Who are the most marketing-driven artists alive & in history

Lightwizard
Lightwizard, my favorites among Asherman's work are his pastels and his drawings. Unfortunately, he has not posted any of his drawings, which would knock your socks off. He has a great talent.

BBB

I saw the more impressionistic landscapes over on The Raven's Realm about two years ago. They were quite good. If the work on the link is newer work, it's a bit too tightly painted for me. The abstract image is a good experiment and very colorful.

I liked the dancing trees and Frenrear. You seem to use oil paint in the same way you use oil pastels - imitating the kind of marks, color use, and look you would get with pastels.

One advantage of oil painting over pastels is that you can mix the paint on a pallate before it gets on canvas to fine-tune the hue/intensity of color, and that there are a wide range of brush strokes available (as many as there are applicators.) I'm not familiar with your personal goals in your work, but it may be useful for you to experiment with color and mark. [Right now, in my own work, I'm focusing on fine-tuning mark to suit different surfaces/expressions.]

Oh, and if anyone is dying to see my work, ditto with the e-mail suggestion. And yes, my friend -is- supposed to be working on the site. Le sigh.

An intereting side note - I attended a lecture by a forensic sketch artist today, and decided that is not what I want to go into. Although, it is a very interesting science.

For what it's worth, the pictures on the site that Aunt Bea supplied are all older works. Nothing there from the last couple of years. I don't work in pastels, I used to do a bit with oil pastel. Now almost everything is oil on canvas, or masonite.

The old pieces that I still have can be had for very reasonable prices these days.

Artists Told 'Don't Give Up Day Job'
Artists Told 'Don't Give Up Day Job'
Wed Nov 19, 9:30 AM ET

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australian artists know they have to suffer for their art, but a new survey reveals exactly how tough it is to be an actor, writer, dancer or painter with average artistic income just scraping above the poverty line.

Nicole Kidman is Australia's richest actor, earning an annual US$27 million according to Forbes magazine's 2003 Rich List, but a survey of artists titled "Don't Give Up Your Day Job" has found one third of them earn less than the poverty line.

The survey by Australia's peak arts body, The Australia Council, found artists had a mean "creative income" of A$17,000 (US$12,230). Australia's poverty line for a single person is around A$15,400 a year, higher if you are married and have children, as many artists are.

More startling was the fact that half Australian artists had a "creative income," that is money earned purely from artistic work, of less than A$7,300 in the year 2000/01, showed the survey received on Wednesday.

That statement, "Don't give up your day job," has been close to coming out of my mouth when artists come into the gallery to show work. If all these artists on this poll have attempted to get a gallery to show their work or have been in community venues either judged or not judged and try to sell their work, it may be it just isn't very good. Believe me, I've seen some pretty bad stuff executed (sic) by wanna be artists. The gallery has work that has been published commercially which is not that good even for decorative art and it does sell. It's really subjective so picking out one artist who was the most market driven is difficult -- Kincaid can fill the bill rather conclusively in my book at the present time, but many would still say Dali or Neiman.

BTW, bear in mind that Leroy Neiman and his publisher, Knoedler and Co., managed to get his prints up to $5,000.00 plus and Hiro Yamagata had prints changed hands on the secondary market for as high as $20,000.00. Today, one is lucky to get $1500.00 out of any Neiman or Yamagata print.

Another name for this commercial work is fad art. One recent fad is the Paris scenes done in a kind of urban realism and has been on a wave for many years stemming out of one French artist's work, Andre Renoux. In the Yamagata naive art "school," Michel Delacroix is still going strong with high prices for his prints (it's been said that Delacroix bemoaned the fact that Yamagata copied his ideas even though the style is more cartoon pop). There are only a handful of artists who establish this kind of market. Kincaid has established it under mostly false pretenses, that a cheaply done common lithograph afixed to canvas and dabbled on by his elves is worth any more than a few hundred dollars.

art
Oh, LW, never stop.

I don't know, JL, sometimes I am just letting off steam because of the public's perception of this new industry of manufactured art. At least the legislators put the kabosh on calling these print studio manufactured graphics (with little or no involvement of the artist other than it is a copy of their work ) original prints. Now if they would apply the law to the Kincaid scam, they very well could call this art illicit and unlawful.

Well, my more commercially oriented painting sold last week. (YAY!) It was still wet when I delivered it to a venue which had location, location, location written all over it. I am not sure
that it entailed any less work or thought than the work that I usually do that no one wants to hang on their walls. Both are relevant to me.......

truth
Congratulations, Shepaints.

Don't ever feel that "going commercial" will ever be to your detrement, shepaints. Jasper Johns displayed his White Flag in Bergdorf Goodman's window as part of a display he devised. Both he and Rauschenberg had a small operation on the side in the beginning to make some bucks. I'm not suggesting that any artist who decides to be more commercially viable will ever make it to their stature but so what. We also can't be the star in the lastest production of "Swan Lake" with the Kirov Ballet or write like Gore Vidal.

The point is, producting what people want to enjoy and decorate their walls is only pretentious if it's passed off as something it is not.

truth
LW, as usual, a balanced and extremely sober perspective. I try SO hard to pick, but can't find an opening.

Now come on -- you can find something wrong. People will talk.

I've been on both sides of the aisle in regards to the high art world and the commercial art world so my perspective is based on some experience. Of course, there is more money in the commercialization rather than the academic track.
There is some very good commercially produced art that can sometimes transcend its pedestrian trappings. To conclude that Castelli, for instance, is not commercial is saying he doesn't make money and the artist doesn't make money. Everyone would like to use the word professional over commercial but that's a cop out. In the art field that is overtly commercial, it likely means the artist is producting for an audience -- he may be inspired to paint a scene or subject but whether the artist admits it or not, he is aiming to sell the work and wants to please as many as possible. So many artists who fit that description and they don't always start out with than in mind. They may actually want to paint picture postcard or greeting card landscapes. Need I mention any names?

It's the art marketers who got savvy that the work could be manufactured as limited edition prints and the majority of the public would believe it was more than just decoration. Actually, most of the customers I know don't have any other motive to buy other than the work goes with their decor. Landscapes are popular because they are depicting places people have likely visited. The figurative art can remind them of a close person they know or even a remote memory of a person. Color and style will always be a deciding factor in purchasing any artwork for one's home or business environment. In most cases, the marketing technique is right in there with selling a Lexus or a Maytag.

Then i suppose, LW, there are the "high end"
art galleries such as Saatchi in London, UK which
can make an artist's career. Think no further
than Damien Hirst.....There has got to
be immense crediblity in the gallery's reading of the market and immense marketing savvy involved too before a star is born, doncha think?

There are galleries, high end or just high. Each gallery has their own bevy of collectors in the more austere academic market. It's really a different kind of selling game as far as how the art is represented.

I like your take on "pretentiousness" LW...Yes,
agreed, there is nothing wrong with being able
to sell your art, but please be real!

One of my friends is a dealer. He says, "Good
art sells"........

I tend to agree with him but also believe that good art doesnt always sell! Take portraits for example,
many people don't want someone they don't know staring at them from their walls!

"Good" is generalizing and a simplification. Good cigarettes sell, too, but they are bad for you.

Bad art can be marketed just like any bad product. Eventually mediocrity catches up with the buying public and this is especially true with the commercial print market.

Mediocre art is possibly not bad for the health unless one suffers from a terminal case of buyer's remorse. That can be very painful (like, "What an idiot I am for buying this piece of junk art.")