While this advice may work for some, I would like to point out that this person is making very popular art. This type of art is most likely easier to sell than what most contemporary artists produce.
Also, this remark is giving away a fairly limited view on art appreciation:
> While you can learn from failures, only sales strengthen the muscle because only they show that someone actually cares about what you are making
This is obviously not the case for art projects that target only a few people, or art practices that do not result in tangible objects. (Although there are some exceptions, such as Marina Abramovich, but those are very limited.)
Great for them, but this is not about all art. It just is impossible to live of most art forms. This type of art fits well with our economy, and therefore makes a living. That fit is more important than all the business advice put on top.
The article does point out exactly this problem, but glosses over the fact that most artists don't want to change to popular art. Only a few can, and most don't want to.
On the other end of the spectrum, "experimental artist" (whatever that is) Lawrence English wrote "A Young Person's Guide to Hustling (in Music and the Arts", which seems more like what you're after.
> The article does point out exactly this problem, but glosses over the fact that most artists don't want to change to popular art. Only a few can, and most don't want to.
I don't think author hides the fact. It's plain as day that to make a living, you need to sell art which resonates with people. You can still find room to be creative within that constraint, but you can't ignore the audience.
Artists should quit the illusion that they can create whatever they please and expect the income to automatically follow.
But that isn’t really true, per se. It depends on your definition of “people” – the mass market? High end collectors and galleries like Gagosian? Very different audiences, and appealing to one is probably the opposite of the other.
Encyclopedia Brittanica defines "popular art" as art that resonates with ordinary people in modern urban society. I'm sure we could point to examples of people earning a living at non popular art.
> Most people who enjoy making art should not try to make it their full time job. When you turn an avocation (hobby) into a vocation (job) you have to do new things you do not enjoy. Emails, events, meetings, accounting, and more. These are not only a drag but can actually strip the joy from the rest of your art practice.
You'll have to do things you do not enjoy if you want to treat it as a business, including changing your artistic vision if needed etc.
> Art is absolutely an expression of yourself. But your art is not you.
A pragmatic approach could be to work on commericially-proven styles for money and your own style just for yourself (and potentially others if you make a branding that's famous enough).
At the end, yeah, it's a job if you want to make a living with art. There will always be market forces and to extract value from that, you need to understand and conform with it. But that's only if you see yourself as a business and not purely as an "artist" which I think is what you're reffering to when you say "most artists don't want to change to popular art" etc.
Also I don't think it's true overall. Like you say the "person is making very popular art" and that's why they're successful but there's many like them who are also making popular art but are not successful at all. It's also the process they follow and how they approach their business that sets them apart. That part is valuable info/guidance for any artist that does want to be commercially succesful imo.
great point but I think that even people who create "difficult" art can derive some sort of income from it. in fact, the solopreneurs section points to an opportunity for AI to be a helpful co-pilot on each of those mundane and dreaded tasks listed there. In additional fact, I asked Gemini Pro a while a go to spell out the steps to a successful fine arts career and the output was very similar to this blog's so square-one/concept validation, decision making (eg. given this list of business-relevant events and attendees, which should I prioritize and prepare for) are actions it can take on your behalf or help with.
That said, once a critical number of people start getting the same advice, take the same action then you have another issue to navigate but it would be the same with any tech advancement, eg. the first artists to get their own phone line or a fax machine or a computer ...
You said it yourself: he was primarily a professor, not an artist. His position being a "luxury" is another argument. Anyway, He taught languages to brilliant students and created a highly respected translation of Beowulf. LoTR, Silmarillion, Hobbit, and all of it, were his hobby, a secondary but burning passion.
I'm sure many on this forum have secondary passions, be it music, visual art, writing, or anything else. Yet most of us realized we need to make money, and that those pursuits can be done at a fairly high level in our leisure time.
As a resident of SF I've only ever heard of fnnch in the context of people hating his art (I still don't understand why). Is it a case of any publicity being good publicity?
He is objectively a very popular artist - as he mentions in the article he has made > $1million/yr at least one year (and I imagine more often that once). I do own one of his honey bears and I remember in the online "drop", based a price of $500/bear, he made ~$300k in that single drop which sold out in approximately 20 minutes.
I think the people you hear expressing dislike is probably due to his popularity and how often you see the honey bears around SF. He's also a Stanford economics grad, and some people in SF really dislike the stereotypical Stanford alums who think they're superior beings.
I searched for some pictures. The first couple I came across looked like the result of a prompt to an AI: "generate images of plastic honey bears with various outfits and/or accessories":
Yeah I mean, they are cute little graphics and a fun character/brand, but I don’t exactly see how people consider this some masterful piece of artwork. I don’t live in SF, but I can imagine it gets old to see it everywhere.
The idea that someone is a snob because they dislike generic looking artworks is a hilarious indicator of how far aesthetic discussion and standards have fallen. The word used to mean someone that looks down upon the popular arts in favor of more traditional/expensive/sophisticated art.
Now apparently it means having any standards or metrics of evaluation, period. Either you think everything is equal aesthetically, or you’re a snob.
Thankfully this kind of empty opinion isn’t convincing many people these days.
>One of the biggest mistakes I see artists make is painting things that don't resonate with people. Once you have an aesthetic that works, the market rewards you for exploring adjacent aesthetic territory. You might not make a living right away — it took me over two years from when I painted that first Honey Bear until I took my art full time — but it is totally necessary if you are to make a living off your own art (as opposed to teaching or commercial art). Until then, if what you're doing isn't resonating, you just need to just paint something else. Experiment with different concepts and directions until you find something that works.
He doesn't spend a whole lot of time deliberating on the literature versus television question, but it's easy to see what he's chosen.
> The Beatles wrote 227 songs, but only 34 hit the Top 10. Do you think they would put out a song that they didn't believe could be a hit? Mozart wrote over 600 songs, but only about 50 of them are widely played. Do you think he purposefully wrote duds? Of course not.
This is completely backwards. The Beatles put out songs that they didn't think were hits, and put out songs that they were conscious of being the antithesis of a hit. They wanted to freak people out from time to time. As many artists do.
Just check out Revolution 9. Pretty sure you can't get much out there than that when it comes to music of that era. And still very out there to this day.
Or for a more 'songy songs' that I'm pretty sure they didn't think at all in terms of hit material: Tomorrow Never Knows or Within You Without You. And there's dozens more.
More importantly, the Beatles are one of the few groups that I can listen to the entire album and love every song, and then come back 5 years later and still love the album. There are many successful musicians who have a handful of good songs and the rest of their albums are filler.
Off topic but always incredible to remember the Beatles only recorded for what 7-8 years. Incredible what a legacy that is for such a short period of being a band
The irony is that knowing all the other things that were going on during that period, it sure is good that they were not at all artificially promoted for social engineering purposes, and we can totally be sure of that without any shred of doubt or question.
No. These are not unknowable things. CIA, etc. releases and leaks make it possible for even you to know them. Just because most people are simply unaware because they operate in what can only be described as a manufactured state of ignorance, like a "Matrix" or the artificial world of gaslighting and manipulation depicted in 1984, does not make it impossible to know the things that are openly and publicly knowable. What is your excuse for not knowing these knowable things?
I am sure you believe in certain things, you have convictions of some kind, some ideals you espouse. How would you think any of those things could come true if you are like a head of cattle on a range, with no understanding of your state of existing solely for the benefit of the rancher, grazing not because you are cattle that likes grazing, but because the rancher likes you grazing for his own purposes?
Don't worry though, you are not the only one who is really rather aggressively and intentionally self-deluding and seemingly unable and unwilling to see reality, since the soma he is fed is so pleasant and comfortable and warm.
Your ignorance does not make everything you are unaware of "conspiracy theory". These are not things you aren't even able to simply read in primary documents that have been released and leaked. You just think you are the main character because of narcissism that if you don't know something, then it must not be real. You may want to fix that flaw.
Sorry, your narcissistic injury and flaccid attempt at insult in order to protect your own self-image does not move me. It's just unimpressive noise. So you can just stop that.
The irony is that although I technically do know very much secret information, there is no secret information you would need to know, you could just know the very much publicly available and accessible information that has come out over the years through releases and leaks... yet you still don't know it even though it is available to you... but you instead just resort to your typical narcissistic attempts at using insult and abuse to deflect from your own ignorance and inflated bubble of self-worth. Poke that bubble and be a normal person and just inform yourself instead of being ignorant and faking it.
Writing a song is just the beginning. Then there is all the massive effort with the arrangements and polish for it (see George Martin). I doubt the Beatles would make the effort unless they thought a song was worth it.
being “worth it” and being “a hit” are two different things. the parent is trying to point out they made songs knowing full well those particular song would never be a hit, but they definitely thought it was “worth it.”
many artists do things often knowing they won’t make money from that piece. and some artists believe money should never drive why you create a piece of art, different reasons should be at the forefront, should be the driving force, some force other than widespread success.
the beatles were well known for making thing they did not water down for the masses, knowing it would likely not be a commercial success. and conversely they were also known for intentionally watering things down so the masses would take it. it’s one part of why they have stood the test of time.
How do you conclude that? Is it hard to believe that Paul would write a song, and then realize it wasn't good?
> some artists believe money should never drive why you create a piece of art
Yes, and I'm acquainted with a few of those. They are proud that their art is something nobody else likes. They criticize others for "selling out", meaning making art that others like enough to be willing to pay for it.
They're just trying to justify their lack of talent.
I'm not impressed.
BTW, the Beatles very much enjoyed their money and success.
In the days of the Beatles, and throughout the heyday of the recording industry, the artists and their management pursued "hits", to be sure, and wanted to be seen on the Billboard charts and in rotation on the radio. But that was secondary to sales figures.
It was the RIAA that certified sales figures and awarded the Gold Record, Platinum, and Double Platinum prizes. There were various formats that records could be distributed in, but let's simplify to the "album" and the "single".
A single was typically one song on each side, A/B, and the A-side was considered desirable and marketable. Singles were purchased first by radio and dance DJs so they could be played individually on demand. There was a secondary retail market for singles, so consumers could purchase them as well.
The record album developed from a set of many 78 discs and coalesced into a single, Long-Play, 33.33 RPM record. Its capacity was about 6 songs per side, depending on their length.
There were various strategies for collecting songs into an album, such as a sampler of the artist's best, all their performances in a year's sessions, or even various artists. During the Beatles' fame, the "Concept Album" and "Album-Oriented Radio" (AOR) came into being.
So you could sell singles with one hit song, and this would propel the "B-side" into people's homes as well, so they may get curious, flip it over, and play the B-side, but B-sides were often considered lower quality, disposable, or less popular.
An album could sell great if it had one hit track. Recording companies would usually peel off the best tracks on an album to release as singles too, so that the radio play would promote the band and drive sales of the entire album. Many people who heard a hit song would be disappointed when they spent a lot of money on an album, only to find "filler" in-between, because the album format usually guaranteed a certain runtime or number of tracks.
When the Beatles produced "Sgt. Pepper" it was a foray into the "concept album" where all the tracks contributed to a cohesive idea or theme. This tended to enhance album sales over singles, because the single would be a peek into the larger "concept" and whet the public appetite for the whole thing.
When "Album-Oriented Rock" became popular, the DJs were freed from the constraints of playing "hit singles" in isolation and they were more encouraged to explore the unreleased tracks ("deep cuts") from albums, as well as tracks of longer duration that weren't appropriate for hit radio stations. In turn, AOR bands were under less pressure to release their "hit single" for every album and shielded from the phenomenon of "one-hit wonders" while instead their audience was, again, encouraged to invest in an entire album.
In the 1980s, a 45 RPM single may cost $1.50 or $2, while a full-length album was $8.99 to $12. The format switch to cassettes was sort of masterful, because for a while, the 2-track single format was abandoned, and consumers were kind of forced to get the entire album on cassette.
Yes I've ignored a lot of rough edges here, like the older 78s, and 8-track cassettes, and classical radio, but that was basically the landscape for pop artists, who needed hits but first and foremost, needed sales. The Beatles also capitalized on another enduring method of driving record sales: live performances and world tours. It wasn't called "The British Invasion" for nothing.
> So you could sell singles with one hit song, and this would propel the "B-side" into people's homes as well
And that's also how Queen almost broke up in 1975. (Roger Taylor making just as much money from singles for writing "I'm in love with my car" that Freddie Mercury for writing "Bohemian Rhapsody".)
I had never thought about it, but The Beatles toured almost constantly from January 1961 until late January 1965. Then they played a few concerts in summer and early December, before their last tours of Germany, Japan and the Philippines and the US in 1966. At the same time they released 7 full length albums. Crazy!
The work rate was quite something, as was the natural talent backing it up. If you somehow have nine hours to spare it's well worth watching the "Get Back" documentary, which is very fly-on-the-wall.
> Art is absolutely an expression of yourself. But your art is not you. Try not to entangle your ego with your art.
This is something I wish I could impress upon 23-year-old me. I had all the drive in the world to create, and made some things I knew would (to the right market) sell - and I was, in fact, proved right, a few times - but I felt nothing but embarrassment about the actual selling. It wasn't even that I feared rejection - quite the opposite! I was an actor; rejection is, like, 90% of the job - and I had no problem selling other things, or others' work, just my own. Saying "I've got something great, you should buy it" about my own stuff felt unbearably egoistic. To be honest, it still makes me cringe. I'm not completely sure where that comes from - maybe an upbringing in a religious culture that emphasized humility? Anyway, I certainly don't have a "hustle" mentality, and can't quite bear those who do. Nevertheless, I'd have got a lot further in that career if I could have let go of that particular inhibition.
This quote brings to mind the movie "Secret Mall Apartment," which I watched last weekend:
> Art is absolutely an expression of yourself. But your art is not you. Try not to entangle your ego with your art. If someone does not like your art, that does not mean they do not like you. If they think your art is bad, that does not mean they think you are bad.
The movie is partly about an apartment built in secret in a mall as an art project, and partly about the lead artist, Michael Townsend. Townsend is generally the opposite of Marsh in that he isn't interested in money, to the point of pretty much having none.
Getting back to the quote about ego: There is a scene in the movie where Michael is having a conversation with his wife about building the apartment, and his wife is emphasizing that she's trying to set up their new home. Michael clearly had his ego entangled with his art, to the point where it caused his marriage to fail.
I've seen too many times in real life people who do arts and want to try to sell it not understand that once you switch from a hobby to a business, you need to spend at least 50% of your time on the business/marketing/logistics/etc side of things, hence failing miserably. The best possible outcome that I've seen is that they miraculously hit a nerve on the first hit, become famous, and at some point realize they need to pay taxes and do so in a decent timeframe.
So I found this article great to explain those things, and also how it's not just "you", but it's "the part of you that people need to buy" to make it into an actual business the thing that it's important. I'll be sharing it a bunch, I'm so happy fnnch wrote this!
Or delegate that stuff and become a "sellout". Just don't get taken advantage of. Oh, and have actual talent. Or don't, doesn't really matter, if the salesperson has some of their own.
As a father of two small children during COVID, I can't begin to thank fnnch enough for his Honey Bear Hunt project: https://upmag.com/honey-bear-fnnch/
Hundreds (if not thousands) of honey bears were posted in windows around SF. It was one of those things that happens in SF every now and then, a mix of whimsy and hustle and unexpected joy. We couldn't take our kids to school, we couldn't take them to the park. Instead, we would drive them around town and have them point out all the honey bears they saw. "Honey bear! Another one!"
Variants of this were in NL as well, but it was just stuffed animals (I believe in support of health care workers); people went out for walks to go and spot them.
I wish stuff like that would happen again, it was an interesting time where people actually stayed home and explored their environments, their home and themselves a lot. Before that (or at the same time?) it was AR games like Pokemon Go. I'm out of touch with what's happening now, it just feels like people have reverted or gone into a new normal. Or maybe that's just me.
I’m somewhat of two minds of the whole thing. I don’t blame the guy for making an income, but yeah, the honey bears are kind of boring, and especially w/ this post he comes off as a bit of a sellout. Art is weird.
> “These bears have become synonymous with gentrification in San Francisco,” he told fnnch, “and the displacement of the artists that come from here.”
I have mixed feelings (i.e. I understand your boredom) of his honeybear art from a pure aesthetic pov. However, (as any modern viral influencer knows), any successful artist will invite haters. This article reinforces the notion that fnnch is very successful...
When I was 16, I had already graduated high school but wasn’t quite ready for college due to the age gap so I started a punk rock band. Toured around the east coast with my band mates. Met a relatively successful musician and asked how he is able to earn a living making music.
His response still resonates with me after 30 years.
It’s the same for starting a winery: “If you want to make $1M, start with $10M.”
He basically said the same only it was the record labels that footed the bill. I enrolled in college the end of that summer.
Moral of the story, don’t be on the fence. Commit. The part about it being a business, fact. That’s the only way you’re going to make a living with your art.
The breakthrough realization for me was that all businesses are fundamentally similar. They have the same knobs just configured differently. The knobs are things like product, sales channels, marketing, PR, and brand. A jeweler might have high material costs (gold and diamonds), an artist moderate material costs (paint and canvas), and a greeting card company low material costs (paper), but they all have "material costs". These knobs are what you see through the business lens, and when approached this way it is clear that there is nothing magical about being an artist — it is simply a different configuration of those knobs.
Hard, hard disagree.
Art and art-adjacent fields (storytelling in print and film, music, videogame design, etc.) are working with intangibles. The best artists wield qualities such as technique, perspective, charisma, zeitgeist and so on.
They build their creations in ways that they can't truly explain, and the resulting "product" generates emotions in their audiences - pleasure, sorrow, joy, energy, nostalgia, melancholy - and bonds that are so strong that they can't help but be drawn to the works.
Another way of looking at this dynamic: No one needs to listen to a favorite song, or visit an art museum, read a book by a talented author, or replay a beloved game in the same way that they may purchase a light bulb or sign up for a SaaS subscription. Yet TFA is treating art as merely another type of manufactured product.
Businesses have tried to harness art for millennia. Sometimes the businesses succeed. But where they often fail is assuming that art is a fungible commodity that can be created through an algorithm or assembly line, with the creative flame locked down and bent completely to the will of a business executive or technical product manager.
Such efforts from the likes of game studios or a record company or AI are derivative by nature and rarely inspiring. The exceptions are those built by creators whose intangibles still manage to shine through, despite the harnesses placed upon them.
I'm speaking from the perspective of someone who has worked in book publishing, news media, and pop music over many years (including a stint working for The KLF's record label, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10932055)
It doesn't sound like you're refuting the central claim. Artists still have to be concerned about marketing, sales (i.e. I made great art, but now need to find someone to buy it if I want to eat), revenue, profit (i.e. I made money, but if I spent more than I made on materials then I didn't actually make money), and so on. It's a business.
What you're highlighting is that art's value proposition is different from the value proposition of typical businesses. But not that artists are somehow free from having to worry about basic economics.
It's not a business. Selling art is a business. Making art isn't a business.
Many artists would rather blow up their careers than make work solely for business reasons.
There's a huge cadre of content creators and entertainers who are happy to do that, but - as the previous post says - their work is typically entirely forgettable. Even when it's commercially successful.
And successful original creators usually have business managers to deal with "basic economics."
The ideal for most artists is complete creative freedom and an open budget. Not many get there, and not everyone who does get there produces something memorable. But it happens occasionally, and it's usually far more interesting than create-to-market content.
> It's not a business. Selling art is a business. Making art isn't a business. Many artists would rather blow up their careers than make work solely for business reasons.
Again, you're arguing a distinction which the author agrees with. From the article:
> Most people who enjoy making art should not try to make it their full time job. When you turn an avocation (hobby) into a vocation (job) you have to do new things you do not enjoy.
I think perhaps you're getting hung up on some semantic quibble rather than focusing on the broader point. "Artist", "professional artist", "artist for a living", "someone who spends most of their hours making art but also needs to eat". Choose whichever term satisfies your complaint. These people need money to live, that's just how the world works.
Maybe I'm being thick here, but i still dont quite get how does he earn money from his artwork?
For example, how does he earn from the Honey Bear murals? does the city or building owner commission him for the murals? If so, does he do some kind of outreach or sales call to the building owners or is it the other way round?
Not an artist and nor am I in the art world, just curious how does business work in there
Large murals on, for example, commercial buildings or residences are typically commissioned. These are big enough to require scaffolding/lifts and take multiple days to paint; with some exceptions (vacant property) it'd be hard to pull that off without the owner calling the cops. The building owner is paying them for the mural, or in some cases there's city grants or arts council projects.
Lots of muralists document the art/business on youtube! Two I like: Kiptoe and SmoeNova
In the blog post he also mentioned doing commissions.
As for the public art, I don't think he was directly paid for the initial honey bear, I think it was just marketing - that is, its popularity boosted his following.
> A jeweler might have high material costs (gold and diamonds), an artist moderate material costs (paint and canvas), and a greeting card company low material costs (paper), but they all have "material costs".
There is a great line in the book Narconomics [0] that compares the "value added" of creating high end paintings to narcotics. He points out that the input (paint, coca leaves) are VERY cheap. The end product (high end paintings, cocaine) is very expensive.
(I believe he makes this point to show that raising the price of inputs slightly has no real bearing on the price at the end given the size of the margins)
Good post. I'd argue this is very similar to solo game development. There's a lot of extra administrative stuff that simply has nothing to do with actually making games and a lot more to do with making a real business. So the framing there is accurate.
One difference is that video games often take a lot more investment - at least a full-size, not-a-game-jam one. That is, the risk and upfront investment can be a lot higher. But then I'm sure that with artists it's also years of slowly building up skills, reputation, contacts, etc - the author himself seems to imply he basically got lucky with the honey bear, and I feel it's the same with e.g. video games. Quality wise a lot of games are fine, but despite the hours / years invested they may never be successful. This is an issue in high-budget games too, with several high profile failures in recent years even though they did everything right. On paper.
aren't most of these just direct copies of some other game that went famous? e.g. Dark Souls set a genre "souls-like", Stardew Valley copied an old game but we can say they started the resurgence or development of cozy management games...
this resonates a lot. i'm building an indie mobile game right now and the ratio of "actual game dev" to "everything else" is probably 30/70 at this point. marketing, aso, community management, influencer outreach, accounting, support.
the bit about testing what sells vs what you love is real too. we ended up testing three completely different positioning angles simultaneously with different audience segments, just to figure out which one actually sticks. feels less like art and more like running experiments, but honestly that's what keeps you from burning cash on the wrong audience for months.
the Beatles analogy in the post is interesting but i think the better framing for indie creators is: you need a tight feedback loop. not "make 600 things and hope 50 land," more like "ship, measure retention at day 7, iterate." the constraint of small budgets actually forces better product thinking imo.
I'd say painting is quite a different business model than making music. There are different channels, people nowadays don't understand the value of music because they "have" everything on Spotify/Apple Music/whatever and there must be a huge tech behind you to sell good quality of sound. You also can't make your own CD (yes you can, but will it work with a CDR recorder?) and sell it progressively for $100 then for $500...
Painting is a tough business. If you have the talent to spend a month on a painting and then find people will happily pay $2000 for it in a gallery, you are a fantastic artist!
But the gallery takes 50% leaving you a gross income of $12k. Then you pay for your supplies and work expenses. If that's all you do, you end up way below the poverty line.
> As a final note, if you make something that you like, at least one person will like it — you. If you make something you think other people will like, you run the risk of no one liking it at all. That would be sad.
I think it borders on parody that this hyper capitalist, hype driven mindset (originally found in tech) has not only infected a lot of "art", but they are boasting about it. A more accurate title is how to make a living selling a very specific kind of popular mural/Art Basel/showroom/"elite" kind of art.
Many of the artists on the Art Basel run are nepo babies. Same with academic art, music, and architecture. It's incredibly hard to get into those circles without some kind of independent income and/or cultural networking.
Every so often the invisible hand picks someone off the streets, but it happens much less often than it might.
Contemporary artist here, with gallery representation. I also teach on, arguably, the best undergrad "fine art" program in the world.
It is worth pointing out what this artist's practice actually is. The audience here might be afraid of conjectures around the subjective phenomena of "taste", so let me propose this:
That thing that everyone complains about here when you make an interesting app, put it up, and there's a cheaper Chinese produced version of it within a month that's got a better ranking in the app store than yours? That's what this guy is doing in art terms. The "product" is derivative, and frankly, so is the hustle. That's not why most of us make art, and his work wouldn't stand up to scrutiny by my undergrads (much less the "art world" in general) who are typically optimizing for innovation in the field.
I would argue that this guy doesn't really need to be an artist, in the same way that we don't really need the 50th knockoff of the same app. Sure he can do it and I guess good on him for making some money from it, but those are separate questions compared to those of most artists. He could use those same skills he discussed to sell used cars or vapes or something. Or maybe just be a programmer and "ship"? Notice that he doesn't even attempt to explain what is novel or contextually relevant about his work, or even where his desire to do it, as opposed to selling any other product, comes from?
Personally, I use my teaching to create economic space for myself to not need to be in thrall to a flippant and cruel "market". I have some basic rules for my gallery (no sales to arms dealers, no sales to oil industry, leaning that way towards AI/tech tbh) but one of the reasons I have a gallery, in addition to lightening my cognitive load of all the admin and sales in general, is because I suspect it would damage my capacity to make cutting-edge work if I knew how the sausages were made. It's most certainly not the only way to do it, it's just how I've landed. I usually advise my students starting out to follow the Phillip Glass method (really, the 1970s-90s method): get a part-time job that pays the most you can get but that does the work that will kill your mind the least, so you have at least 1 extra day and the mental space to do your 'real' work with that 1 day plus the weekend. Then over time, if you get paid for the art, cut down on the part-time job, and repeat. I will admit it is getting much harder to do this now, so my advice may be outdated.
Anyway, I'm being snarky, and he would correctly argue it's gatekeeping. But just a bit of context for the discussion here.
It sounds like / I feel like there's two categories of artists; the one is in it for the art (and would benefit from e.g. a patron or subsidies like the Irish one mentioned elsewhere / also currently on the front page) if their stuff isn't commercially viable.
But the other, and this is the vast, VAST majority of people, create content. Not to be too disparaging, but if the objective is a paycheck then that's what is being made. And this is everywhere - marketing, digital design, video game assets, book series, commissions, etc.
Yes it takes artistic skills to do it, but is it "art"? Is it something (as the comment I'm replying to says) "novel or contextually relevant"? Or is it doing what needs doing because the boss says so?
I think it's important to make this distinction. And that's also the gist of people who want to do art as their day job - there's plenty of work, but you have to accept you're doing what other people want you to do instead of try to do something new.
You’re making a point mostly about aesthetics. But regardless of aesthetics, to be a working artist, the artist needs to make money.
Sounds like you make money partially by teaching and partially by gallery sales. Which are two of the commercially viable paths that are mentioned in this essay.
> Then over time, if you get paid for the art, cut down on the part-time job, and repeat.
The point of this article is simply that the above will not happen by accident.
It depends on your art form and what you’re trying to say. Because once you start optimizing your work for sales, you are deliberately going down a certain path.
I don’t want to criticize that path - because being paid as an artist is a millennia-old thing. The idea that true artists don’t work for money is something that came out of the Romantic era, and many, many world famous historical artists like Da Vinci or Michelangelo were doing a job for rich clients. But it seems to lock you into a path where you need to replicate the same style over and over again, because that’s what you’re known for.
There’s a great little scene in the Basquiat movie about this:
I'm talking about the same kind of work. The same style, so people can recognize you and don’t get confused. Once you’re famous, airborne, you gotta keep doing it in the same way. Even after it’s boring. Unless you want people to really get mad at you…which they will anyway.
I think the Phillip Glass solution of doing a completely unrelated job is probably a better solution, IF you’re trying to focus on expression. It also gives you more material for creating; if you read many writers and artists’ bios, their day jobs directly impacted their work.
My favorite example being Moby Dick - could someone without years of whaling experience even begin to conceive of that book?
whatever you do, don't quit your job to start a business thinking that will give you freedom and autonomy. if you believe you are called to make art, in whatever form, you have a moral obligation to make that art. aka find a boring corporate job where you can slack hella hard and work on your craft during company time.
also don't expect your art to pay your rent, because then your work will follow the market and it will suck. your spirit will suffer, too.
There is a program for Basic Income for artists in Ireland, but it obviously assumes you are a legal resident of Ireland. It is limited to 2,000 artists and there are more applicants than there are spots. Property rental is expensive in Ireland. If there are people seriously interested, these links should clarify the details of the program.
Ireland is a great country but I wouldn't move here for that specific reason. There are other great reasons that would be much more important or relevant.
One reason to not move to Ireland is that housing is very expensive, there are plenty of other problems too.
I worked out it's easier to make a living doing something well paid and do the art on the side. Sometimes people pay me for the art if I'm lucky, mostly photographic prints. I wouldn't want to do it the other way around.
Art is basically a value tokken store for the super wealthy and they keep it valuable by limiting the supply to what is "valuable" art by forming one huge cartell. Gallerys, museums, art brokers are either in this cArtel or they are not.
Your value as an artist depends not on the quality of your art, but mostly by your ability to sell yourself to and into service to these cArtells. Like any scam demanding free labour and enthusiasm by the young, the art industry has an aura that it projects to scoop up daydreamers and those rebelling.
great post, thank you! I recently started showing and selling my art (I do plotter art and paintings). It’s both exciting and frustrating at times to see how pieces “land” or completely miss.
> Mozart wrote over 600 songs, but only about 50 of them are widely played.
Calling Mozart’s works “songs” is ignorant.
Mozart wrote some songs (“lieder”, or art songs for voice and piano), but his work spans operas, symphonies, concertos, chamber music, masses and other sacred music, and solo piano works.
While this advice may work for some, I would like to point out that this person is making very popular art. This type of art is most likely easier to sell than what most contemporary artists produce.
Also, this remark is giving away a fairly limited view on art appreciation:
> While you can learn from failures, only sales strengthen the muscle because only they show that someone actually cares about what you are making
This is obviously not the case for art projects that target only a few people, or art practices that do not result in tangible objects. (Although there are some exceptions, such as Marina Abramovich, but those are very limited.)
Great for them, but this is not about all art. It just is impossible to live of most art forms. This type of art fits well with our economy, and therefore makes a living. That fit is more important than all the business advice put on top.
The article does point out exactly this problem, but glosses over the fact that most artists don't want to change to popular art. Only a few can, and most don't want to.
On the other end of the spectrum, "experimental artist" (whatever that is) Lawrence English wrote "A Young Person's Guide to Hustling (in Music and the Arts", which seems more like what you're after.
https://collapseboard.com/a-young-person%E2%80%99s-guide-to-... https://lawrenceenglish.bandcamp.com/album/a-young-persons-g...
This is much better than the post & he also sounds like a much more interesting artist.
He's great and has also run workshops as of pretty recently so you can find opportunities to learn from him directly too
I also saw an experimental short at TIFF's Wavelengths program in 2024 that he "scored": https://tiff.net/events/wavelengths-1-eye-and-ear-control
> The article does point out exactly this problem, but glosses over the fact that most artists don't want to change to popular art. Only a few can, and most don't want to.
I don't think author hides the fact. It's plain as day that to make a living, you need to sell art which resonates with people. You can still find room to be creative within that constraint, but you can't ignore the audience.
Artists should quit the illusion that they can create whatever they please and expect the income to automatically follow.
But that isn’t really true, per se. It depends on your definition of “people” – the mass market? High end collectors and galleries like Gagosian? Very different audiences, and appealing to one is probably the opposite of the other.
Encyclopedia Brittanica defines "popular art" as art that resonates with ordinary people in modern urban society. I'm sure we could point to examples of people earning a living at non popular art.
For sure, but those people need to make sales too, otherwise they are not “earning a living.”
Yeah but I mean it does make sense though right?
> Most people who enjoy making art should not try to make it their full time job. When you turn an avocation (hobby) into a vocation (job) you have to do new things you do not enjoy. Emails, events, meetings, accounting, and more. These are not only a drag but can actually strip the joy from the rest of your art practice.
You'll have to do things you do not enjoy if you want to treat it as a business, including changing your artistic vision if needed etc.
> Art is absolutely an expression of yourself. But your art is not you.
A pragmatic approach could be to work on commericially-proven styles for money and your own style just for yourself (and potentially others if you make a branding that's famous enough).
At the end, yeah, it's a job if you want to make a living with art. There will always be market forces and to extract value from that, you need to understand and conform with it. But that's only if you see yourself as a business and not purely as an "artist" which I think is what you're reffering to when you say "most artists don't want to change to popular art" etc.
Also I don't think it's true overall. Like you say the "person is making very popular art" and that's why they're successful but there's many like them who are also making popular art but are not successful at all. It's also the process they follow and how they approach their business that sets them apart. That part is valuable info/guidance for any artist that does want to be commercially succesful imo.
great point but I think that even people who create "difficult" art can derive some sort of income from it. in fact, the solopreneurs section points to an opportunity for AI to be a helpful co-pilot on each of those mundane and dreaded tasks listed there. In additional fact, I asked Gemini Pro a while a go to spell out the steps to a successful fine arts career and the output was very similar to this blog's so square-one/concept validation, decision making (eg. given this list of business-relevant events and attendees, which should I prioritize and prepare for) are actions it can take on your behalf or help with. That said, once a critical number of people start getting the same advice, take the same action then you have another issue to navigate but it would be the same with any tech advancement, eg. the first artists to get their own phone line or a fax machine or a computer ...
> This is obviously not the case for art projects that target only a few people, or art practices that do not result in tangible objects.
Indeed, it's not like Tolkien worked on the Silmarillion for four decades before LOTR was published because he was trying to sell it.
Well he was also a professor at Oxford, which is a luxury not afforded most artists.
You said it yourself: he was primarily a professor, not an artist. His position being a "luxury" is another argument. Anyway, He taught languages to brilliant students and created a highly respected translation of Beowulf. LoTR, Silmarillion, Hobbit, and all of it, were his hobby, a secondary but burning passion.
I'm sure many on this forum have secondary passions, be it music, visual art, writing, or anything else. Yet most of us realized we need to make money, and that those pursuits can be done at a fairly high level in our leisure time.
As a resident of SF I've only ever heard of fnnch in the context of people hating his art (I still don't understand why). Is it a case of any publicity being good publicity?
He is objectively a very popular artist - as he mentions in the article he has made > $1million/yr at least one year (and I imagine more often that once). I do own one of his honey bears and I remember in the online "drop", based a price of $500/bear, he made ~$300k in that single drop which sold out in approximately 20 minutes.
I think the people you hear expressing dislike is probably due to his popularity and how often you see the honey bears around SF. He's also a Stanford economics grad, and some people in SF really dislike the stereotypical Stanford alums who think they're superior beings.
Oh, it’s the plastic bear honey jar artist
Seems like a case of snobbery on behalf of these people. These are nice images but not "high art" which I guess prompts some people to scoff at them
Being critical of generic-looking murals doesn’t make someone a snob.
I searched for some pictures. The first couple I came across looked like the result of a prompt to an AI: "generate images of plastic honey bears with various outfits and/or accessories":
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQajHzw...
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRpoQbV...
There's AI slop, and then there's human slop.
Yeah I mean, they are cute little graphics and a fun character/brand, but I don’t exactly see how people consider this some masterful piece of artwork. I don’t live in SF, but I can imagine it gets old to see it everywhere.
It kinda does, friend.
The idea that someone is a snob because they dislike generic looking artworks is a hilarious indicator of how far aesthetic discussion and standards have fallen. The word used to mean someone that looks down upon the popular arts in favor of more traditional/expensive/sophisticated art.
Now apparently it means having any standards or metrics of evaluation, period. Either you think everything is equal aesthetically, or you’re a snob.
Thankfully this kind of empty opinion isn’t convincing many people these days.
You might not be a snob, but you sure as hell sound like one. It's okay when other people like simple things that you don't like.
Where did I say it’s not okay for people to like simple things I don’t like?
I just said having aesthetic opinions doesn’t make someone a snob.
I was thinking the same: we have all become pop-artists now since that seems to be what "sells".
Andy really knew what he was doing (from the classic interview): https://youtu.be/n49ucyyTB34
The author is fairly clear about it to me:
>One of the biggest mistakes I see artists make is painting things that don't resonate with people. Once you have an aesthetic that works, the market rewards you for exploring adjacent aesthetic territory. You might not make a living right away — it took me over two years from when I painted that first Honey Bear until I took my art full time — but it is totally necessary if you are to make a living off your own art (as opposed to teaching or commercial art). Until then, if what you're doing isn't resonating, you just need to just paint something else. Experiment with different concepts and directions until you find something that works.
He doesn't spend a whole lot of time deliberating on the literature versus television question, but it's easy to see what he's chosen.
> The Beatles wrote 227 songs, but only 34 hit the Top 10. Do you think they would put out a song that they didn't believe could be a hit? Mozart wrote over 600 songs, but only about 50 of them are widely played. Do you think he purposefully wrote duds? Of course not.
This is completely backwards. The Beatles put out songs that they didn't think were hits, and put out songs that they were conscious of being the antithesis of a hit. They wanted to freak people out from time to time. As many artists do.
Just check out Revolution 9. Pretty sure you can't get much out there than that when it comes to music of that era. And still very out there to this day.
Or for a more 'songy songs' that I'm pretty sure they didn't think at all in terms of hit material: Tomorrow Never Knows or Within You Without You. And there's dozens more.
More importantly, the Beatles are one of the few groups that I can listen to the entire album and love every song, and then come back 5 years later and still love the album. There are many successful musicians who have a handful of good songs and the rest of their albums are filler.
Off topic but always incredible to remember the Beatles only recorded for what 7-8 years. Incredible what a legacy that is for such a short period of being a band
The irony is that knowing all the other things that were going on during that period, it sure is good that they were not at all artificially promoted for social engineering purposes, and we can totally be sure of that without any shred of doubt or question.
Artificially promoted (by who?) for (what) social engineering purposes?
And frankly, isn't all promotion artificial?
I think the comment was intended to be sarcastic
No. These are not unknowable things. CIA, etc. releases and leaks make it possible for even you to know them. Just because most people are simply unaware because they operate in what can only be described as a manufactured state of ignorance, like a "Matrix" or the artificial world of gaslighting and manipulation depicted in 1984, does not make it impossible to know the things that are openly and publicly knowable. What is your excuse for not knowing these knowable things?
I am sure you believe in certain things, you have convictions of some kind, some ideals you espouse. How would you think any of those things could come true if you are like a head of cattle on a range, with no understanding of your state of existing solely for the benefit of the rancher, grazing not because you are cattle that likes grazing, but because the rancher likes you grazing for his own purposes?
Don't worry though, you are not the only one who is really rather aggressively and intentionally self-deluding and seemingly unable and unwilling to see reality, since the soma he is fed is so pleasant and comfortable and warm.
.. what new kind of conspiracy theory BS is this, that George Martin was a lizard?
Your ignorance does not make everything you are unaware of "conspiracy theory". These are not things you aren't even able to simply read in primary documents that have been released and leaked. You just think you are the main character because of narcissism that if you don't know something, then it must not be real. You may want to fix that flaw.
>You just think you are the main character because of narcissism
As opposed to your grandiose self worth based on knowing "secret" information lol. Go back to your cave tinfoil hat boy. No one cares.
Sorry, your narcissistic injury and flaccid attempt at insult in order to protect your own self-image does not move me. It's just unimpressive noise. So you can just stop that.
The irony is that although I technically do know very much secret information, there is no secret information you would need to know, you could just know the very much publicly available and accessible information that has come out over the years through releases and leaks... yet you still don't know it even though it is available to you... but you instead just resort to your typical narcissistic attempts at using insult and abuse to deflect from your own ignorance and inflated bubble of self-worth. Poke that bubble and be a normal person and just inform yourself instead of being ignorant and faking it.
Writing a song is just the beginning. Then there is all the massive effort with the arrangements and polish for it (see George Martin). I doubt the Beatles would make the effort unless they thought a song was worth it.
being “worth it” and being “a hit” are two different things. the parent is trying to point out they made songs knowing full well those particular song would never be a hit, but they definitely thought it was “worth it.”
many artists do things often knowing they won’t make money from that piece. and some artists believe money should never drive why you create a piece of art, different reasons should be at the forefront, should be the driving force, some force other than widespread success.
the beatles were well known for making thing they did not water down for the masses, knowing it would likely not be a commercial success. and conversely they were also known for intentionally watering things down so the masses would take it. it’s one part of why they have stood the test of time.
but they definitely thought it was “worth it.”
How do you conclude that? Is it hard to believe that Paul would write a song, and then realize it wasn't good?
> some artists believe money should never drive why you create a piece of art
Yes, and I'm acquainted with a few of those. They are proud that their art is something nobody else likes. They criticize others for "selling out", meaning making art that others like enough to be willing to pay for it.
They're just trying to justify their lack of talent.
I'm not impressed.
BTW, the Beatles very much enjoyed their money and success.
Of course, but ‘worth’ does not encompass only monetary worth!
If nobody wants to pay for X, then X is worthless.
I wouldn't pay anything for any of your family. Or for you.
I'm not sure that's a good measure of worth. Unless you think others would? What's the market value for your family?
In the days of the Beatles, and throughout the heyday of the recording industry, the artists and their management pursued "hits", to be sure, and wanted to be seen on the Billboard charts and in rotation on the radio. But that was secondary to sales figures.
It was the RIAA that certified sales figures and awarded the Gold Record, Platinum, and Double Platinum prizes. There were various formats that records could be distributed in, but let's simplify to the "album" and the "single".
A single was typically one song on each side, A/B, and the A-side was considered desirable and marketable. Singles were purchased first by radio and dance DJs so they could be played individually on demand. There was a secondary retail market for singles, so consumers could purchase them as well.
The record album developed from a set of many 78 discs and coalesced into a single, Long-Play, 33.33 RPM record. Its capacity was about 6 songs per side, depending on their length.
There were various strategies for collecting songs into an album, such as a sampler of the artist's best, all their performances in a year's sessions, or even various artists. During the Beatles' fame, the "Concept Album" and "Album-Oriented Radio" (AOR) came into being.
So you could sell singles with one hit song, and this would propel the "B-side" into people's homes as well, so they may get curious, flip it over, and play the B-side, but B-sides were often considered lower quality, disposable, or less popular.
An album could sell great if it had one hit track. Recording companies would usually peel off the best tracks on an album to release as singles too, so that the radio play would promote the band and drive sales of the entire album. Many people who heard a hit song would be disappointed when they spent a lot of money on an album, only to find "filler" in-between, because the album format usually guaranteed a certain runtime or number of tracks.
When the Beatles produced "Sgt. Pepper" it was a foray into the "concept album" where all the tracks contributed to a cohesive idea or theme. This tended to enhance album sales over singles, because the single would be a peek into the larger "concept" and whet the public appetite for the whole thing.
When "Album-Oriented Rock" became popular, the DJs were freed from the constraints of playing "hit singles" in isolation and they were more encouraged to explore the unreleased tracks ("deep cuts") from albums, as well as tracks of longer duration that weren't appropriate for hit radio stations. In turn, AOR bands were under less pressure to release their "hit single" for every album and shielded from the phenomenon of "one-hit wonders" while instead their audience was, again, encouraged to invest in an entire album.
In the 1980s, a 45 RPM single may cost $1.50 or $2, while a full-length album was $8.99 to $12. The format switch to cassettes was sort of masterful, because for a while, the 2-track single format was abandoned, and consumers were kind of forced to get the entire album on cassette.
Yes I've ignored a lot of rough edges here, like the older 78s, and 8-track cassettes, and classical radio, but that was basically the landscape for pop artists, who needed hits but first and foremost, needed sales. The Beatles also capitalized on another enduring method of driving record sales: live performances and world tours. It wasn't called "The British Invasion" for nothing.
> So you could sell singles with one hit song, and this would propel the "B-side" into people's homes as well
And that's also how Queen almost broke up in 1975. (Roger Taylor making just as much money from singles for writing "I'm in love with my car" that Freddie Mercury for writing "Bohemian Rhapsody".)
I had never thought about it, but The Beatles toured almost constantly from January 1961 until late January 1965. Then they played a few concerts in summer and early December, before their last tours of Germany, Japan and the Philippines and the US in 1966. At the same time they released 7 full length albums. Crazy!
The work rate was quite something, as was the natural talent backing it up. If you somehow have nine hours to spare it's well worth watching the "Get Back" documentary, which is very fly-on-the-wall.
> Art is absolutely an expression of yourself. But your art is not you. Try not to entangle your ego with your art.
This is something I wish I could impress upon 23-year-old me. I had all the drive in the world to create, and made some things I knew would (to the right market) sell - and I was, in fact, proved right, a few times - but I felt nothing but embarrassment about the actual selling. It wasn't even that I feared rejection - quite the opposite! I was an actor; rejection is, like, 90% of the job - and I had no problem selling other things, or others' work, just my own. Saying "I've got something great, you should buy it" about my own stuff felt unbearably egoistic. To be honest, it still makes me cringe. I'm not completely sure where that comes from - maybe an upbringing in a religious culture that emphasized humility? Anyway, I certainly don't have a "hustle" mentality, and can't quite bear those who do. Nevertheless, I'd have got a lot further in that career if I could have let go of that particular inhibition.
> I'm not completely sure where that comes from - maybe an upbringing in a religious culture that emphasized humility?
Empasized humility or crushed any sense of self worth?
This quote brings to mind the movie "Secret Mall Apartment," which I watched last weekend:
> Art is absolutely an expression of yourself. But your art is not you. Try not to entangle your ego with your art. If someone does not like your art, that does not mean they do not like you. If they think your art is bad, that does not mean they think you are bad.
The movie is partly about an apartment built in secret in a mall as an art project, and partly about the lead artist, Michael Townsend. Townsend is generally the opposite of Marsh in that he isn't interested in money, to the point of pretty much having none.
Getting back to the quote about ego: There is a scene in the movie where Michael is having a conversation with his wife about building the apartment, and his wife is emphasizing that she's trying to set up their new home. Michael clearly had his ego entangled with his art, to the point where it caused his marriage to fail.
I've seen too many times in real life people who do arts and want to try to sell it not understand that once you switch from a hobby to a business, you need to spend at least 50% of your time on the business/marketing/logistics/etc side of things, hence failing miserably. The best possible outcome that I've seen is that they miraculously hit a nerve on the first hit, become famous, and at some point realize they need to pay taxes and do so in a decent timeframe.
So I found this article great to explain those things, and also how it's not just "you", but it's "the part of you that people need to buy" to make it into an actual business the thing that it's important. I'll be sharing it a bunch, I'm so happy fnnch wrote this!
Or delegate that stuff and become a "sellout". Just don't get taken advantage of. Oh, and have actual talent. Or don't, doesn't really matter, if the salesperson has some of their own.
As a father of two small children during COVID, I can't begin to thank fnnch enough for his Honey Bear Hunt project: https://upmag.com/honey-bear-fnnch/
Hundreds (if not thousands) of honey bears were posted in windows around SF. It was one of those things that happens in SF every now and then, a mix of whimsy and hustle and unexpected joy. We couldn't take our kids to school, we couldn't take them to the park. Instead, we would drive them around town and have them point out all the honey bears they saw. "Honey bear! Another one!"
Variants of this were in NL as well, but it was just stuffed animals (I believe in support of health care workers); people went out for walks to go and spot them.
I wish stuff like that would happen again, it was an interesting time where people actually stayed home and explored their environments, their home and themselves a lot. Before that (or at the same time?) it was AR games like Pokemon Go. I'm out of touch with what's happening now, it just feels like people have reverted or gone into a new normal. Or maybe that's just me.
Some interesting context here is that fnnch is disliked as an artist by many - https://www.kqed.org/arts/13896327/fnnch-honey-bears-street-...
I’m somewhat of two minds of the whole thing. I don’t blame the guy for making an income, but yeah, the honey bears are kind of boring, and especially w/ this post he comes off as a bit of a sellout. Art is weird.
Hmmmmm
> “These bears have become synonymous with gentrification in San Francisco,” he told fnnch, “and the displacement of the artists that come from here.”
I have mixed feelings (i.e. I understand your boredom) of his honeybear art from a pure aesthetic pov. However, (as any modern viral influencer knows), any successful artist will invite haters. This article reinforces the notion that fnnch is very successful...
> Artists Are Solopreneurs
They make that assumption throughout, but the most straight forward way to make a living as an artist is to apply for a job.
For some types of art, the norm is to be an employee. It's mostly game studios that need people who can make nice 3D models.
When I was 16, I had already graduated high school but wasn’t quite ready for college due to the age gap so I started a punk rock band. Toured around the east coast with my band mates. Met a relatively successful musician and asked how he is able to earn a living making music.
His response still resonates with me after 30 years.
It’s the same for starting a winery: “If you want to make $1M, start with $10M.”
He basically said the same only it was the record labels that footed the bill. I enrolled in college the end of that summer.
Moral of the story, don’t be on the fence. Commit. The part about it being a business, fact. That’s the only way you’re going to make a living with your art.
The breakthrough realization for me was that all businesses are fundamentally similar. They have the same knobs just configured differently. The knobs are things like product, sales channels, marketing, PR, and brand. A jeweler might have high material costs (gold and diamonds), an artist moderate material costs (paint and canvas), and a greeting card company low material costs (paper), but they all have "material costs". These knobs are what you see through the business lens, and when approached this way it is clear that there is nothing magical about being an artist — it is simply a different configuration of those knobs.
Hard, hard disagree.
Art and art-adjacent fields (storytelling in print and film, music, videogame design, etc.) are working with intangibles. The best artists wield qualities such as technique, perspective, charisma, zeitgeist and so on.
They build their creations in ways that they can't truly explain, and the resulting "product" generates emotions in their audiences - pleasure, sorrow, joy, energy, nostalgia, melancholy - and bonds that are so strong that they can't help but be drawn to the works.
Another way of looking at this dynamic: No one needs to listen to a favorite song, or visit an art museum, read a book by a talented author, or replay a beloved game in the same way that they may purchase a light bulb or sign up for a SaaS subscription. Yet TFA is treating art as merely another type of manufactured product.
Businesses have tried to harness art for millennia. Sometimes the businesses succeed. But where they often fail is assuming that art is a fungible commodity that can be created through an algorithm or assembly line, with the creative flame locked down and bent completely to the will of a business executive or technical product manager.
Such efforts from the likes of game studios or a record company or AI are derivative by nature and rarely inspiring. The exceptions are those built by creators whose intangibles still manage to shine through, despite the harnesses placed upon them.
I'm speaking from the perspective of someone who has worked in book publishing, news media, and pop music over many years (including a stint working for The KLF's record label, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10932055)
It doesn't sound like you're refuting the central claim. Artists still have to be concerned about marketing, sales (i.e. I made great art, but now need to find someone to buy it if I want to eat), revenue, profit (i.e. I made money, but if I spent more than I made on materials then I didn't actually make money), and so on. It's a business.
What you're highlighting is that art's value proposition is different from the value proposition of typical businesses. But not that artists are somehow free from having to worry about basic economics.
It's not a business. Selling art is a business. Making art isn't a business.
Many artists would rather blow up their careers than make work solely for business reasons.
There's a huge cadre of content creators and entertainers who are happy to do that, but - as the previous post says - their work is typically entirely forgettable. Even when it's commercially successful.
And successful original creators usually have business managers to deal with "basic economics."
The ideal for most artists is complete creative freedom and an open budget. Not many get there, and not everyone who does get there produces something memorable. But it happens occasionally, and it's usually far more interesting than create-to-market content.
> It's not a business. Selling art is a business. Making art isn't a business. Many artists would rather blow up their careers than make work solely for business reasons.
Again, you're arguing a distinction which the author agrees with. From the article:
> Most people who enjoy making art should not try to make it their full time job. When you turn an avocation (hobby) into a vocation (job) you have to do new things you do not enjoy.
I think perhaps you're getting hung up on some semantic quibble rather than focusing on the broader point. "Artist", "professional artist", "artist for a living", "someone who spends most of their hours making art but also needs to eat". Choose whichever term satisfies your complaint. These people need money to live, that's just how the world works.
Maybe I'm being thick here, but i still dont quite get how does he earn money from his artwork?
For example, how does he earn from the Honey Bear murals? does the city or building owner commission him for the murals? If so, does he do some kind of outreach or sales call to the building owners or is it the other way round?
Not an artist and nor am I in the art world, just curious how does business work in there
Large murals on, for example, commercial buildings or residences are typically commissioned. These are big enough to require scaffolding/lifts and take multiple days to paint; with some exceptions (vacant property) it'd be hard to pull that off without the owner calling the cops. The building owner is paying them for the mural, or in some cases there's city grants or arts council projects.
Lots of muralists document the art/business on youtube! Two I like: Kiptoe and SmoeNova
Probably here: https://store.fnnch.com/
In the blog post he also mentioned doing commissions.
As for the public art, I don't think he was directly paid for the initial honey bear, I think it was just marketing - that is, its popularity boosted his following.
> A jeweler might have high material costs (gold and diamonds), an artist moderate material costs (paint and canvas), and a greeting card company low material costs (paper), but they all have "material costs".
There is a great line in the book Narconomics [0] that compares the "value added" of creating high end paintings to narcotics. He points out that the input (paint, coca leaves) are VERY cheap. The end product (high end paintings, cocaine) is very expensive.
(I believe he makes this point to show that raising the price of inputs slightly has no real bearing on the price at the end given the size of the margins)
0 - https://amzn.to/4r8fIJP
Good post. I'd argue this is very similar to solo game development. There's a lot of extra administrative stuff that simply has nothing to do with actually making games and a lot more to do with making a real business. So the framing there is accurate.
One difference is that video games often take a lot more investment - at least a full-size, not-a-game-jam one. That is, the risk and upfront investment can be a lot higher. But then I'm sure that with artists it's also years of slowly building up skills, reputation, contacts, etc - the author himself seems to imply he basically got lucky with the honey bear, and I feel it's the same with e.g. video games. Quality wise a lot of games are fine, but despite the hours / years invested they may never be successful. This is an issue in high-budget games too, with several high profile failures in recent years even though they did everything right. On paper.
> quality wise a lot of games are fine
aren't most of these just direct copies of some other game that went famous? e.g. Dark Souls set a genre "souls-like", Stardew Valley copied an old game but we can say they started the resurgence or development of cozy management games...
this resonates a lot. i'm building an indie mobile game right now and the ratio of "actual game dev" to "everything else" is probably 30/70 at this point. marketing, aso, community management, influencer outreach, accounting, support.
the bit about testing what sells vs what you love is real too. we ended up testing three completely different positioning angles simultaneously with different audience segments, just to figure out which one actually sticks. feels less like art and more like running experiments, but honestly that's what keeps you from burning cash on the wrong audience for months.
the Beatles analogy in the post is interesting but i think the better framing for indie creators is: you need a tight feedback loop. not "make 600 things and hope 50 land," more like "ship, measure retention at day 7, iterate." the constraint of small budgets actually forces better product thinking imo.
I'd say painting is quite a different business model than making music. There are different channels, people nowadays don't understand the value of music because they "have" everything on Spotify/Apple Music/whatever and there must be a huge tech behind you to sell good quality of sound. You also can't make your own CD (yes you can, but will it work with a CDR recorder?) and sell it progressively for $100 then for $500...
Paintings are really different kind of animal.
Painting is a tough business. If you have the talent to spend a month on a painting and then find people will happily pay $2000 for it in a gallery, you are a fantastic artist!
But the gallery takes 50% leaving you a gross income of $12k. Then you pay for your supplies and work expenses. If that's all you do, you end up way below the poverty line.
Music, unfortunately, has a very different business model not just because of the difference in medium, but because it's copyable.
You can share a photograph of a painting, but it's, just, not the painting. A rip of a CD is nearly identical experientially.
There are many who, however, sell tapes, MiniDiscs, SD cards and other obscure formats with a small but serious following.
> As a final note, if you make something that you like, at least one person will like it — you. If you make something you think other people will like, you run the risk of no one liking it at all. That would be sad.
Love that quote!
I think it borders on parody that this hyper capitalist, hype driven mindset (originally found in tech) has not only infected a lot of "art", but they are boasting about it. A more accurate title is how to make a living selling a very specific kind of popular mural/Art Basel/showroom/"elite" kind of art.
Many of the artists on the Art Basel run are nepo babies. Same with academic art, music, and architecture. It's incredibly hard to get into those circles without some kind of independent income and/or cultural networking.
Every so often the invisible hand picks someone off the streets, but it happens much less often than it might.
Contemporary artist here, with gallery representation. I also teach on, arguably, the best undergrad "fine art" program in the world.
It is worth pointing out what this artist's practice actually is. The audience here might be afraid of conjectures around the subjective phenomena of "taste", so let me propose this:
That thing that everyone complains about here when you make an interesting app, put it up, and there's a cheaper Chinese produced version of it within a month that's got a better ranking in the app store than yours? That's what this guy is doing in art terms. The "product" is derivative, and frankly, so is the hustle. That's not why most of us make art, and his work wouldn't stand up to scrutiny by my undergrads (much less the "art world" in general) who are typically optimizing for innovation in the field.
I would argue that this guy doesn't really need to be an artist, in the same way that we don't really need the 50th knockoff of the same app. Sure he can do it and I guess good on him for making some money from it, but those are separate questions compared to those of most artists. He could use those same skills he discussed to sell used cars or vapes or something. Or maybe just be a programmer and "ship"? Notice that he doesn't even attempt to explain what is novel or contextually relevant about his work, or even where his desire to do it, as opposed to selling any other product, comes from?
Personally, I use my teaching to create economic space for myself to not need to be in thrall to a flippant and cruel "market". I have some basic rules for my gallery (no sales to arms dealers, no sales to oil industry, leaning that way towards AI/tech tbh) but one of the reasons I have a gallery, in addition to lightening my cognitive load of all the admin and sales in general, is because I suspect it would damage my capacity to make cutting-edge work if I knew how the sausages were made. It's most certainly not the only way to do it, it's just how I've landed. I usually advise my students starting out to follow the Phillip Glass method (really, the 1970s-90s method): get a part-time job that pays the most you can get but that does the work that will kill your mind the least, so you have at least 1 extra day and the mental space to do your 'real' work with that 1 day plus the weekend. Then over time, if you get paid for the art, cut down on the part-time job, and repeat. I will admit it is getting much harder to do this now, so my advice may be outdated.
Anyway, I'm being snarky, and he would correctly argue it's gatekeeping. But just a bit of context for the discussion here.
It sounds like / I feel like there's two categories of artists; the one is in it for the art (and would benefit from e.g. a patron or subsidies like the Irish one mentioned elsewhere / also currently on the front page) if their stuff isn't commercially viable.
But the other, and this is the vast, VAST majority of people, create content. Not to be too disparaging, but if the objective is a paycheck then that's what is being made. And this is everywhere - marketing, digital design, video game assets, book series, commissions, etc.
Yes it takes artistic skills to do it, but is it "art"? Is it something (as the comment I'm replying to says) "novel or contextually relevant"? Or is it doing what needs doing because the boss says so?
I think it's important to make this distinction. And that's also the gist of people who want to do art as their day job - there's plenty of work, but you have to accept you're doing what other people want you to do instead of try to do something new.
You’re making a point mostly about aesthetics. But regardless of aesthetics, to be a working artist, the artist needs to make money.
Sounds like you make money partially by teaching and partially by gallery sales. Which are two of the commercially viable paths that are mentioned in this essay.
> Then over time, if you get paid for the art, cut down on the part-time job, and repeat.
The point of this article is simply that the above will not happen by accident.
Post your work
It depends on your art form and what you’re trying to say. Because once you start optimizing your work for sales, you are deliberately going down a certain path.
I don’t want to criticize that path - because being paid as an artist is a millennia-old thing. The idea that true artists don’t work for money is something that came out of the Romantic era, and many, many world famous historical artists like Da Vinci or Michelangelo were doing a job for rich clients. But it seems to lock you into a path where you need to replicate the same style over and over again, because that’s what you’re known for.
There’s a great little scene in the Basquiat movie about this:
I'm talking about the same kind of work. The same style, so people can recognize you and don’t get confused. Once you’re famous, airborne, you gotta keep doing it in the same way. Even after it’s boring. Unless you want people to really get mad at you…which they will anyway.
https://youtu.be/hfI1YAo32fc?si=05msdQY9-SCJAMhX
I think the Phillip Glass solution of doing a completely unrelated job is probably a better solution, IF you’re trying to focus on expression. It also gives you more material for creating; if you read many writers and artists’ bios, their day jobs directly impacted their work.
My favorite example being Moby Dick - could someone without years of whaling experience even begin to conceive of that book?
Move to Ireland apparently https://www.reuters.com/world/ireland-rolls-out-pioneering-b...
whatever you do, don't quit your job to start a business thinking that will give you freedom and autonomy. if you believe you are called to make art, in whatever form, you have a moral obligation to make that art. aka find a boring corporate job where you can slack hella hard and work on your craft during company time.
also don't expect your art to pay your rent, because then your work will follow the market and it will suck. your spirit will suffer, too.
this person's art is..... dismal
Everyone's a critic.
Move to Ireland, they just rolled out basic income for artists
There is a program for Basic Income for artists in Ireland, but it obviously assumes you are a legal resident of Ireland. It is limited to 2,000 artists and there are more applicants than there are spots. Property rental is expensive in Ireland. If there are people seriously interested, these links should clarify the details of the program.
https://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/employment/unemploymen...
https://www.gov.ie/en/department-of-culture-communications-a...
https://www.gov.ie/en/department-of-culture-communications-a...
Ireland is a great country but I wouldn't move here for that specific reason. There are other great reasons that would be much more important or relevant.
One reason to not move to Ireland is that housing is very expensive, there are plenty of other problems too.
How does that work? How does the government decide who is an artist and therefore worthy vs someone who just pretends to be one to get the free money?
It's being discussed in another Hacker News submission: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46977175
Don't move for that; it's just $1,500/month.
https://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/employment/unemploymen...
Could go either way- I think that ruthless free market forces are what keeps art good.
yeah! without the threat of financial ruin we'd never get to have the brilliance of thomas kinkade and kenny g
I worked out it's easier to make a living doing something well paid and do the art on the side. Sometimes people pay me for the art if I'm lucky, mostly photographic prints. I wouldn't want to do it the other way around.
Most artists or musicians I know do this.
They have a 9-5 and do the fun stuff on the side.
Not as fun but you gotta eat.
> While you can learn from failures, only sales strengthen the muscle because only they show that someone actually cares about what you are making
There are languages where there's a distinction between artists and painters.
They stopped being an artist with that one line.
Art is basically a value tokken store for the super wealthy and they keep it valuable by limiting the supply to what is "valuable" art by forming one huge cartell. Gallerys, museums, art brokers are either in this cArtel or they are not.
Your value as an artist depends not on the quality of your art, but mostly by your ability to sell yourself to and into service to these cArtells. Like any scam demanding free labour and enthusiasm by the young, the art industry has an aura that it projects to scoop up daydreamers and those rebelling.
That is true for high end art, but there are lots of artists who make a living who mostly sell to people who like their stuff.
I kind of think that “art” that is about repeat sales and branding is really more craft than art.
I don’t mean that it’s without merit just that although these things live in the same space they are not the same.
I really enjoyed this post. Nice balance of pragmatism while enjoying the enjoyment of a craft in itself.
great post, thank you! I recently started showing and selling my art (I do plotter art and paintings). It’s both exciting and frustrating at times to see how pieces “land” or completely miss.
I appreciate the time and effort they put into writing that. Interesting to see not only their own art but also the examples from other artists.
Any recommendations for getting exposure to other on-the-way-to-being-popular artists like the X-Ray one that was highlighted?
Help me understand… he makes a full time living getting people to pay him to paint murals of honeybears? What is he selling, exactly?
His store is literally just the same image of a generic honeybear… is he selling $10k plus a month of that same honeybear print?
Awesome post - really insightful!
> Mozart wrote over 600 songs, but only about 50 of them are widely played.
Calling Mozart’s works “songs” is ignorant.
Mozart wrote some songs (“lieder”, or art songs for voice and piano), but his work spans operas, symphonies, concertos, chamber music, masses and other sacred music, and solo piano works.
He also did some neat obscene works, like his classic Eat my ass:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C78HBp-Youk
Selling unique works is harder due to sentimentality. Easier to sell replicated works, like digital music.
I compose all sorts of music but the only music people really like (and give me money for) is pirate music.
Not pirated music. Pirate music.
shrug
hey at least someone is listening to it XD
I've got multiple hours of music in different genres and get 50 views in 10 years...
What's pirate music?
Running Wild.
https://runningwild.bandcamp.com/album/crossing-the-blades
So he's basically saying that artists should use vandalism to become successful? Kind of a very bold proposition.
Worked for Bansky, to great success, I might add.