{"id":2975,"date":"2012-04-23T17:18:39","date_gmt":"2012-04-23T21:18:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/?p=2975"},"modified":"2022-08-01T07:43:18","modified_gmt":"2022-08-01T11:43:18","slug":"not-a-real-artist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/2012\/04\/not-a-real-artist\/","title":{"rendered":"Not a Real Artist"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have been attending a workshop<\/a> on “The Artist as an Entrepreneur.”\u00a0 Its purpose is to help artists become more successful businesspersons, by teaching basics of business plans, marketing, sales, finances and networking.\u00a0 I appear to be the oldest person in the class, and I think I’m being viewed with some suspicion by a few of the others: while I am there to figure out how to turn a hobby into a business, the other artists are trying to make a living at it. There have been a couple of comments to the effect that “retired people” aren’t serious about or dedicated to the cause of art and so should be avoided.\u00a0 In other words, not real artists.<\/p>\n

One of the speakers, while discussing markets and product niches, noted the recent death of “Bob Timberlake<\/a>” and made a disparaging reference to his work: he was popular and successful, but he was not an artist, don’t we agree?\u00a0 In his haste to lay waste, the speaker got his schlock wrong.\u00a0 Bob Timberlake is still with us — it is Thomas Kinkade<\/a> who is not.<\/p>\n

\n
\"\"<\/a>

Timberlake<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Light<\/a>

Kinkade<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Bubbles<\/a>

Millais<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Is\u00a0anyone and everyone who calls himself or herself an artist an artist?\u00a0 What standard determines whether a person may be called an artist or whether a work is considered art?\u00a0 This was explored in a 2011 study by Kieran, Meskin and Moore<\/a>.\u00a0 They asked, “Do works belong to the artistic canon because critics and museum curators have correctly discerned their merits?”\u00a0 Or, do works enter the canon as a result of “cultural exposure over time” with less regard for objective qualities of the work?\u00a0 To find out, the authors compared how viewers reacted to paintings by John Everett Millais (1829-1896) and the aforementioned Thomas Kinkade (1958-2012) after a single exposure and repeat exposures.\u00a0 If quality of a work outweighs exposure to a work in terms of influencing viewer preferences, then one could argue there are in fact objective quality standards for art.<\/p>\n

The results: whereas increased exposure to Millais paintings had little effect on how well viewers liked them, “…we found that with bad paintings by Kinkade, exposure decreased, rather than increased, liking [of the work] in relation to our control groups.”\u00a0 I might argue with the authors about having prejudged Kinkade’s work as “bad”, but then again, when people like something less and less the more they see it, that is the kind of art that ends up in a Goodwill store.<\/p>\n

\n

At my workshop, I was struck by the number of attendees who shared that making art was integral to advancing their social cause.\u00a0 I began to wonder: if I am to be an artist, do I need not only a product but a cause?\u00a0 Will a cause make my art better?\u00a0 Will it get me through the door and on the wall?<\/p>\n

Perhaps the workshop speaker was right and Kinkade was not a real artist.\u00a0 And neither will I be a real artist until the Gatekeepers of Good Artisanship evaluate my worthiness against the standards and decide that I pass.\u00a0 I can’t wait.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have been attending a workshop on “The Artist as an Entrepreneur.”\u00a0 Its purpose is to help artists become more successful businesspersons, by teaching basics of business plans, marketing, sales, finances and networking.\u00a0 I appear to be the oldest person … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2975","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2975"}],"version-history":[{"count":100,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2975\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28389,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2975\/revisions\/28389"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}