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"Coca-Cola", by Andy Warhol - copyright 1999 Andy Wahol Foundation for the Visual Arts - Coca-Cola is a
trademark of, The Coca-Cola Company,
Atlanta, GA. - Thank you.
If you're serious about regularly staying in touch with, and building your client list (as the Abundant Artist recommends), Constant Contact is great. Really, give it a try, its free for awhile - no sweat, and it is a very effective way staying in touch with clients very professionally.
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Art Marketing Note:
For any dedicated artist today, a good web site is not just essential but critical. It is your first line for showing work to galleries, clients and a variety of other situations. Abundant Artist recommends,reliable, affordable web services from Yahoo! Web Hosting , for domain registration, web hosting and a variety of small business services. They are the excellent and have some very good artist directories for listing your site and services as well.
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An Interview with Art Marketing and Artist Career Development Expert, Caroll Michels continued
return to page 1
Chris: So how does the young artist start breaking into
the marketplace?
Caroll: Well, there are several ways and, of course, the
most important thing is to create a body of work. The studio work
is the most important, and once you have a body of work, then there
are different ways of going [about] it.
Of course, we’ve entered a new age with the Internet, which is
fabulous and it’s changing things. It’s changing the traditional
way people used to market their work, which would be the slide package,
which I think is totally ineffective.
So it’s a matter of really assessing your goals in terms of, …
what’s the goal here? And it might not be a goal that lasts forever
and ever. It could be a three-year goal, a two-year goal, a five-year
goal.
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Who is the audience that you want to reach? What is the purpose?
I mean, people have a very hard time when they say they want to
be a successful artist. They’re not quite sure what that means because
success could be translated into earning a living, supporting yourself
full time as an artist. It could be exhibiting. It could be receiving
peer approval from other artists. Is it approval from the general
public? There are lots and lots of areas where one can seek approval,
and it gets very, very cloudy, and it’s important to analyze what’s
going on. … On the other hand, goals can change. They’re not written
in stone, and that’s very important to understand, not to get tied
into one goal for the rest of your life.
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Chris: So should the artists copyright their work?
Caroll:
Yes, this is very, very important. You can do a simple copyright,
which is basically, for example, a painter can sign his or her name
on the back of the canvas and put the copyright seal and a date.
But I recommend, especially if … any images are going on the Internet,
that you go through the Library of Congress and do it that way.
It’s not difficult and you can get information online about that.
Chris: So how does the artist approach a dealer?
Caroll: … There are several ways of doing it, and it depends
where you live. For example, in New York City, dealers, for the
most part, are very inaccessible. And the traditional way of approaching
dealers, even in smaller areas, is to send a slide package and a
resume, information about your work, an artist’s statement.
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And I have had big problems with slide packages for a long time
because most dealers do not project the slides. So they’re looking
at these very, very tiny images, usually with unnatural light, and
they’re making a decision within 30 seconds of whether they’re interested
in the work or not.
So I’ve really encouraged artists to send in large photographs.
And of course, now with the Internet, people are using … the Internet
Web site as a portfolio, which is really, really great. Not all
dealers are high-tech and don’t have Web sites, so they might not
be online. But this is a wonderful way, and it’s a great advance
that’s happened in the last few years.
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But the problem with the dealers is … generally dealers take 50
percent. I don’t think the public is really aware of how much …
from a sale they actually keep. … The economics are very, very off
balance.
You know, if I had my way, … I would really love to get rid of
the whole gallery system, and this could only happen if artists
had enough self-confidence to show without using a gallery for validation,
and if the public had enough self-confidence to be able to buy from
artists right out of the studio. So I don’t think it’s going to
happen in my lifetime. But this would be really, really a great
system for me.
Dealers are, for the most part, and I really hate to generalize
about a certain group of society, but they’re kind of a strange
lot and they have an awful lot of power. They’re really salespeople.
And artists, unfortunately, really feel that somehow they have the
golden eye. Only the dealer can ascertain whether an artist is talented.
So if there’s neediness going on from the side of the artist, the
dealer gets more and more power. …
So there’s a great imbalance in the power, and this is something
that I like to do as an artist advocate -- to empower artists to
take control over their careers because once … there is money in
the picture, a dealer is not thinking in the artist’s best interest.
They’re thinking in their best interests.
So there’s an awful lot of hanky-panky that goes on, a lot of
dealers don’t work with contracts. I always say, “Don’t work with
anyone who won’t sign a contract.” Not that … the contract is a
guarantee if you end up in court that you’re going to win, but it’s
much safer that you use a contract.
Chris: And is there a way to show your art outside of the
dealer network?
Caroll: Absolutely. … As much as I’m putting down the gallery
system, I think … you can use the gallery system, but you should
use other vehicles as well.
I love to see artists selling out of their studio. I like to see
artists showing in museums and alternative spaces combined with
galleries.
I mean, the benefit of the gallery, of course, is artists work
in such an isolated vacuum. So even having a show, not necessarily
for selling work, it’s also a culmination and celebration and you’re
going public. And I think this is very, very important for people
who are alone in the studio so much of the time. …
And then there are ways of going directly to, for example, directly
to the public, to corporations, and this … becomes a way of life
for many artists who are able to handle this kind of thing, of mixing
the business as well as the creative endeavors. Not all artists
can do that, as I said, and can’t be expected to. And therefore,
they might have to just rely on gallery representation because they
just are unable to meet the public. It might be something about
their personality.
Click to: Read the rest of the interview with Caroll Michels / return to pg. 1
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