Success in Art

It was a nice surprise to find an art chapter in a success book even when I was not trying to find neither. I didn´t have too much hope on finding something interesting in this particular book, perhaps because I have read many success books that fail to make the case for it. Any book that states that is able to distill any universal law should be read carefully.

I don´t wish to pass any judgement or spoil any surprise for you if you ever read the book or this chapter, which I recommend if you are interested to enter the art market or have any dreams to be a successful artist. Setting aside the success factor for other professions that the book explains, it was quite interesting to read that the author and his team gathered sets of data to make a case about how art networks work for galleries around the world.

Even when this text might conclude in a disheartening idea for the hopeful artist, nowadays the art markets have been evolving, mostly due to the openness of platforms to publish their work and to be known by a wider audience. The thick line between art galleries, art critics, sales people and the public is getting thinner every time, and artists are able to have more control over what they are able to create and sale.

Setting aside the uninteresting process on how the current art market operates, the success of an artist and its work does not depend on the networks, the critics or the monetary value of the pieces, it solely depends on what the artist defines as success. We learned from the earlier expressions of humankind, that art is an innate process, that is mainly the result of the need of communication among humans, and even when the modern concept of art is related to an art gallery or a price tag, the art market is a human modern invention. The price tag in an art piece does not represents its intrinsic value, it represents the value that the market needs it to have.

Art networks might support the artist in need of exposure of its creations to make a living out of it, but it does not represent how successful an artist is. Throughout humankind development we were able to find an infinite amount of sculptures, paintings and art expressions made by anonymous people, most of them died penniless, as complete strangers to fame, or barely making it into art books. Can we state that these artists were failures because their art did not have a price tag and barely made some money to buy bread and oils? What would Vincent or Amadeo think about this? Is the concept of great art bounded to a high price tag? to a market?.

Even when we are not still able to measure the aesthetics of art pieces, or the basic concepts that make art great, the text is a good effort on trying to understand how performance and networks affect modern art markets. If you want to take a peek at the book you can get it from the author´s website at https://barabasi.com/book/the-formula.

The concept of art success is as valid as the concept of being successful at being human.

Success in Art(c)sanxez