Art and Promotion
Great
article/rant at Viceland on artists and how they become successful.
Creative Publicity
Today's Artists Don't Need a Studio
Hey, which celebrities did Mick Jagger network, flirt with, fuck, or try to meet to get where he is today?
None.
Jagger comes from a time when narcissism, exhibitionism and — oh, yes — hard work and creativity were still the only tools of the trade. The idea of “meeting the right people,” expending some of your creative energy to set up a mini-self-promotion agency, wasn’t on the front burner. Drive and talent did most of it. Can you believe it? He actually thought his talent would carry him through. Mick and his ilk were the last to subscribe to the old myth of the creative genius. It seems incredible today, but it was once considered beneath an artist to do his own marketing. The cranking out of flyers and invitations, the false patter of cocktail schmoozing, the gossipy jangle of telephones, or a mind for business were all considered alien to the artist’s creativity. Somebody else took care of that shit.
Compare Mick to my downstairs neighbor Adam Andrews. Adam is a 20-year-old musician and artist who came east from Portland to make it in New York. For him each day is a trade-off between developing his very original musical style and finding ways to get it noticed. He takes it for granted that nobody will ever know his name unless he sticks it in their face. So he’s copped a free, hip, noticeable haircut from his friend in beauty school, learned to crash parties, compiled a massive mailing list on his computer, produced his own CD with ripped-off cover art, and sucked up to the very people he once read about in seventh grade in Interview but now detests.
All this self-promotion is taking the bite out of Adam’s creativity. Before he came to New York, he was knocking out a song a week. Now he’s been pushing the same demo for over a year. But because of people like him, artists who are spending more time on their work will never get noticed. There’s just too much aggressive marketing competition.
And a bit more:
Maybe the worst aspect of the Baby Networker phenomenon is the callousness with which they approach established talent. In the past, young, worshipful artists sought out culture heroes who’d inspired them. These groupies were the types who had memorized every word or chord progression of their favorite celebrity. William Burroughs had a string of them. So did stuffy old poets like James Merrill and aging rock stars like Dylan. Even that old Nazi sympathizer Leni Reifenstahl, who filmed for Hitler and just turned 100, still has a young buck-bottom to carry her camera equipment. When these old-fashioned idolizers finally met their idols, they were always full of admiration and awe. They wished only to serve and learn.
Not so today. Fledgling artists don’t worship idols, they merely fix them in their sites as potential targets. Imagine somebody working James Joyce or Shakespeare cuz they knew he was well positioned in the industry. There they’d sit, yawning during Hamlet or admitting that Ulysses put them to sleep while in the same gesture slapping some half-baked adolescent manuscript or homemade CD down for him to read or listen to.
Posted by DaveH at June 1, 2005 11:55 AM