Imagine this!
Impassioned artist, surrounded by canvases, materials, moquettes and littered, crumpled sketches, negotiates sale of painting with client.
Client: Tell me what you want for it?
Artist: (dumbstruck) uhhh…well….what would you give me…I mean this took me months–YEARS!– if you count when it first occurred to me…I mean, I have $2000 on it.

(variable endings)
Artist: Oh sure.
Artist: Can you make it $1100?
Artist: No. You’re a lawyer! Do you discount your fees?*
With all the current talk about fundraising and the presidential hopefuls, the “Money Primary,” I began thinking about the meaning of money in the studio.

Beyond the obvious value of cash, what other content is there? Emotional, prestige, self-worth, societal prestige, establishment in countless way–money may contain any of these elements. It’s no wonder that negotiations with clients are filled with a mixture attitudes for the artist, whether he/she is conscious of them or not.

The sales of art is an event outside the business models; although I’ve heard countless arguments placing it squarely within them. Does it really take an artist to understand this? I shouldn’t think so. Art is not only a “one-of-a-kind” sort of thing, a concept that most Ebay loggers could define well. It is also the product of a personal process that places value on the artist’s intuitive intelligence–the highest use of how our minds perform, in that it includes not only instinctive information, not only all the memories stored within accessible and consciously inaccessible brain folds, but all the learning, thinking, conceptualizing, observing and reviewing…well you get the picture. The manifested result of a talented and creative person who is able to utilize all of these resources to materialize an aesthetic statement encapsulating it all is a damned sight different than most products that fit into the business model.
money
So yes, sales negotiations are hard. The embarrassment about money is really a nonverbal response to that stack of bills will now substituting for the piece. It has nothing to do with gratitude. I’m absolutely sure the artist in the above scenario is thanking lucky stars and whatever authority is in charge of accepting thanks. It is this difficult other equation that is so hard to work out.

Of course, for some artists this is not a problem. There are those who simply do not accept money as an equivalent, those who who choose not to sell their art, and create pieces for their own satisfaction and possibly their heirs. They have chosen to be irrelevant to the subject of money and art, at least in their lifetimes.

The majority of working artists choose a varying mixture of gallery representation and personal client dealings. At one end of this scale is a small number of artists, working directly for galleries and producing at their demand when possible. At the other end, an equally small group selling solely out of studio, but consider the studio primarily a working place. Visiting patrons are welcome but the best be respectful.

Beyond this I would suggest two extremes. There are other artists that would project a lack of concern about sales and those who produce work for little other reason than the marketing of it. The first group would include some artists in academia or those holy few that have risen to the higher echelons of the art biz world. Their polar opposites, the Bob Timberlakes and so forth, have thrown their talent into the witches stew of marketing and live in an equally rarified ether of wealth. Both groups have a prestige and garner respect but obviously from very different mindsets. And yet I suggest that they are demonstrating the same emotional attachment to cash, possibly with the same energy, albeit different shades. Although it may seem the marketeer artist’s value of money may seem obvious, I want to look beyond at how he identifies with sales as the measure. The point is, those who shun sales, identify with the same exact measure turned upside down. The importance of sales and marketing to both wield powerful strength.

Me, I’m a realist. I’ve learned to listen to clients’ response to my work and discuss with it them. This ain’t easy sometimes. It is however respectful of others intelligences and perceptions and at times a nourishing of my own awareness.**

I say over and over again “there’s nothing more rewarding than making a living by my own hands.” My grandfather was a cabinet maker and a carpenter. He died when I was very young so really he couldn’t have had a direct influence on me. Yet I think he did somehow. He became legendary in my young mind, my hero when I was an adolescent. All of my grandparents were supporters of labor movements.
My parents valued books, discussion, public education and middle class stability. I am just doing what comes naturally, I think. The lessons of my grandfather’s creativity, the work ethic of my parents, the value of thought and the reality of the blue collar labor movement makes me try to be hones, keep my nose clean and make the most truthful art I can. Money is just the grease that keeps this wheel spinning.
money
* I’m in debt to artist Judy Crane for this emboldened advice.
**I am reminded here of countless times remarks have made me see my work differently. The most striking example of this was a painting I had labored on for months in which the subject was Marilyn Monroe’s suicide. Yet after the painting was completed, while talking with a art critic and friend Kate Ariail, I realized the painting was about my own Mother’s death. It’s difficult to come up with a more dramatic example than this.

Money isn’t everything, but it’s the mother’s milk of the arts. When I hear an artist tell me: “They’re not in it for the money.” I tend to walk away and forget about them - the rest of the world will soon enough. When I read comments from someone who just had to close their gallery saying: “We never planned for this space to be a commercial success”. I’m not surprised they are closing the doors. Money, although evil, can do many good things. If you don’t have any - there is not a lot you can do.

Do we measure how good an artists is by how many degrees they have, how many grants they have received, how many awards they have won, how many exhibits they have been in, how many reviews they have inspired, how many collections contain their work or how much money they have?

Most of us don’t do it by any one of those factors, but it’s hard to say money isn’t a factor in all of them. Degrees are not handed out free, grant money has to come from somewhere, awards can only be won at the expense of an event which takes money to present, exhibits are costly - even in galleries trying not to make a buck, reviews take up space in papers and magazines that believe me or not are expensive to publish, and unless you plan on giving your work to collectors - money is the factor involved in everything.

So when someone tells me money doesn’t matter, I have to think they are very young and inexperienced (probably living off of Mom & Pop or a significant other) or their ship has already come in and they can afford to make such foolish statements.

Face it, what burns most artists about the subject of money is that it seems that some artists with no real talent can make tons of money and some who do really good work can’t seem to make a dime. It’s the haves and have-nots struggle.

Please tell me why begging for a grant of public money is so much better than finding a customer to buy your art. Is it like the stolen apple that always taste sweeter than the one you paid for?

An example was given of a lawyer who wanted a discount from an artist, but wouldn’t give one on his/her fee - are you sure that’s the case. You don’t think that even top lawyers are asked for discounts by rich clients.

It’s a supply and demand world - yet I know I can’t afford a top lawyer (if I needed one) so I’ll look for one I can afford. Life has already asked me to discount the service I can receive. That’s life. But I’m still going to try to get the best product for the price I can afford - or charge it on my plastic card and pay more for it over time - a long time and a lot more money than the original price.

Money is a bitch! But we all have to decide what’s our price - buying or selling. The problem comes when you start worrying about other people’s price.

Money matters - don’t fool yourself into thinking it doesn’t. Just don’t let it rule your life.

When you start producing art people can’t live without - someone will pay any price you ask. Finding those folks to look at your work is the real trick. But then you might have to do some marketing to do that. Marketing cost money - so there you go.
2. Andrea Gomez Says:
April 15th, 2007 at 7:17 am e

The example of the lawyer was actually based on a story in which a lawyer demanded a discount and the artist’s impulsive retort was to turn the tables on him. Lawyers may very well give discounts. In fact many work gratis for friends and good causes. Here’s the difference.

Customers routinely approach artists with requests for discounts. In much of the public’s mind, dealing with an artist is akin to dealing with a garage sale seller or a flea market dealer. Public studio artists are asked over and over again “what would you take for it?” Then there is “can you give me the same discount you give your gallery?” They assume that if an artist is willing to accept a 50% commission arrangement with a gallery, that they will “discount” their art for the public who trek to their studio. As a gallery owner, you can see the ethical potholes here.

Beyond this though is the simple fact that lawyers are regarded with the respect due professionals, and artists are not. This was what drove my artist friend to smart mouth the lawyer.

***
I understand what you are saying about marketing, although I might call it self-promotion. Again there is a difference, and it isn’t semantics. Marketing is reserved for the selling of furniture. Shall we take out ads for July 4th Sales, or:
HURRY! 50% OFF list price SALE ENDS MONDAY!!!!!!!!
OK, you didn’t mean that. Yet it’s not too far from what Timberlake does.
On the other hand, Pablo Picasso knew how to self promote, didn’t he. Many artists do. (I’ve never been too good at it, myself.) Here, though, there is a line one can cross when creative energies are primarily funneled into self promotion. Flanders Gallery recently showed Fahamu Pecou, a passable painter who knows self promotion inside out.
AR featured Flanders’ show because of the nature of this artist’s statement and the proximity of the Flanders gallery and clientele. The artist was giving a dressing down to the white world, and Flanders is situated on the edge of Raleigh’s most landed gentry neighborhood. (AR asks “Whoa! Am I still on the edge of Hayes Barton?”)

The introductory paragraph with:
What this genius needs is a small universe to arrange, embellish, and show. AR took a lot of hits in the art community by calling Pecou a genius. They missed, I think, that AR was referring somewhat cynically to the artist’s genius in “marketing.” That is definitely this guy’s demonstrated level. Instead they went to the show thinking, Geez, has Rambler lost her mind? Well, that’s a given, but still they just needed to think one step further and ask “why ‘genius’?” They would have gotten to the point being suggested( or figured the Flanders gallery owner had paid AR under the table.)

All this to say, Pecou is a fantastic example of 70% marketing; Timberlake 100%. Both of them sit in front of the canvas and to different degrees ask what will sell. Pecou finds his way there through a particularly counterculture way, making his honest statement about being dark skinned in a light skinned world, but nonetheless still primarily wanting to “sell it.” I see compromise in his painting.

However as for his marketing techniques, I actually love them. The idea of plastering posters all over the place of one’s paintings is great! ( I think Pecou chose the phrase Pecou is the Shit, which in my humble mind is most definitely Not Great.) A deep dark secret which I now impart to the world: I have long fantasized of renting a billboard and putting up huge sized one of my sky-thunder-lightening-tornado paintings. Judy Holiday and Peter Lawford are in a movie (It Should Happen to You) where exactly this has happened, and Judy’s visage floats heroic-sized over the town square. She tells her chauffeur to circle the square over and over again just so she can see it.

When I saw that scene last month, I said, “Yes! That’s What I’m talking about” to my poor beleaguered partner, who has heard this and similar schemes for years! The world should feel relieved that I have meager cash reserves.

But yes, there is nothing wrong with self promotion. Yet the artist must always be mindful of his/her very important job in the world. If the artist
loses sight of that, the world cannot be expected to see it either.
3. Antonio Rivera Says:
April 16th, 2007 at 12:48 pm e

Money is very necessary be you just plain humankind or specialhumanartist. How we get it varies, as I agree with parts of Starland’s and Gomez’ positions. Like Tom, I turn away for those making disclaimers of its importance, with Gomez I take heed of its importance to sustaining the efforts but that we must not sell out. (Like her I am bkad at self promotion, yet I do it as it is necessary. By putting our work out there in galleries or other venues is one way of making money and we will stand a better chance of getting our prices with multiple exposure.)

My own solution to this dilemma is to set a price and stick to it (excepting dearest of friends and the two or three absolutely supportive collectors of my work). Though I recognize and often have to deal with people wanting to bargain on prices, I would rather keep the piece and maintain the prices my work has reached (thus protecting my collector’s valued collections). When I first showed here an eight by ten inch drawing might go for fifty to seventy five dollars, now they are close to a thousand. This is not to say I sell like hot cakes, I do not, I actually support myself by other means, but my pricing is based on what serious collectors will pay and not least on my own sense of personal integrity as an artist and man.
4. Antonio Rivera Says:
April 16th, 2007 at 1:08 pm e

Reflecting on what my eyes show me is true about the local art scene and what seems to be selling and after several months of reading versions of the same art reviews of artists in New York City (see regular NY Times Art Section for yourself) the problem in great part is that bad art sells.

For the last several seasons here (Raleigh) and the Triangle we have been douched, sorry I meant to say doused with shows of young artists doing novel (sorry I meant to say new) work for this area (this is true about nyc too, though there it is not credited as new). But what we see is heavily influenced by the art being shown in places like New York, Los Angeles, etc taken in third hand by local artists. What we see is well and good if we accept that these artists are still in their apprenticeship and have not yet evolved to being Artist (capital A) ho have found their voices and means.

But this is what sells in Raleigh as it does elsewhere. With the non-existant education in art history and culture, the public and many up and coming collectors accept this yet untried, untested (for longevity and value) art as valid. Add to this that the New Money-ed, as I like to say, “Have more money than sense,” meaning in part that they want to be taste makers (though they lack a foundation for making judgements) serious art is falling by the way side. Novelty seems the rule, and local serious and major artists are falling to the way side.
5. Andrea Gomez Says:
April 16th, 2007 at 3:36 pm e

Tony so many of the points you make are salient and well spoken. But, before the discussion gets too far afield, I want to return to idea I attempted to examine in the essay. A friend of mine, a stock broker/financial advisor-dude, once gave me his take on the emotional content of money. His idea was that money is not just a quantifiable standard for wealth accumulation or a material symbol for gold. It is an object to which people have all kinds of attachments, emotional, psychological, etc.

I just wanted to extraploate this idea to our peculiar sector of the populace. Artists have an even wierder relationship with money, for all kinds of reasons, some of which I mention above. I just wanted to put that under the microscope.

Further I do think there is a hypocrisy with some grant seekers. The hypocrisy is not choosing to seek grants. Grants allow artists to explore ideas without pressure and creatively go to wherever they can. In fact, the grant structure is an absolute necessity for the health of art, for the health of society.

The hypocrisy is in the attitude of some ivy tower artists who look condescendingly at those who choose another way to fund their work, namely through sales. I, for one, am sick of being looked at as a “sell out” because I’m engaged in selling my work. My holier-than-thou colleagues, you try it from down here for a year. Create without compromising your art, like Rivera does (and I do,) and sell it to continue funding your work and life.
6. Tom Starland Says:
April 17th, 2007 at 8:08 am e

Andrea, the grant structure in Raleigh or North Carolina might be drastically different than those in South Carolina for artists. Here grants are handed out to those who tow the line of those in control of the money. You have to fit a certain profile - one that reflects the panel of jurors, selected by those who control the money. Anyone outside this circle is totally left out. Eventually artists who don’t fit the profile stop applying. It is no surprise when university art professors continue to get the majority of grants when the selection panel is composed of out-of-state university art professors. Agencies in control of funding feel safe with these people involved - this way they will never have to face opposition from those with degrees in hand. The grant system here is all about being safe with little to do about freedom to create.

The catch-22 for people who want to criticize this system is that while the average artist is discouraged to apply by years of seeing the system work - without their applications filed it is hard to point out the patterns of neglect. Administrators are always able to say we picked the best from the pool of applicants. Recently in SC less than five people applied for the State’s highest grant for visual artists. One of their solutions to the problem was to do away with a previous program reform limiting artist to winning a total of three of these grants in a lifetime - to allow them to win more. That’s encouraging to those who have yet to get one.

My advise to artists is always to apply - force the system to deal with the perception of a biased slant, but seek funding through sales of art - which I think gives more freedom to create. With money in hand with no stings attached artists are free to create - as long as they don’t get swept up into the allure of dipping further into the well of what sells - pandering to the market.

On the other end of this are members of the academic visual art community who have made statements that they will feel a failure, regardless of career highlights, if they don’t get one of these grants that their peers have won - in some cases several times. So is the grant system really that good for the art community - since there are so few to go around. So here we have another measure of money (grant money) which I feel is more destructive than a positive factor in the art community.

Sorry if this is just another branch off your original topic - but life is short and so it seems is time for the freedom Arts Ramble gives to some of us.
7. Andrea Gomez Says:
April 17th, 2007 at 9:52 am e

But actually, Tom, I think the subject of grants is fairly germaine to the whole thing, because of the perception of prestige. Your points are well taken, and it sounds like SC is an extreme example of the very worst of the grant phenomena: that is the prize going to the verifiable. It’s true that in many cases we see that once an artist’s name is circulated among the granters, this name is in very good position for getting the next and the next. Until your comment, however, I always considered this to be true on the level of national or huge, prestigious agencies, private and public, not our humble state folks. Perhaps there is someone out there involved with the grant process who can speak to such things.

I have received a few grants in my life. I applied for them purely for the completion of ideas in which there were no commercial value. Although I chose that way to fund this work, I was always in awe of those who knew how to do it by involving the private community–who knew how to approach backers and convince them of the worth of their work. More importantly I never thought of grants as a way of upping my prestige and stature or getting on the grant circuit.

There are those who do. They should know that their lofty status as grant receiver does not define them. Their work and life does.

When I was in Artspace, back in the 90’s I suggested to Ann Tharrington, then the executive director, that Artspace give a studio to a student intern and let them be in the world of open studios for 6 months. Ann put the program in play and it still continues. It was my attempt to bridge a palpable gap between those close to gritty world of customer/artist encounters and those who look down on us.
8. Tom Starland Says:
April 17th, 2007 at 10:36 am e

Well, I don’t want anyone to think that I feel all who have received grants are undeserving or unqualified - even those folks who I do think are undeserving or who got them by design rather than being the best of the pool - do good work. I’ve never had a problem with the work by artists receiving grants - except on an NEA level. But federal dollars for some art projects is no less wasted than federal dollars for war or whether cow farts make holes in the sky. You just have to shake your head.

My problem is more with the process. Like when an application says that there is a limit of four pages for a resume. What does that tell the artist who’s resume fits on half a page - that you’re out of your league in applying.

I’m an old WPA kind of guy - I’d like to see public money go to do things for public good - even art grants. Of course it may take 50 years for the public to appreciate that art - if ever. But at least something is left behind to represent the public money invested.

But I want to return to an earlier point - why do artists feel grant money is better, untainted, prestigious money compared to that earned through sales of art? Except for the fact that some artists pin those grants on their chest like they were badges of honor, saying - I’m better than you and this shows it.

As a non-artist I just have a hard time understanding how an artist says - I have this idea for a work of art - I’ll do it if you give me this amount of money - if you don’t - I won’t do it. Isn’t a good idea worth doing on your own dime - what ever the cost? Or is it just money to play with?

As a taxpayer I don’t want to invest in people who won’t invest in themselves or their own ideas and when I do I expect to get something out of it.
9. Antonio Rivera Says:
April 17th, 2007 at 1:05 pm e

I never did get the two grants I have applied for. But found for myself that the process here involved having connections (ala south carolina)and I was (and am still) not connected enough.

I agree with you when you said, “As a taxpayer I don’t want to invest in people who won’t invest in themselves or their own ideas and when I do I expect to get something out of it.”

I personally do not believe in public spending on art, not as a taxpayer and not as an artist. What money is spent on public art projects rarely provides more than civic ornamentation and fails to reach for any level of major art. Last years fiasco here over the merits or demerits of the Plensa project is such a case, for me that was Raleigh’s way of buying itself into the twenty-first century by buying a high tech billboard. I do not believe in any kind of state sponsorship of art because of all the strings attached, social, political, apprpriateness of subject matter etc. Remember Ashcroft covered the breast of the Justice Sculpture…so what would this administration fund. What did the Nazi’s fund.

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