Hacker News Reader

On the other end of the spectrum, "experimental artist" (whatever that is) Lawrence English wrote "A Young Person's Guide to Hustling (in Music and the Arts", which seems more like what you're after.

https://collapseboard.com/a-young-person%E2%80%99s-guide-to-... https://lawrenceenglish.bandcamp.com/album/a-young-persons-g...

This is much better than the post & he also sounds like a much more interesting artist.

He's great and has also run workshops as of pretty recently so you can find opportunities to learn from him directly too

I also saw an experimental short at TIFF's Wavelengths program in 2024 that he "scored": https://tiff.net/events/wavelengths-1-eye-and-ear-control

> The article does point out exactly this problem, but glosses over the fact that most artists don't want to change to popular art. Only a few can, and most don't want to.

I don't think author hides the fact. It's plain as day that to make a living, you need to sell art which resonates with people. You can still find room to be creative within that constraint, but you can't ignore the audience.

Artists should quit the illusion that they can create whatever they please and expect the income to automatically follow.

But that isn’t really true, per se. It depends on your definition of “people” – the mass market? High end collectors and galleries like Gagosian? Very different audiences, and appealing to one is probably the opposite of the other.

Encyclopedia Brittanica defines "popular art" as art that resonates with ordinary people in modern urban society. I'm sure we could point to examples of people earning a living at non popular art.

For sure, but those people need to make sales too, otherwise they are not “earning a living.”

100%

I didn't understand GP's point at all because I think the author makes this exceedingly clear: if you want to paint only for you, and only stuff that appeals to you and a limited few, that's totally fine (and I think the author really emphasizes that's totally fine), just don't expect to make a living off of it.

I thought this article was excellent. In particular, I liked the emphasis that you really just have to produce lots and lots of art to find "image market fit", because it's nearly impossible to know what will resonate with people before you create it. There is just an undeniably huge amount of luck in finding something a lot of people like, so it's important to give yourself as many swings at bat as possible.

Yeah but I mean it does make sense though right?

> Most people who enjoy making art should not try to make it their full time job. When you turn an avocation (hobby) into a vocation (job) you have to do new things you do not enjoy. Emails, events, meetings, accounting, and more. These are not only a drag but can actually strip the joy from the rest of your art practice.

You'll have to do things you do not enjoy if you want to treat it as a business, including changing your artistic vision if needed etc.

> Art is absolutely an expression of yourself. But your art is not you.

A pragmatic approach could be to work on commericially-proven styles for money and your own style just for yourself (and potentially others if you make a branding that's famous enough).

At the end, yeah, it's a job if you want to make a living with art. There will always be market forces and to extract value from that, you need to understand and conform with it. But that's only if you see yourself as a business and not purely as an "artist" which I think is what you're reffering to when you say "most artists don't want to change to popular art" etc.

Also I don't think it's true overall. Like you say the "person is making very popular art" and that's why they're successful but there's many like them who are also making popular art but are not successful at all. It's also the process they follow and how they approach their business that sets them apart. That part is valuable info/guidance for any artist that does want to be commercially succesful imo.

> This is obviously not the case for art projects that target only a few people, or art practices that do not result in tangible objects.

Indeed, it's not like Tolkien worked on the Silmarillion for four decades before LOTR was published because he was trying to sell it.

Well he was also a professor at Oxford, which is a luxury not afforded most artists.

You said it yourself: he was primarily a professor, not an artist. His position being a "luxury" is another argument. Anyway, He taught languages to brilliant students and created a highly respected translation of Beowulf. LoTR, Silmarillion, Hobbit, and all of it, were his hobby, a secondary but burning passion.

I'm sure many on this forum have secondary passions, be it music, visual art, writing, or anything else. Yet most of us realized we need to make money, and that those pursuits can be done at a fairly high level in our leisure time.

As a resident of SF I've only ever heard of fnnch in the context of people hating his art (I still don't understand why). Is it a case of any publicity being good publicity?

Seems like a case of snobbery on behalf of these people. These are nice images but not "high art" which I guess prompts some people to scoff at them

Being critical of generic-looking murals doesn’t make someone a snob.

It kinda does, friend.

The idea that someone is a snob because they dislike generic looking artworks is a hilarious indicator of how far aesthetic discussion and standards have fallen. The word used to mean someone that looks down upon the popular arts in favor of more traditional/expensive/sophisticated art.

Now apparently it means having any standards or metrics of evaluation, period. Either you think everything is equal aesthetically, or you’re a snob.

Thankfully this kind of empty opinion isn’t convincing many people these days.

You might not be a snob, but you sure as hell sound like one. It's okay when other people like simple things that you don't like.

Where did I say it’s not okay for people to like simple things I don’t like?

I just said having aesthetic opinions doesn’t make someone a snob.

I searched for some pictures. The first couple I came across looked like the result of a prompt to an AI: "generate images of plastic honey bears with various outfits and/or accessories":

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQajHzw...

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRpoQbV...

There's AI slop, and then there's human slop.

Yeah I mean, they are cute little graphics and a fun character/brand, but I don’t exactly see how people consider this some masterful piece of artwork. I don’t live in SF, but I can imagine it gets old to see it everywhere.

Oh, it’s the plastic bear honey jar artist

He is objectively a very popular artist - as he mentions in the article he has made > $1million/yr at least one year (and I imagine more often that once). I do own one of his honey bears and I remember in the online "drop", based a price of $500/bear, he made ~$300k in that single drop which sold out in approximately 20 minutes.

I think the people you hear expressing dislike is probably due to his popularity and how often you see the honey bears around SF. He's also a Stanford economics grad, and some people in SF really dislike the stereotypical Stanford alums who think they're superior beings.

The author is fairly clear about it to me:

>One of the biggest mistakes I see artists make is painting things that don't resonate with people. Once you have an aesthetic that works, the market rewards you for exploring adjacent aesthetic territory. You might not make a living right away — it took me over two years from when I painted that first Honey Bear until I took my art full time — but it is totally necessary if you are to make a living off your own art (as opposed to teaching or commercial art). Until then, if what you're doing isn't resonating, you just need to just paint something else. Experiment with different concepts and directions until you find something that works.

He doesn't spend a whole lot of time deliberating on the literature versus television question, but it's easy to see what he's chosen.

Sure, you are right. For the article author's market, many are literally and metaphorically pedestrian, popular and colorful but uncomplicated.

I read a quotation recently that said in essence, the work of creativity moves from creating something no one else has ever seen or thought of, towards creating new and different insight into something almost everyone already knows about.

great point but I think that even people who create "difficult" art can derive some sort of income from it. in fact, the solopreneurs section points to an opportunity for AI to be a helpful co-pilot on each of those mundane and dreaded tasks listed there. In additional fact, I asked Gemini Pro a while a go to spell out the steps to a successful fine arts career and the output was very similar to this blog's so square-one/concept validation, decision making (eg. given this list of business-relevant events and attendees, which should I prioritize and prepare for) are actions it can take on your behalf or help with. That said, once a critical number of people start getting the same advice, take the same action then you have another issue to navigate but it would be the same with any tech advancement, eg. the first artists to get their own phone line or a fax machine or a computer ...

I was thinking the same: we have all become pop-artists now since that seems to be what "sells".

Andy really knew what he was doing (from the classic interview): https://youtu.be/n49ucyyTB34