The traditional, recommended career path for an
artist today is to start out in an MFA program, where you learn how to build a
portfolio and write an Artist’s Statement designed to appeal to the art world insiders.
The standard resume of a late-career artist includes a long list of
exhibitions, starting with juried shows, then invitational group shows, and
finally solo shows. A particularly impressive resume will also include the
names of prestigious collectors and museums that own works by the artist, a list
of grants and commissions awarded by private and government organizations, a
list of reviews in well-known newspapers and magazines, and a list of books in
which the artist’s work has been published. The artist will create his or her
work in a private studio, with all sales handled by a specific gallery.
Somewhere along the way, the average artist will
come to accept that they will never get rich doing their art. They come to this
conclusion because this is what they are told, over and over. It’s the cliché
of the starving artist. To sustain themselves, artists find jobs teaching art,
working in galleries, or working as graphic designers for advertising,
animation, and video games. Many artists abandon their dreams and become
bankers or insurance salesmen, dabbling in art on weekends and after
retirement. A few artists become “established” in the art world, their work
receiving praise from critics.
I recently wrote a short biography of a Boston Arts
& Crafts silversmith, George Christian Gebelein, which got me thinking
about the tradition of patronage in the arts, in which wealthy individuals
provide financial support to individual artists through commissions.
The Boston Society of Arts & Crafts, like other
arts and crafts organizations, was formed by a group of artists, artisans, and
collectors who sought to encourage hand craftsmanship at a time when
mass-produced, machine-made goods had taken over the market for decorative and
fine arts. The situation was pretty much the same as it is today: most people
spend their money on mass-produced goods, rather than on hand-made goods, which
tend to be more expensive. In addition, the average person will buy something
familiar, something they know will be accepted or admired by their friends and
acquaintances, something “safe.”
The Boston Society of Arts & Crafts opened The
Handicraft Shop on Somerset Street around 1900, giving craftspeople a studio
space and showroom for their work. Most importantly, the Society and its
mission encouraged wealthy patrons to support the craftspeople by commissioning
work from them.
For the silversmith Gebelein, commissions from
wealthy patrons were essential to the start of his career. One patron in
particular, a descendent of John Jacob Astor, was a vital supporter of Gebelein’s
early years, keeping him busy with commissioned work, recommending his work to
family members, and lending an aura of prestige which Gebelein used in his
advertisements. Gebelein later added mass-produced goods (including Chase art
deco chromewares) to his shop, recognizing that they brought a much more
reliable income with a higher profit margin than his handcrafted silver.
The most famous examples of arts patronage date
back to the Renaissance, when Italian nobility and the Vatican hired artists
like Michelangelo, da Vinci, Botticelli, and Raphael to create some of the most
impressive and influential artworks in European history. Patronage continued
for centuries as a standard method of creating fine and decorative arts. During
the late 19th century, John Singer Sargent relied on commissions of
portrait paintings for decades, until he was finally successful enough to
declare he would not take any more portrait commissions.
For many artists, the downside of patronage has
been the lack of full artistic control over their own work. Some patrons, trusting
in the skills of the artist and seeking to encourage their artistic growth,
have allowed full creative freedom to commissioned artists. In many cases,
however, patrons have had very definite expectations and have required artists
to follow certain guidelines in creating their commissioned work. A few famous
disputes between artists and patrons have arisen from this: for example, Rodin
threatened to stop working on his Burghers of Calais when the town that
commissioned the work disapproved of his design. The final work was placed on a
high pedestal against the wishes of the artist, who wanted it at ground level.
During the 20th century, an image of
artists as creative geniuses, fundamentally different from non-artists, struggling
in isolation, became popular. The ability of artists to express abstract
concepts and emotions became highly prized. Greater value was placed on
individual expression than on technical skills. Equally prized in the art world
of the 20th century was the ability to do something different,
something that had never been done before.
The general public found it difficult to understand
the abstract and the conceptual art movements and became alienated from the art
world. Many attendees of museum exhibitions and gallery openings have been
baffled by modern art. Countless cartoons have lampooned this disconnect. The
average person, for example, may know that Jackson Pollock is considered to be
a great artist, but can’t understand why.
The art world was taken off guard by Thomas Kinkade
in the 1990s. Defying artistic tradition, Kinkade built a highly successful
business selling prints of his paintings to the masses through the QVC shopping
channel, small galleries at upscale malls, and the internet. Kinkade was a
fantastic businessman, raking in hundreds of millions of dollars from copies of
his art. He carefully shaped and controlled his public image as a devout
Christian who loved his family and sought merely to bring joy through his art.
While Kinkade marketed himself as “the painter of
light,” many of his critics, myself included, derisively called him the
“painter of crap.” I have spent years trying to understand why so many people
love his art. A better question might be why do I dislike his art so much? Certainly
his commercial success is part of the equation. Kinkade’s commercial success
and widespread popularity is unsettling because it creates the possibility that
his art will become established as “good” art, that countless imitators will
mimic his style and that artists working in more sophisticated styles will have
to struggle much harder for acceptance.
It is tempting to write at length about the
schlockiness of Kinkade’s art, to tear apart his carefully crafted image by
citing examples of galleries he defrauded, of the thousands of creditors to
whom he owed millions, of the out-of-control alcoholism that destroyed his
life. But Kinkade’s significance has nothing to do with his art or his personal
life. Kinkade’s significance is that he was able to use modern technology to
completely bypass the traditional routes to financial success as an artist.
It remains to be seen if other artists are able to
follow his example. While his business model was flawed (defrauding galleries
is not the sort of thing that ends well), it certainly has merit. By building
an accessible public image to market inexpensive mass-produced prints, he
earned more than enough money to support himself and his family. It is
certainly something to think about.
