s likely to happen?

Could it be that resistance is some part of ourselves that we have dismissed or dissed…some part that is trying to get our attention by putting the brakes on a particular direction another part of us has decided to head?  

Or could it be that resistance holds a jewel in it’s closed fist that melts open when we embrace it, when we befriend the scowl with a kind, attentive heart.

And, more important, what new and unimagined creative horizons might we cross with resistance by our sides?

When you feel yourself resisting something, how do you deal with it?

Or, can you take something made out of sugar and almonds seriously because it is made out of sugar and almonds, and not…say… marble.

But besides all that, my main concern was that something as compelling as the Marzipan babies had no artist’s name connected to it.

These miniature wonders came across the Internet highway as “anonymous,” and I couldn’t help but wonder if there was a connection. Almonds ‘n sugar = no artist to be taken, seriously or any other way.

This week, the medium is no less quirky – nails – but this artist is not about to be forgotten.

The sticky factor at work

I want you to notice the two things this artist has done to make sure he’s not upstaged by the quirkiness of his materials:

1. His images have an embedded mark that gives you not just the artist, but his website too.

2. And the whole series of his images gives you not just the art, but the artist and his process.

Where do you think you are losing your greatest opportunity to become an Internet “floater?”

After these driftwood and oak horses turned up in an email, without an artist’s name, I was compelled enough to go searching on Google.  ”Driftwood horses” did not lead me to the artist’s website, but to another website,  where I did find her name and her website: Heather Jansch.

What I found most interesting, on this viewing adventure, was that the presentation of her images was so much better on the website that was not her own.

And herein lies a caution tale for artists:how you present your work online deeply impacts the level of how compelling your work comes across.

Just compare the two websites side-by-side. The first one is simple, fairly un-elegant, but her horses nearly leap off the page.

Whereas Heather Jansch’s website feels cramped and the horses don’t seem to have enough room to move.

This story ends well enough, since the viral aspect of how I learned about Jansch’s work has landed her here, on this blog.

But how much more mileage would she get if she followed the next artist we’ll look at next week?

Untitled

I have this friend who loves to send me emails about art made from idiosyncratic materials. I don’t know if he sends these to everyone on his list, or just because he knows art’s m’ thing, and I’ll get a kick out of them.

I call this “Side Show” art. Like the dog with 3 heads, it fascinates people. And quirky art floats all over the Internet.

Sure… a work of art can be fascinating, but can you equate fascination with a work of art?

Shhh… Marzipan Babies sleeping…

Unknown artist

Here is the sum total of information that came with a series of 12 images…

These are made with marzipan: sugar, egg whites and almonds, a substance used as a base for icing, or to mold decorative forms.

That’s it — the whole ball of marzipan.

This artwork is flying around the world, literally, and we don’t know the artist’s name, how to contact the artist, if these are for sale — nada!

Does this artist get even one ping! from all of this free promotion?  (Give it your best guess.)

A long-standing controversy: who decides what is real art?

Now I don’t care how snobbish your fine art, artistic persuasion might be, you gotta admit these are compelling on several levels:

• Kinesthetic resonance — These make me shiver with a odd kind of ecstasy as I look at them.
• Human identity — Don’t we tend to love that which reminds us of ourselves?
• Pure skill — The sense that these babies might wake up, or cry, or smile at me is deliciously creepy.
• Scale — I don’t know if it’s the human power gene or the nurture gene, but something fascinates us when it’s miniature. And fascination gets you points. Maybe not enough for the MOMA, but points nonetheless.

Is this real art?

We could bat around — Is this real art? — for a long time. But what fascinates me is that we have a work of art, but no artist.

I asked my friend, Neil, if he could track down the artist for me, and he could not.

Next Tuesday, we’ll look at more quirky art, only this time the artist has his PR ducks all in a row.

Unknown artist

Now, you tell me: are these Marzipan Babies “real” art?