I want to add to what I wrote yesterday in the "Groundbreaking Virtual Platform!" post.
The Art world for the most part is and has been the domain of the elite. There is no formula to becoming a successful working artist, but it doesn't hurt to have things like connections, charismatic personality, salesmanship, etc. You are often dependent on other people like gallery owners, curators and critics to recognize your work in order to be able to exhibit your work. I have been lucky that I've had art shows on a slow but regular basis. However, I've always been intimidated by the establishment of galleries. I moved to NYC right after I finished my MFA (if you can believe that I have that) and being a wide eyed-naive punk that I was, I e-mailed a gallery that I thought was kind of cool to inquire about showing them my work. I didn't include any work for them to see in that e-mail, but I got a reply saying "Who do you think you are?" followed by obscenities. That kind of stopped me dead in my tracks from actively seeking out exhibition opportunities for a while. I think it was only after I had some recognition online that I started doing physical art shows.
What I want to say is that there is this huge hurdle before you can show your work and that hurdle I think has inevitably prevented some really talented artists from showing and being recognized for their work. You might say that if you don't have the guts to go over that hurdle, you don't want it enough. That might be one way to look at it, but then artists are as diverse as they come and not all of them have the "guts" at their disposal. Was I too insecure to give up after just one lousy e-mail? Did it mean I wasn't worthy of showing work? As we all know some of our most beloved art in the world has only been discovered after the artist has deceased. Maybe they didn't try hard enough to be recognized or maybe the establishment at the time were simply too blind to recognize their greatness. I don't know if my idea of virtually having shows would be the thing for everybody, but I think there will be hell of a lot more artists showing their work and we will discover so many artists we'd never seen or heard of before. The establishment might not like this, but we will no longer have to seek their approval just to get a chance to show work. It'll be the great equalizer. Can't wait to see it happen.
The Art world for the most part is and has been the domain of the elite. There is no formula to becoming a successful working artist, but it doesn't hurt to have things like connections, charismatic personality, salesmanship, etc. You are often dependent on other people like gallery owners, curators and critics to recognize your work in order to be able to exhibit your work. I have been lucky that I've had art shows on a slow but regular basis. However, I've always been intimidated by the establishment of galleries. I moved to NYC right after I finished my MFA (if you can believe that I have that) and being a wide eyed-naive punk that I was, I e-mailed a gallery that I thought was kind of cool to inquire about showing them my work. I didn't include any work for them to see in that e-mail, but I got a reply saying "Who do you think you are?" followed by obscenities. That kind of stopped me dead in my tracks from actively seeking out exhibition opportunities for a while. I think it was only after I had some recognition online that I started doing physical art shows.
What I want to say is that there is this huge hurdle before you can show your work and that hurdle I think has inevitably prevented some really talented artists from showing and being recognized for their work. You might say that if you don't have the guts to go over that hurdle, you don't want it enough. That might be one way to look at it, but then artists are as diverse as they come and not all of them have the "guts" at their disposal. Was I too insecure to give up after just one lousy e-mail? Did it mean I wasn't worthy of showing work? As we all know some of our most beloved art in the world has only been discovered after the artist has deceased. Maybe they didn't try hard enough to be recognized or maybe the establishment at the time were simply too blind to recognize their greatness. I don't know if my idea of virtually having shows would be the thing for everybody, but I think there will be hell of a lot more artists showing their work and we will discover so many artists we'd never seen or heard of before. The establishment might not like this, but we will no longer have to seek their approval just to get a chance to show work. It'll be the great equalizer. Can't wait to see it happen.
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