Artists afraid of selling their work
Posted by: admin in Artists are their own worst enemies, Artist stereotypes, Commerce and the failure of art, The struggles of artists, Doomed artist, Artistic failure in AmericaA recent article in Business Week, “Creative Artists Confront Sales Anxiety,” details something fairly obvious, that artists tend not to be good business people. The story quotes one shopkeeper, who says about 1 in 20 artists are natural sellers. “The rest don’t really know to approach it: They’re scared of it, it’s not comfortable for them at all, and they don’t really seem to have any skills to draw from.”
The problem? Psychological hurdles. Because many artists see their work as an “extension of themselves, not just a product,” this creates a fear of personal rejection that fosters basic sales anxiety. This is true, the story relates, of even the most professional-minded and seemingly dispassionate artist professionals. For some reason, artists just can’t separate their egos from their art, and this is to their ultimate professional detriment. In the end, art may be the only profession that fosters the idea that products are made to please the maker, not other people.
Artists need to jettison this notion, fast. “The minute you start selling your work, whether you like it or not, you are a businessperson,” the story quotes one gallery owner. Artists who don’t, she says, are only sabotaging themselves.
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February 15th, 2008 at 10:53 am
I seem to have the opposite problem. I spend too much time selling and not enough time perfecting my work.
Of course, my day job is as a salesperson, so that could be part of it. I have definitely noticed this problem with any number of my artist friends, though. How can you put that much work into something and not simply tell everyone about it? As an artist, simply talking passionately about your project is usually going to sell more of it. That’s my experience.
February 15th, 2008 at 12:49 pm
Interestingly, Cory, you’re not alone. According to a 2006 University of Minnesota study (conducted by arts economist Ann Markusen) 39% of 1,800 artists surveyed spent more than two-thirds of their professional time working in for-profit jobs; only 19% reported doing no commercial work at all. So artists do, in general, know what business is about.
The problem comes in, I think, in dealing with selling one’s own art–one’s own creative child–and thinking about what one makes as an artist as just another commodity or product that someone may or may not want to buy. In this Business Week article a creative product business owner says a creative business is still a business. “Once those creative ideas are down on paper,” she says, “it’s all about logistics.” Not at all about the artistic creative soul…