The Long Tail of the Art Market, and Artists' Fantasy Lives

I'm bucking my long-term resistance to reading mainstream economics and business books (books which look at economics and business without taking into account social justice issues and class oppression usually drive me nuts), and deciding to go ahead an research my way towards having a better understanding of the big picture of how the Internet has changed the economics of cultural production and distribution. Why?

Because I am an artist. An artist trying to figure out making a living while keeping my somewhat non-commercial sculpture practice at the center of my life. And like many artists, I battle with a love/hate relationship with the traditional models of the art market, and am intrigued by the opportunities current technologies provide (cheap, easily accessible means of producing and distributing our own work, which for so long was not possible in many forms of media). These days millions of people are able to make their own skits, films, songs, books, articles, photos, video games, TV shows, talk shows, radio shows, remixed music, animations, videos, and more and more, and distribute them to millions of other people, with a desktop computer and increasingly affordable hardware and software. This is wonderful. It opens up the “Long Tail” of the art world for all to see, in all its stunning diversity, mind-boggling crappiness and inspiring genius. What does this mean for those of us with the “artist” identity? What is the role of artists now?

These are some of the questions I plan to explore in this blog for a while, and I hope you will join me. Comment, email me, pass the blog address around.

 The place I am starting for myself has to do with my own long-held fantasies about being an Art Star. C'mon fellow “fine” artists, we all have them. One day, someone in the inner sanctums of the art market will discover you, put you on the cover of ArtForum, and suddenly you will have all the resource and recognition you could ever need to work full-time on your art without worrying about money, and you will travel the world meeting other fabulous artists and collaborating, etc etc. You will wear rad sneakers while giving irreverent lectures at art universities, for fun, not for money. You will buy a house in India/Italy/Berlin/London. You will marry Bjork. You will see your art in coffee table books and gallerists will pay you lots of money to make installations in their NY white boxes, and of course, this will continue for the rest of your life, and you will die knowing you Have Made a Great Contribution To the History of Art. You will live on forever in the Canon.

Of course, it's not really like that for 99% of the famous artists. And, its not important to achieve that recognition from an art market which represents an ideologically and culturally narrow sliver of the overall production of interesting or significant art being made in the world.

It works for me like a lottery fantasy. I fantasize about what I will do with my giant eventual lottery winnings, even though I don't buy lottery tickets and have a strong distaste for the lottery system and refuse to support it. Some part of me refuses to give up on the dream of the lottery, and its the part of me that doesn't quite believe that I will build a life of financial security for myself as an artist, facing all the hardships of economic oppression (health insurance, anyone?) and figuring out how to survive anyway, and live the life I want. It's hard, people. There is a reason we're all buying lottery tickets, or not buying them but dreaming about it anyway.

With the art world. I find myself fantasizing about being an “art star,” though I do not actually find myself working towards it as a goal. My goal is to make art, to make GOOD art, to find ways to keep making good art, and to surround myself with those crazy geniuses I know who have made similar decisions. And most artists, successful artists, employ a number of strategies to piece together financial resource, artmaking time, creative community and public visibility/recognition for their work. Many teach and hold down other jobs. The real “Art World,” the one we call that, the one with Art Stars on the Front Pages, is also way more complex and full of a billion gray areas than the fantasies permit. The Art Star fantasy is a sham.

But like the lottery fantasy, the Art Star fantasy confuses issues around money, career, real creative satisfaction. When I decided to start to sell small-scale artwork online at affordable prices (thereby taking control of my own distribution and sales of my work), I was told by people in my art community invested in the traditional art-market way of doing things not to use my real name in my online dealings. It could compromise my chances in the “art world.”

(Which got me thinking how in a funny way, the Art Star Fantasy is like an abusive lover. The one that says “I am not going to give you any love. Well, maybe I will, if you do everything perfectly and the wind blows in just the right direction and all the stars line up just so. But don't leave me, because you will never make it on your own. You're stuck here.” )

As with the lottery, which keeps thousands of people hoping for a big break instead of (another fantasy, I know, but here goes) organizing to make the changes necessary so that all people are protected from poverty and oppression, The Art Star fantasy keeps us artists competing, separate from each other, and all working on our “individual” careers in hopes of being noticed at the right time and the right place, rather than organizing together to create the networks and communities necessary to fill all our needs as artists. That's what the fantasy does.

But here is the Long Tail of the art market; in other words, the big diverse cultural outpouring of a million forms of art, as seen on the Internet, overwhelmingly by people with little investment in the Art Star fantasy and little connection with the New York – centered Art market. Online galleries and collectives and shops and networks abound, and emerging from the morass of mediocrity, there are works of great intelligence and beauty popping up everywhere, just existing, not asking permission to exist. For those of us who were conditioned (in childhood, or in universities, or in art communities) with an expectation or dream about the “Art World”: can we give it up and join the bigger stream? Can we be one of many, happy to make our art, empowered to make money from it, without the hope of being a major celebrity? Comfortable in the niches and micro-communities we call home?  What can we gain from jumping ship? What is lost?

Comments

[layla]

i've been a big fan of your etsy shop for some time now and just stumbled over to your blog...very intriguing post, i'll be back to see what other thoughts are traveling through your brain in the near future!
layla

[naima]

Hi Amy,
I just referenced this post at my own blog. Thanks for writing it...
naimalowe.blogspot.com

[Evan]

Do you have an RSS option?

[Jen]

Wow, great post. I started to write an inappropriately long reply, but I'll save it for my own blog and will link back to here. I'm really interested in how different people find ways to make it work, how to navigate between what I call the "Capital A Art World" (the traditional gallery scene, the Canon, the Art Star Fantasy) and the "small a art world" (internet, local communities, DIY) and make meaningful, fulfilling work and also make a living.

Have you read "Why Are Artists Poor" by Hans Abbing? I haven't yet, but it looks interesting.
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/presssite/metadata.epl?mode=synopsis&bookkey=65531

[Amy]

Thanks Jen! I'll look for your reply on your blog. Your Etsy shop is looking fantastic these days, by the way. Love the daily digital collages!
I went to look at that book - its out of stock. Looks great though.

[Debt Free or Bust - Sherri]

I loved this article. Philosophy, art and bucking the old school system. I'm all for people telling me what I can't do and then proving them wrong.

We do what we can and want to do, and if we listened every time a naysayer piped up with a negative opinion, we'd all still live in the dark ages!

The internet brings so much more to the table than was ever here before. The table is as big as the whole world and there is plenty for everyone. Nobody has to be poor unless they choose to be, as long as they're willing to buck whatever system is holding them back.

Good for you stopping believing what everyone else says you can't do and striking out on your own. That's a big lesson for everyone to learn. Believe in yourself and your own abilities.

Great article!
Sherri

[Amy Walsh]

Evan, yes, you can subscribe to my blog here:
http://amywalsh.typepad.com/my_weblog/atom.xml

[Amy]

Hi Amy, another artist Amy here. I too have indulged in my Art Star fantasies, alternating them with my Lottery Dream while brushing my teeth or watching the coffee pot. And it turned out that for a long time, starting from the day I graduated with my BFA, they bound up my creative process with a lot of unrealistic expectations and subsequent disappointments. I had to re-evaluate why I wanted to be an artist, a process that turned out to be very different from my ability to be one. And its also a long process with its own timetable, with lots of stumbling around and twice as much wandering. It wasn't until I settled into accepting my "Art Job" (surface design) as a large part of my identity that I let go of my underdeveloped ideas about being a star. And then a strange thing happened. I started making art again. Because I wanted to. And I had to. The process, not the results, became the reason I got up in the morning. Now I'm not going to pretend that I would be content if my art never saw the light of day, or delighted a curator or a gallery owner. I want it out there, in any appropriate venue. But I had to rediscover the "Why" before I could make anything worth a damn. The "Where" it will ultimately wind up is still a mystery, and maybe it should be.

[Warrior Girl]

AMY!!!

My lovey darling superheroine pal!!!! Have you been in my head?? This past couple of years has taught me so much. Boy would I love to connect! Thank you so much for your input and thoughts. I can only respond with the fact that having made choices about wanting to make a living off of my art, made me struggle quite a bit, and go off of focus a bit. But what if my art is beyond a painting, and I need the resources to do the things I dream of, which include my own garden project. I, too am learning as time passes, but as I returned to the USA to work on some old issues, see my family, or have a mid-life crisis, I realized something. This creation was the root of positive empowered change in my life. What it meant in the beginning still stands, ONLY if I continue with the processes and theories of this project, which begins with meditation.

If the universe chooses to award me, after a life that although extremely fulfilling has not been easy, I can then share and replace my dad's pension that was lost in 2008, and go to school so that maybe I can use that to "consciously create" (as the mayans say) projects for the good of the planet.