What does it mean to be an artist? Well, for anyone who wishes to have their work seen and appreciated, and anyone who then hopes to make modest income from the art, it means spending a lot of time in pursuits that have nothing to do with art.

Brian Sherwin of myartspace blog today writes to artists about the need to have an artist statement, something that briefly summarizes what your art is about. Don’t expect your art to speak for itself, he writes. Get over whatever self-consciousness you have, recognize the need to market yourself, and get going. (That’s a brutal summary of his post, an artist statement of it, if you will.)

I faced a similar demand as a freelance writer. I needed an artist statement for my fiction (suspense with sardonic humor), my humor column (Art Buchwald-inspired ironic look at modern culture) and non-fiction (digital age policy issues). I also needed what is known as a TV Guide summary for each piece I pitched, fiction or non-fiction. Anyone who has read a TV Guide (or used an on-screen program guide, for you younger readers) knows, it looks like this: “5:00 pm, I Love Lucy, Lucy tries to hide an expensive purchase from Ricky.”

As a non-fiction writer, that wasn’t hard: “The election of George W. Bush could mean a strong deregulatory bent under likely FCC Chairman Michael Powell.” As a fiction and humor writer this was more difficult, because a part of me was in each of those pieces and it was difficult to sum up one’s deepest self in a sentence.

But artists are asked to do that and more. We must be salesmen. I spent a good part of my day writing query letters on nice stationery and mailing them off, glad when an editor requested sample pages but dismayed at the same time because the postage was higher. (Now you can pitch with email, but I suspect the ease of that has meant editors get too many pitches and it’s harder for your voice to be heard.)

We must sometimes be distributors. I managed to get my humor column picked up by a few newspapers, but I had no syndicate to work through, I marketed it myself. (To those who think me a luddite, I had a web site and e-newsletter promoting the column in the mid-1990s before most people knew what a web site was.)

We must sometimes compromise our art if we want to eat. I was a freelance writer as a profession; that meant in a tie, editors ruled. Usually the compromise was modest. Once was I prepared to walk away despite generous pay (I had my eye on a motorcycle with that money) and the prominence of the publication (which I knew would help to have on my publication list). I felt my name couldn’t be associated with the changes made by a chain of editors. Fortunately the editor-in-chief saw it and wondered why the piece didn’t look more like X, which is what I had originally written. The publication ran my original piece, and all was right with the world.

Some out there wish for a Yochai Benkler view of the world, one large kibbutz where art is created for art’s sake and somehow society makes sure artists get to eat. There are of course plenty of artists out there who do choose to create art for art’s sake, but some wish to support themselves with their art, as my colleague Lucinda has written.

If we value art in this society, we should also value the artists within society. We should empower them to pursue what path they will with their art. We should recognize they are already forced to do many things unrelated to their art in order to continue creating art. And we shouldn’t look to put more burdens on them (only allow a performing artist to self-distribute on the Internet, for example, out of a hatred for “the system”) nor try to create collective schemes that take away the power of the artist to determine his or her own future.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, October 23rd, 2008 at 9:30 am by Patrick Ross and is filed under advertising, creators. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.