5 Things That Destroy an Artist
Over the last few decades, I’ve had the opportunity to observe the art industry from many different angles. Here are five things that can potentially destroy an artist.
5 Things That Destroy an Artist
There are 5 things that can literally destroy an artist’s career.
Number 1: Artists are betrayed from the very beginning.
In almost every other industry, you learn the craft, develop your skills, and then apply them professionally.
A doctor studies medicine and practices medicine.
A dentist studies dentistry and becomes a dentist.
An engineer learns engineering and applies those principles.
Nobody expects them to reject what they learned in order to prove they are professionals.
Imagine an accountant saying:
“I don’t follow accounting rules because I want to be original.”
It would make no sense.
But in the art world, artists are often taught something completely different.
They are told that technique is academic.
That mastery is old-fashioned.
That to be a true artist, they must separate themselves from what they studied.
The trap begins at the very beginning.
Number 2: The myth that skill doesn’t matter.
A question that has confused the art world for decades:
“What makes an artist great?”
The answer is often unclear.
Sometimes recognition, reputation, and market attention become more important than the actual ability behind the work.
But without skill, what is the foundation of the artist?
Number 3: The obsession with dead artists.
Many collectors and institutions prefer to invest in artists who are no longer alive.
Major retrospectives often celebrate historical figures, while living artists struggle to receive the same attention.
The result?
Many artists become recognized only after they are gone.
Number 4: The false idea that true art should have no meaning.
A common belief is that art becomes more sophisticated when it removes narrative, emotion, and communication.
But throughout history, some of the greatest artworks had powerful ideas, stories, and human experiences behind them.
Meaning is not a weakness.
Number 5: Art becoming disconnected from the public.
When contemporary art becomes impossible for many people to understand, the audience doesn’t feel invited.
They feel excluded.
And when people stop connecting with art, they stop engaging with it.
Art has always been a conversation between the artist and society.
Without that connection, something important is lost.
The solution?
Artists need both:
Mastery of the craft.
And an understanding of the world around them.
Because talent alone is not enough.
The art world is a very particular industry. And every artist who enters this world, often without realizing it, ends up facing many of the same situations.
Identifying the critical elements and pain points of this industry can make it much easier to understand how it actually works, allowing artists to take them into account when developing their own strategy.
In particular, there are five situations that, in my opinion, simply make no sense. In this post, or video post, I want to point them out.
Number 1: Artists are betrayed from the very beginning.
The first point is also the hardest one to digest.
How is it possible that in an industry like this, anyone who spends ten or fifteen years of their life learning the craft eventually enters the professional world only to feel completely betrayed by it?
You are told that originality matters. That you have to think outside the box. That you have to be unique.
And yet, at the same time, your work has to be recognizable. A collector needs to be able to look at a painting and identify it as yours.
Number 2: The myth that skill doesn’t matter.
The second point is equally interesting.
Have you ever stopped to ask yourself what makes an artist great? What makes one artist important, while another is not? Is it fame? Or is it the ability to represent life?
These are all interesting questions.
Lately, one of the most sophisticated currents of contemporary art has been promoting the idea that an artist doesn’t necessarily need to be skilled, or to possess greater skills than others.
And this is where I disagree.
Because if skill is no longer part of the equation, what criteria are we left with to evaluate an artist?
Of course, the message that the artwork conveys intrinsically has to be just as important as the medium itself. But without these two elements working together, the audience is left in complete confusion.
Number 3: The obsession with dead artists.
As a living contemporary artist, I have some objections to the fact that the biggest sales in the art market are so often made in the names of artists who are already dead.
Maybe I’m too biased, but I believe there should be a few more multimillion-dollar sales happening for living artists too. There are simply far too few of them compared to the historical classics, Old Masters, and Modern artists whose works regularly sell for millions at auction.
Maybe I’m being a little sarcastic here, but I would really like to see collectors engage much more with living artists as well.
Maybe that’s just my pet peeve.
Number 4: The false idea that true art should have no meaning.
Unfortunately, some people have started to identify modern and contemporary art as the ultimate temple of art without a message and without a purpose.
I see it differently.
I think of art as something that transcends individual forms of expression: photography, painting, cinema, dance, and many others. Art is art, and these different forms probably borrow from one another and share certain rules of communication and operation.
It is true that there are songs or pieces of music where the lyrics aren’t completely clear. It’s also true that there are silent films made entirely of images.
But who would want to watch a ninety-minute film with no meaning whatsoever, just a series of images placed next to one another, while the entire emotional and analytical burden is left to the viewer?
At some point, it would become torture rather than entertainment, right?
Number 5: Art becoming disconnected from the public.
The last point is perhaps a consequence of point four.
At some point, it is the audience that decides. It is the masses that determine what is important and what is not.
Is this the best way to evaluate art? Probably not. But in some ways, it may also be the most democratic.
People from every social background and every cultural environment have the power to decide whether something has value or not. And I believe this is one of the great strengths of art: you don’t have to be an expert or an art critic to have an opinion about it.
If we take that possibility away from the general public, then the art world is left in the hands of critics. Only critics become the ones holding the keys to interpreting and accessing contemporary art.
And I don’t think that’s right.
I have enormous respect for the world of critics and for the museum world. But I believe that every person, regardless of their level of education or expertise, should have the freedom to say, “This left something with me,” or simply, “I like this,” without having to rely on an expert to validate that feeling.
Do you agree with those five points? Let me know in the comments.