Good morning Van Camper,
I hear similar arguements like you have typed, that popularity and public opinion drive who are artists and what is art. Perhaps this is a more modern notion, though indeed many of the old masters starved or thrived due to the frequency of commissions from wealthy patrons. I recall that Vincent van Gogh only sold one painting while he was alive, and that sale involved a reluctant purchaser whom Vincent owed an unpaid debt. Definitely van Gogh was not popular while he was alive, so in a public centred viewpoint, he was not an artist.
I find it interesting when some people deride industrial images, especially when people like Charles Sheeler already established that genre many decades ago. Okay, so wealthy patrons, Ford Motor Company in the case of Charles Sheeler, helped get his work recognized in his lifetime, but could we claim that Sheeler was more of an artist than van Gogh, or even a more successful artist simply because he was more popular in his lifetime?
Whenever someone wants to get really controversial, often Jeff Koons is mentioned. He was astock broker prior to entering the world of art, so it could be said he was already successful, and he even had a ready list of people who might find his work interesting. Koons only comes up with concepts, then has others actually craft his works. Oddly enough, the "works" of Jeff Koons have been in museums, netted him lots of money, and even influenced other artists like Damien Hirst. So that would make it: sells his works for lots of money, is displayed in many museums, and his works are liked by certain segments of the public. Funny enough, Jeff Koons has now made it into some art history texts. The controversy remains due to the fact that many other artists do not consider his approach as art. Going with one of the things you pointed out, Jeff Koons has been very successful at marketing, though perhaps we should call what he is something else, a new term: marketist.
I don't like your public approach, because it elevates people like Thomas Kinkaid to the lofty heights of elite artists. I would rather remain relatively unknown, and less financially successful, than to be the equal of Thomas Kinkaid. The world of art is not the NYSE, nor NASDAQ, and success in the public eye (or wallet) as a criteria seems to me as devaluing creative endeavours. Marketing art works is not fine art, it is business and advertising.
I have nothing against someone making money off their creative endeavours, but I don't correlate that to someone who merits historical consideration as a great artist. Just because someones works and images end up by the thousands in malls across the US seems too loose a measure of greatness. Sure, some of the people here would really like that, especially with all the income it could deliver. There were probably several artists in van Gogh's time that made a living from their works, yet we might not hear about them, nor know them now; they were successful enough to make a living from art, but despite the public success, they were not memorable enough.
This comes right back to Burtynsky and Gursky. Both have financially gained from their works. Both are a little controversial. Quite likely both are good at marketing. Enough people like their works to buy them, though maybe if we could find a larger group of people who don't like their works, that might enable us to discredit them as artists . . . sort of a mob appeal scenario. Maybe we are just asking the wrong questions; perhaps success and financial gains should not be criterias for determining who are artists.
So what criteria, other than public appeal, do you use to determine if someone is an artist? What criteria do you use to determine that someone is NOT an artist? No need to answer those; I don't feel we can apply a checklist of conditions to art, and like I stated previously, there is rarely concensus opinion in the world of art.
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