The Business of Being an Artist

Daniel Grant

• Publisher: Allworth
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781621534693
• Topic: Kunst
• Subtopic: Kunst & Wirtschaft

The fifth edition of this updated and expanded classic provides visual artists with an in-depth guide to developing and building a career as a professional artist. Veteran art writer Daniel Grant weaves the words and experiences of dozens of practicing artists throughout this informative volume to describe their real-life challenges and the solutions they found to overcome them. Grant covers everything from art gallery etiquette to the legal rights of artists, including chapters on: Making the transition from school to the working world
Searching for funding through grants and fellowships
Developing relationships with art dealers
Handling criticism and rejection
How to stay safe in the studio
Finding a variety of ways to get paid in the new economyNew to this edition are expanded sections that look at utilizing exhibition venues from sidewalk fairs to regional biennials to national parks, selling in other countries, talking with collectors about your art and yourself, avoiding the perils of defamation, transporting and travelling with art, using "greener" materials, and the experience of becoming an artist later in life and of artists' children. The Business of Being an Artist is an invaluable resource for art students, aspiring artists, and professional artists who want to learn all there is to know about successfully navigating the world of art.Allworth Press, an imprint of Skyhorse Publishing, publishes a broad range of books on the visual and performing arts, with emphasis on the business of art. Our titles cover subjects such as graphic design, theater, branding, fine art, photography, interior design, writing, acting, film, how to start careers, business and legal forms, business practices, and more. While we don't aspire to publish a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are deeply committed to quality books that help creative professionals succeed and thrive. We often publish in areas overlooked by other publishers and welcome the author whose expertise can help our audience of readers.

1

Exhibiting and Selling Art

Artists aren’t people who simply create art and then drift off into oblivion; they want their work to be seen and to receive some sort of reaction from those who see it. Putting art in front of the public establishes an artist as a professional and, for many, the quest for a show is the primary goal. Fortunately, there are many venues for exhibitions available.

For the past 120 or so years, art dealers and galleries have been the principal route to success in the art world—before that, salons or group shows of establishment-picked artists predominated for a couple of centuries. Some artists have been very closely identified with their dealers, such as Renoir and Picasso with Ambroise Vollard or Jasper Johns with Leo Castelli or Richard Serra with Larry Gagosian. Dealers frequently have a select clientele of one or more principal backers who do the bulk of the buying, and it is the ability to steer these important collectors to certain artists’ work that establishes a dealer’s prestige. Few long-term successful dealers survive without this clientele, and gallery owners who rely on walk-in traffic for their sales tend to go in and out of business in a hurry. The main exception to that are galleries in resort and tourist towns where buyers may want something by which to remember their vacation. However, relatively few galleries anywhere generate the volume of sales that would support any of the artists whose work is displayed, requiring those artists to place their artwork with a large number of galleries; some artists do just that, but they better keep good records on where their work is and monitor the gallery owners about sales and what they may be owed.

Finding the right dealer who will lead the artist’s work to major collections is a challenge and few generalizations can be made. Dealers become interested in potentially representing artists largely in two ways: The first is when dealers personally know the artist (meeting him or her at an art opening or on a studio visit) or hear about the artist from people they trust such as other artists they represent, curators, critics, and collectors.

The second way is through the strength of an artist’s work and market. Artists usually send dealers images of their work and some indication that there is a market for it. To that end, artists who are starting out need to build a track record of group and one-person exhibitions and, along with that, develop a group of consistent buyers. Dealers don’t like to try to build a market for an artist but, instead, look for artists who already have a market that can be expanded. Art galleries and dealers are but one means, albeit a highly publicized one, for artists to exhibit and sell their work. Success in the art world may lead to critical acclaim and financial rewards, but many artists find the process of currying favor with dealers and even spending so much of their time in the large cities where the major art dealers are located to be grating on their nerves, contrary to why they sought to be artists in the first place.

There are alternatives, opportunities for artists to sell their work outside of the gallery structure, and many artists have been able to gain exposure or make a living this way. The French Impressionist exhibitions in Paris of the 1870s and ’80s were all organized by the artists involved (one of Mary Cassatt’s main values to this group was in convincing wealthy American collectors to come take a look). The German Expressionists of the 1910s staged exhibits and published the Blue Rider Almanac to promote their work; a sprawling group of American artists put together the 1913 Armory Show, which is credited with establishing Modernism in the United States; Dadaist artists in the 1920s created “Manifestations,” and Pop Artists of the early 1960s put on “Happenings.” The group of art students at Goldsmiths College in London, interested in conceptual and installation art, who became known as the Young British Artists, gained notoriety through a 1988 exhibition titled “Freeze,” which was put together by the group’s leader, Damien Hirst, at the Saatchi Gallery. Eventually, those artists found their way into mainstream galleries but they made their start outside of them, and they did it by uniting themselves for a common effort. These days, such exhibitions are called artist-curated shows and they often take place in nonprofit art spaces, but the intent of today’s artists is the same as it was for the Impressionists, Expressionists, Dadaists, and Pops: Artists with similar interests and artistic ideas band together to promote themselves as a group and individually. Hey, art world, something new has arrived! Being an artist is a business, requiring artists to act entrepreneurially, being as creative in efforts to generate attention to themselves and their work as they are in their own art.

The first step on this path starts with putting work before the public.

SO, WHERE CAN I SHOW MY WORK?

There is a wide variety of exhibition spaces available for the starting-out artist. Banks, libraries, corporate headquarters, community centers, hospitals, real estate offices, cafés, and restaurants, for example, are frequently willing to allow artists to hang up their works on the walls where the public may see them. The likelihood of sales is often low and the possibility of damage to the work (fingerprints, coffee splashes, cigarette smoke) is considerable, but this type of show is a chance for feedback and for the artist to circulate press releases, announcements and exhibition cards, and be remembered the next time his or her work is on display.

Many towns and smaller cities have arts centers where exhibits can be seen in an actual gallery setting. A notch above the art show in the bank or library, the arts center is likely to have its own means of promoting activities, increasing the number of people who may come to view the artwork. This may be a first opportunity for a write-up in a local newspaper, again increasing the number of people who know about the exhibit and the artist.

One might also look outside the usual sites where art is displayed to places where people with money and thoughts of making a purchase are going such as furniture, wine stores, and jewelry shops. The clientele is a bit more select and the connection between artwork and furniture, for instance, is reasonably close; buyers are apt to think about one in relation to the other. Real estate companies cater to people shopping for a home (they will want to decorate it), while social clubs and country clubs have dues-paying members who have demonstrated that they have discretionary income.

ROUNDING UP VISITORS

Who will come to an artist’s early shows? The answer is, any number of people, but first artists must start out with their own network of friends, families, and associates, all of whom are predisposed to think well of the work. Artists have friends who might come; those friends have friends and business associates, some of whom may be persuaded to come. An artist who works in an office has coworkers, supervisors, a boss, clients, and suppliers who may be willing to come to a show. Family members, such as parents, may also have friends, business colleagues, clients, and suppliers. Out of all these people, there may be some who buy a piece because they like it or just as a show of support. A more informal style of exhibiting work that frequently results in sales is for friends or relatives to host a private showing in their homes, inviting ten people they know to meet the artist and examine the work close-up.

Everyone is a potential client but it is important to let people know that you are an artist —you never know who might become a collector. For that reason, artists need to develop a client list, one that changes and (it is hoped) grows over the years, which will be used to contact people about art exhibitions or an open studio event. That list can grow with the help of some of those friends and family members who suggest other people to be contacted (their friends and business acquaintances, for instance), and those friends and family members may be persuaded to write or call on the artist’s behalf. Using people the artist knows to locate new prospects is a pyramid approach that ensures that more than the same group of potential collectors shows up at each exhibit.

MARKETING

The business term for making the public aware of what one has to offer is marketing, which simply means finding an audience. Who are the people most likely to understand and appreciate the type of artwork I create? Not everyone will get it or like it, and it shouldn’t be assumed that everyone should; more people have seen and not purchased a work by renowned painter Chuck Close, for instance, than have bought pieces, and it isn’t just because of the high prices. His paintings are too large for some would-be buyers; other collectors may appreciate his techniques but aren’t interested in his self-portraits or portraits of his artist-friends. Yet other collectors of postwar contemporary art prefer abstraction or sculpture. And then there is the price. The universe of prospective art collectors gets whittled down more and more until we come to a very small number of people who actually buy the work of this famous artist.

All artists who have achieved success—defined as the ability to sell their work, particularly being able to live off the sales—have needed to find that audience. In some cases, geography offers some help: Artists of the western landscape are more likely to find buyers in the western half of the country than in the east, while marine artists are apt to interest collectors along the Atlantic and Pacific coastlines. Practitioners of performance art, installation art, and conceptual art have narrower avenues to pursue within a few cities and some college campuses.

Exhibiting artwork and eliciting reactions is how artists begin and, over time, refine, the process of marketing. First and foremost, artists want to know if people understand and like what they are doing. A negative reaction may indicate that the wrong people are looking at one’s work, or it may mean that the art still needs improvement and isn’t ready for general exhibitions and sales. It is wise to solicit the responses of professional artists in the area, perhaps faculty from art schools, who can evaluate the artwork and offer suggestions for the art or, perhaps, where else it might be shown. The next question is, which people are most likely to appreciate the art. Artwork that contains references to contemporary Pop culture is more likely to be enjoyed by younger people, for example. Avid golfers are frequently interested in paintings of the thirteenth hole at Augusta.

Exhibitions often have guest comment books in which visitors are invited to record their reactions, and it is a good idea for artists to have someone else at an art show—friend, relative, spouse—who directs people to these books, asking them also to leave contact information in order that they may be notified of future exhibits, lectures, demonstrations, and open studio events. As valuable as the comments may be, artists will want to know something about these people: Are they homeowners or renters, city dwellers or suburbanites? Do they regularly go to art exhibits and, if so, do they collect? Do they belong to any clubs or associations? The income level (take a guess), age, gender, nationality, and race of the visitors who offer the most positive responses to the artwork will enable artists to better determine where future exhibitions might be planned and who should be invited. If there are any sales, it is advisable for the artist to personally deliver the piece to the collectors’ homes in order to learn more about them: What is their color scheme? What rooms in their home might be suitable for art?

Artists always should be on the lookout for potential buyers, attending the kinds of social and civic activities where these people would be found, such as art exhibition and performing arts openings, charity events, and parties. Jot down names and contact information for one’s client list, following up with a letter, email, or telephone call inviting that person to an upcoming exhibition or to visit one’s studio. If that seems a bit pushy, a get-together could be at a museum or art gallery, or just a café.

PRICING ARTWORK

What a work of art should cost and whether or not an artist ever should offer, or accept, a discount are among the most difficult decisions an artist may face. The problem of pricing has long puzzled artists. There have been some efforts to devise a system in the manner of a building contractor, totting up the cost of materials plus a margin of profit and then adding in the number of hours the artist worked on a piece multiplied by some hourly wage, but the final amount may have no relationship to the market for that artist’s work. This is particularly true for lesser-known or emerging artists who are less concerned with getting the right price for their work than with getting someone to look at and purchase their art. (Artists who have had a history of sales, on the other hand, will have a better idea of prices that are more suitable for particular buyers.)

How much to charge? Artists at the outset of their careers need a point of reference for determining price, and they need to think in terms of comparable work, art that is not wholly dissimilar to theirs by other artists also at an early stage of their careers. Finding comparables may mean going to art fairs, art galleries, and other places where artworks of comparable size, imagery, and quality by artists of similar standing in the art world are sold. Those prices should offer some guidelines to what an artist may charge for his or her works. It is frequently the case that the work created by quite celebrated artists went for very little early in their careers, and some of them look at high secondary market sales of those pieces and think that they were cheated. Perhaps they were cheated, but at the time most of those artists were happy that someone would buy their work. However, back to the subject of lesser-known artists trying to determine what to charge for their work: one should never ask prospective buyers what they would pay for art; that is the artist’s decision.

As sales take place and the number of buyers increase, raising prices may become justified. Consider the case of Scott Fraser, for example, a painter in Longmont, Colorado. His paintings were first shown in an art gallery in Denver and sold for $300 in the early 1980s. Some sales took place and, the following year, his prices went up to $900. The value of his work continued to rise, to $1,500, then $7,000, more recently priced at $20,000 and up. “Each time you make a jump in pricing, you have to get a new set of buyers,” he said.

For other artists, raising prices may require finding another gallery or dealer where opportunities for having works purchased by collectors who will pay more or lend enhanced prestige to the work are greater. Some dealers may only be able to work with emerging artists and not have the contacts to help an artist who is selling work steadily. Changing galleries may be a difficult decision for an artist who got his or her first big break with a particular dealer, and it can be doubly hard in the art world because the relationships between artists and dealers are often on a personal, friendship level.

Discounts are the other side of pricing, customary to the point of expected in the gallery world (“Every work is discounted,” said Manhattan art dealer Debra Force. “I can’t think of an instance in a long time where someone paid the asking price.”) but often jarring to artists who sell their work independently. Artists come up against bargain hunters in their studios and at art fairs where prospective buyers offer to pay as little as $0.50 on the dollar for one or more pieces. At art fairs, many artists claim that these buyers come in an hour before the event is over, just as the artist is preparing to pack up, offering to take work off the artist’s hands but at some substantial discount. It is easy to feel insulted, but the issue isn’t so clear-cut.” On the side of accepting the payment is getting ready cash, which may be welcome if the fair was not as profitable as might have been hoped, and reducing the expenses and risks of crating and transporting artworks back to one’s own studio. Also, if the artist’s work had been consigned to a gallery, any sales would have meant paying a sales commission to the gallery owner, which is often half. The artist still may feel insulted, but some reasons can point to taking the money.

On the downside, allowing a discount once is apt to mean that an artist will be asked again and again for markdowns. Buyers cannot be trusted to be discreet and may well boast to other prospective collectors that they talked you down 10, 20, 25 percent or more and those people will now have reason to think themselves insulted if they aren’t allowed the same (or better) discount as so-and-so.

It is not at all clear that lowering prices increases demand. Economists refer to this in terms of the “elasticity of demand”—demand shrinks or expands with higher or lower prices—but “demand for art is probably not elastic,” according to John Silvia, chief economist for Wells Fargo. He noted that lowering the price for less expensive consumer items “brings people into the store, but if you have a product that is fairly unique or distinct, like art or jewelry, the answer is, no, you don’t lower the price.” In a prestigious realm such as art, cutting prices— “a painting that last week was sellin...