February 7, 2010

 ACE Newsletter

I'm a Prostitute!

by M Theresa Brown

We have had quite a number of new subscribers to our newsletter, so I wanted to send out Theresa's earlier article about the attitude of academics to those of us working with our art in the reality of the day to day world.

Hi [[firstname]] 

I have never quite understood the attitudes that many in academia have with the real world. Whether you are a writer, a poet, a musician or an artist, just mentioning the word "marketing" unleashes a apoplectic barrage of phrases, the two most popular being "selling out" and "prostituting yourself."  

I just came from a series of week long shows.  I was there to display and sell my artwork. I am fortunate. Every bill that I pay comes from the money that I make through the sales of my art.While I work,  I chat with prospects for my art, meet with clients, answer questions, paint.....and speak with artists! 

In one such meeting, a mother and her daughter came up to me and began a conversation. The mom works in a well known pharmaceutical company in research and the daughter is in her final year in college in a school of art as a printmaking major.  To my dismay (yet not a surprise), after chatting about art marketing, both had similar stories about their run ins with their professors. Upon graduating with honors in her field from Rutgers years before, and accepting a research position with the pharmaceutical company, the mom was approached by one of her professors and was told "Well, congratulations on selling out and prostituting yourself to the corporate world"  The daughter, meanwhile, who had recently asked her professor about methods for selling her etchings, was told that "any effort focused on marketing her art results in prostituting it for money and public tastes."  I knew just how she felt, as years earlier, I had been told that "Portraiture is prostituting your art" when a professor found me in town with a sketchbook doing sidewalk sittings.

Prostitution is apparently a popular word in all fields of academia! What "it" really is, is proselytizing an individual's attitude.

My late father, with his Doctorate in Education and his professor emeritus status in an NC university, once told me "It's easy to preach cutting edge art from behind the safety of a salaried job, pension and tenure!"

And that is my usual reply to the queries of questioning students. And, blessing my art history education, my other comment is usually, "even Michelangelo was an "artist for hire."" :-)  What if the master had followed today's current thinking in academia about commissioned art? Would we have had the Sistine Chapel? If there had been no sculpture contests, would we have had the "Pieta" or "David"?

No one can do anything to change the views of those in academia who are obviously unhappy with the direction in their lives that their own careers have taken them.  BUT I can do something for the many artists who talk to me and want something different-a new attitude, a new confidence...and most of all HOPE. Many are no longer willing to let past negative and pessimistic attitudes have power over them, so these artists are ridding themselves of someone else's baggage and looking for guidance. They are looking for guidance that someone, some institute, some university should have shared with them and in doing so, empowered them for success rather than expect their failure before they even started!

What you ever decide to do with your artistic talents and abilities is a decision that only you can and should make.  Don't give someone else the power to make you unhappy! Only after working hard at your art marketing (or any other career choice)  and then deciding that it is not the way you want to go, can you make an educated decision based on fact, not someone else's theory. In reality, and if you dig deeper, the "prostituting yourself" critics have usually never sold their own art, been offered a coveted research job, been offered a music contract, had a best seller and so adopt their sour grapes attitude as a way to compensate for their own potential failings.
Fortunately, as history shows, Michelangelo, Rembrandt, NC Wyeth, Picasso and many, many other revered artists had no such qualms about selling their art!  And if they were prostituting themselves in doing so, I'd like to join their company! After all, it's your clients who pay your bills :-).