By Brad Hamann
As a working artist who sold his first piece in 1976, I find myself amazed at the stubborn perpetuation of the fallacious concept of the “starving artist.” Incredibly, it continues to find acceptance as a common truism, and, unfortunately it can sometimes be found surviving fungus-like in the recesses of the unlikeliest of places—university and college art departments. After nearly four decades of interaction with art professionals, educators, and students, I’ve come to consider the spectre of the starving artist one of the more destructive and soul-devouring concepts remaining in our society today. It needs to be banished once and for all, along with the other societal, gender, and racial stereotypes that are happily finding a shrinking cadre of adherents.
Today’s artists face a fragmented marketplace and the challenge of global competition. The flip side of this, however, is the rise of an amazing array of technology to promote and sell one’s art without ever leaving the studio.
In her marvelous book, The Artist’s Guide—How to Make a Living Doing What You Love, studio artist Jackie Battenfield presents the challenges faced by individuals who choose art as a career, along with the need to utilize professional business-based strategies for career success. Of the many concepts presented in the Department of Art’s capstone course, Senior Portfolio Design, the most important encompass the need for blending the artist’s passion for making art with a dispassionate business-like approach to the selling of art.
Artists who wish to build a life for themselves that is abundant in every way must internalize the belief that art and commerce go hand in hand. It is at this juncture that the paths between the professional and the dilettante diverge. One student goes on to experience a fulfilling and rewarding artistic career while the other finds his or her art practice devolving into a hobby.
The true professional artist must become an expert in the areas of promotion, finance, time management, networking, and the handling of the technologies available to present their art to a potentially worldwide audience. The career toolbox available to young artists today—including inexpensive digital printing of postcards and brochures, easily created online portfolios, the brainstorming found on artist discussion boards, and professional blogs devoted to sharing strategies—is so expansive that the main challenge to the individual is simply to choose the best personal marketing strategy. The “artist as entrepreneur” is the concept around which the Department of Art builds all of its professional practice teachings.
I have found that the design and studio art majors I have had the privilege to work with are as intelligent and motivated as students in any other area of study. The faculty seeks to empower students in ways that will allow them to experience an art career that is as satisfying as, or more satisfying than the ones we ourselves have had. Give a talented art student the right career management tools right out of the gate, and his or her success rate and career earnings have a solid chance of comparing favorably to most other professions.
So when I hear someone talk about the need for artists to have a “real job” to support their respective art practice, I calmly remind them that while Puccini’s La bohème is an enchanting opera and Knut Hamsun’s novel Hunger a fascinating look at an individual artist struggling with poverty, the concept of the starving artist as promulgated in 2014 reveals a jaded and outmoded view and is an example of the very worst sort of self-fulfilling prophecy. There is nothing noble or romantic about young artists who have fallen prey to the idea that there is no money to be made from their art.
Art as a career covers a wide range of occupations, and it is simply one of the most rewarding and satisfying paths one can take. In the Department of Art here at Eastern New Mexico University, training our students in the techniques of art is only part of our mission. The other half of the equation is equipping them with the career success tools to go out into the world and make a good living as working artists and art educators with zero concessions to outdated belief systems. The public—including legislators, administrators, and educators—continually needs to be reminded about the crucial role of art in a healthy society, and I look forward to the day when the current focus on STEM evolves to a higher level with the acknowledgment of the essential importance of STEAM.