Hat tip to Carter Gillies who spotted a wonderful congruence between the posts both I and artist Whitney Smith made yesterday.
Reading Whitney’s post, it almost feels like she wrote it to provide practical illustrations for my ponderings about how the arts community views worth and entitlement.
Where I end my post with a quote from Seth Godin about sharing your work, Whitney mentions it right from the start in the title of her post.
Sharing art work can be weird. Last weekend, when I had a party and sale at my studio, I put all the paintings I’ve been doing on the wall. I didn’t put prices on them because I told myself that I just wanted to show them. But the truth is I didn’t want to put prices on them because I was afraid if I did that, people would feel sorry for me because obviously the paintings are awful and it’s just a little pathetic that I actually thought I could sell them.
She goes on to talk about how she personally likes her “awful” paintings and really enjoyed executing them. As it turned out, some people did want to buy them which put her in a tough spot trying to decide on a price.
I guess this is a lesson to always have a sense of your work’s worth in case people are actually willing to pay you for it. This isn’t really a nudge at Whitney. It happens all the time.
Not more than a month ago I was at a gallery opening where one artist expressed his exasperation that one of the people showing wasn’t prepared to provide a price for his work. Of course this raises questions about whether the guy was really prepared to part with it.
Just as I talked about how sharing and impacting the community is cornerstone of arts philosophy, Whitney echos the idea. (I debate whether I even need to state and give an example of something that is so well known, but there are worse ideas gaining traction through repetition.)
Sharing is part of the artistic process. I believe art is there to give something to humanity– something to think about, a new idea, a connection, a moment of beauty, even a moment of transcendence. If the art isn’t shown, it can’t do its final job of changing people’s hearts and minds. If your art is just for one person– for yourself– maybe there is a good reason for that. But I don’t know what that would be.
Selling is another thing. I don’t think art has to be sold, but there is something to be said for moving it along…
So often the debate about the value of a work of visual art is conducted in the context of a gallery, museum or auction. Rarely, at least in the places I frequent, do we read an artist’s internal debate about the value of their work, when it is considered “done,” when to sell it and what to sell it for.