One of the worst things that’s happened to us as artists is commodification. We’ve been conditioned to see our work as products for marketing and consumption, but who could blame us?
Even though people enjoy art enough to spend money on it, making a living from making art is difficult. Artists treat their art like a business because it helps then get their art out there and generate income from it, but it comes with a plethora of caveats that are reshaping how we think of, make and interact with art.
Platforms That Take A Cut
There are a lot of platforms out there make online content creation easier for the non-tech-savvy, but at what cost? They often take a significant cut of profit generated from your work for having a nice interface and making the publishing process slightly more simple.
But an hour or two of research will save you a lot of time and money in the long run when it comes to having total control over your labor. You’ll find that most the “complicated” options out there are not actually that complicated, and that they’re extremely affordable in comparison to the all-in-one platforms.
The learning curve is slightly higher, but you gain valuable skills, save/make money, and have a greater degree of control. It also helps to know what’s happening behind the scenes, technologically speaking.
Algorithms and Exposure
You rely on their algorithms for exposure, and the algorithm is meant to serve their financial interests, not yours.
If you want your work to appear in front of people, you’ll feel pressured to do what an algorithm deems popular. In conforming to the algorithm, you lose your artistic voice.
Feedback Loop Of Art
A lot of our creative decision making process is molded by years of looking at and processing art. Even the choice to deviate comes from knowledge of what is considered “normal” or “standard.”
Thus, the art environments we find ourselves play an enormous part in our art output. We are attracted to different “styles” that speak to us personally. We adopt technique, subject matter, and visual markers from artist communities and then share our art within that community. For some people, this is all that matters: the social networking side of art.
But the flip side is that some artists feel pressure to conform. To make art at the same level or speed as other artists they see online. When we see the success of an artist, we are convinced that we must follow in their footsteps else die away in obscurity.
It’s difficult to move away from this process, and it’s ever harder to imagine an alternative. It requires an enormous amount of confidence, originality, and freedom to experiment. But fundamentally, this is what makes an artist “stand out”
Takeaway
What’s the benefit though? Why bother standing out? I think it depends on what your mission is as an artist. And it’s ok if you don’t really have one yet, or never plan to.
If you do have a mission, it may sound naive and idealistic to say you shouldn’t pay so much attention to your art idols who’ve accomplished things you want to accomplish. But that is what I’m saying. Being an artist is an idealistic choice, so you should embrace it in its entirety.
Your favorite artists may or may not have taken big risks, but somewhere down the line of inspiration and influences, somebody did. You can choose to be a follower and hope your version is special, or you can choose to be a leader and set an example for others.
What I’m writing may sound like a gross oversimplification, but what if, for a second, we truly believed that art shouldn’t be so complicated to begin with? It should just be about doing what you love and being human, right?