The Art market is jealous.
I
received this from an Artist,“I
approached new galleries they said immediately which is your style?
We only take Artists who paint in the same style so that customers recognize who painted the paintings.”
I
understand why the
gallery takes that position because if they could
just
sell the same painting over and over again
they
would.
They
find a painting that sells and they want to keep selling it, they are
in
business and they sell paintings to
make money.
There
are many artists out there that get big prices for constantly
reproducing the same paintings,
that is factory art, reproducing
the same painting in various versions to please a certain market. Now
that is fine but it is not Art, it is factory painting, doing the
same painting over and over in
the same similar style
because it sells.
That
is ok,
if selling paintings as merchandise is what you are all about.
Realise
that the
art market does not say what is good or bad art, only
history
will
reveal
that.
The
art market only says what it can sell and that is all it is
interested in, it is not interested in great art, it
is interested in selling art.
I
wish Artists could understand that, selling is wonderful but at the
expense of your creativity seems to me to be
counter
productive. I know painters who have slavishly reproduced the same or
similar paintings for years with little alteration in style or
similarity and it
is
just for the market and if it sells the market will demand more and
more, but at some point it stops being Art and becomes mechanical,
factory art,
every painting guaranteed to be the same and sell, but it is no
longer art,
its merchandise.
Picasso
never listened to the galleries
or the market he painted Picasso, and
because
he painted Picasso he
went in the Artistic direction that his creativity led him,
that I believe is why he was so great.
Imagine
if
he had stayed
painting
the blue period all
his career because
it sold, then history would have forgotten him like it does so many
factory painters.
Am
I saying to ignore
selling, not at all, sell all you can but do not allow the sale to
dictate to you what you should paint.
The
Art market is jealous and selfish and wants its own way and if the
Artists
succumb
to that pressure
then
their Art will change as the pressure to produce to satisfy the
market changes them from an Artist to a painter producing factory
art.
Beware
of the trap of popularity, because if you really are
an Artist then your Artistic integrity
will be more important to you than the jealous fickle art market,
selling
our Art is our objective of course and being the captain of our
destiny also, but
we decide what we paint not the market.
Great
Artists continue to evolve and
as they grow and mature personally so their work grows and matures,
changes
and evolves over
the years.
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