What You Starving Artists SHOULD Do To Stop STARVING!

No, NOT get a job. It’s even simpler than that.

Sell what people are actually buying. If people are not currently buying your work, they will not start buying it. Hang onto your seats because this may sting a bit.

As beautiful and meaningful and complex and unique as your art is, people will not buy it.

When people buy, they are not buying beauty

When people buy, they are not buying beauty. They buy the negotiable currency that your artwork creates.

While there is certainly timeless fad resistant true beauty, for the most part, beauty is so subjective that if you want to be a professional artist, you must know what to sell. You must sell something that spans fads, seasons, and cultures.

In the agrarian era, it was beautiful to be pale. Pale skinned women were considered beautiful because they obviously didn’t have to work out in the fields. In the modern era, tan women are considered beautiful. Tan women are considered beautiful because they obviously don’t have to stay in a florescent room typing away their lives – instead they can lay out pool-side.

What you think is beautiful has a snowflake’s chance in spring of being converted into a negotiable currency. To increase the likelihood of selling your art, you must sell what people are willing to pay for. You must sell something your buyer can turn around and sell back out to someone else. You must sell currency.

The currency that you can sell along with your art is You. You. If you do not sell yourself with your art, you will forever starve.

When people bought picassos, they bought picasso as well.  And picasso had a lot of negotiable social currency.

Think about it.

Picasso was at every party. Picasso was a ladies man. Picasso traveled with 14 year old French muses. Picasso luncheoned with dignitaries, royalty, men of commerce and men of the cloth. If you bought a Picasso, you were bound to be the center of conversation at a picasso table until the next buyer. If you bought enough Picassos, he might even loan you one of his muses (in that culture, it was considered perfectly acceptable and honorable due to economic and lifespan issues).

Mostly, if you bought a Picasso, your name was bound to be PR’d to the wealthiest and most powerful people of the time.

You drink, study, and live where you do because of who you will meet there

People bought Picasso because Picasso offered social and business opportunities. You don’t drink $14 Martiniis because you can’t make a better Martini at home. You don’t go to Harvard because Harvard has some secret teachings. You don’t live in NYC because it has the most beautiful landscape and cleanest air. You drink, study, and live where you do because of who you will meet there.

The art work was more than a status symbol. The art was a legal tender note that was negotiable for access to the in crowd of the day. @gapingvoid understands this. Whenever someone purchases a @gapingvoid work, he treats them like family. He introduces them to his large and influential network of friends in the media and advertising world. Is it any wonder the buyers are CEOs of companies who want free PR and marketing? Build your network. Make friends. Build alliances. Introduce your buyers to your social sphere. Follow and mimic what @gapingvoid does.

Follow me at http://twitter.com/journik for the next episode on how to succeed as an artist or entrepreneur…

Posted via web from journik’s posterous – a grade A shouldery. (social media marketing wise)