“Being good in business is the most fascinating kind of art. Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art.” – Andy Warhol
Warhol was right!
Remembering that art is a business can be particularly difficult if you spend the bulk of your day creating art, and even more so if you were never taught the basics of the business world – how to market yourself and your work. The truth is that understanding how to run a business is essential to making a living as an artist. Luckily for you, the steps to achieving this are more accessible than ever in this day and age. With some basic information, tools, dedication, and practice you can learn the art of business.
If possible, you want to delegate, even if at first that means finding some interns to help you with your marketing. You definitely do not want to suddenly take on the entire business yourself. Chances are that doing so will overwhelm you, interrupting your creative process and stopping you dead in your tracks.
Start by outlining the steps you will need to take. Create a long-term business plan, and a more immediate marketing plan. However, don’t let this volume of information and forward thinking distract you, you do not need to complete everything on your list at once. The list will simply help clarify your needs and act as a roadmap.
Define your brand. If the term “brand” is anathema to you, as it is for many artists, throw out the term. Define how you want to be perceived. How do you want the public, the media, galleries and collectors to view you and your art? Integrate your core aesthetic into this perception and your presentation. Once defined, weave this into all aspects of your work and your marketing, including your logo, website, business cards, etc. Present you and your art in a consistent way. Don’t haphazardly switch colors, fonts, typefaces, or graphics. Create a consistent look and feel.
Now realize that you need a marketing strategy. The truth is you can’t sell your work if you don’t sell your work. Don’t fool yourself into believing you’re marketing when you’re not. Simply blasting out emails to galleries or the media and waiting for a response is not marketing. Whomever you’re approaching is most likely being inundated by similar requests daily and traveling down this road will inevitably lead to disappointment and deleted emails. In blind pitching to these people, you’re asking quite a bit from them and you need to offer something more enticing on your end in return.
When pitching to the media, don’t simply give them a story about your work or you as an artist, pitch a story that interests them. Most artists are so focused on what they personally find interesting that they don’t see the bigger picture. They miss the fact that if the story pitched does not interest journalists, producers or editors, it’s going to go nowhere.
Although Warhol was certainly an artistic revolutionary in his own right, it was not just his artwork that solidified him as a legend. As mentioned in the beginning of this post, what separated Warhol from many of his contemporaries (and even artists in the succeeding decades) was how he approached the world of commerce.
He saw business as an ally to his creation, not as the enemy.
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