Is an artists with no audience still an artist?

Alright folks, let's dig in:

Take a look at Don Hall's Art Is Not A Job and some reactions from the post here.

Once again we take a look at the tricky balance between art, freedom and commerce.

There is a lot in Don's post and some other responses and I don't want to tackle them all, but I will focus on one thing.

Don says in his post that "I would create and produce theatre for the rest of my life without making a single dime from it.  Most artists would too."

Part of me agrees with this statement 1000%.  If you love theatre, produce it.  If you love to dance, dance. 

Even if you never get paid for it, love can take you pretty far.

And of course, there is also the fabulous paradox that if do what you love long enough (and well enough) someone will probably pay you to do it one day.

But I think that attitude, if extend too far, can easily become a problem.

Let's consider this.  What if I started a theatre company and produced theatre for 10 years.  I loved it, very few other people did.  Have I been successful as an artist?

By Don's standards the answer would be Yes.  I did what I loved for a long time.

But what if the answer were Maybe?  Or even No?

If you produce art for a significant period of time and can never convince even a small audience to pony up some bucks for it haven't you, at least on some level, failed as an artist?

A politican with no votes is a lousy politican.

A lawyer with no clients is probably a crappy lawyer.

An artist with no audience is . . .?

I don't have a clear or easy answer to that question but I do believe this, artistry doesn't exist in a vacuum.  It exists in relation to an audience and one way an audience shows their love for something is by paying for it.

I mean I know we don't want to acknowledge this, but in the artistic game money does count for something.

It says you connected with them on a level deep enough that they were willing to do the sometimes difficult act of reaching in their pockets to be a part of it.

If you can't get an audience to do that (even just a little), what does that say about your work?

Comments

[Slay]

The size of the audience can't be used to judge the success of one's work in any definitive way. What's the old adage about the Velvet Underground's early shows ... ?

I like this way of judging one's success:
1) What were you trying to do?
2) Did you accomplish it?
3) Was it worth doing in the first place?

[Simon]

A point well made in an artistic sense Matt, but the size of the audience can be used to judge the success of your company's marketing campaign, at least in the first, say, two weeks of a three week run. The size of the audience in that last week, however, may be a good indication of the word-of-mouth saleability of your work, and therefore a fair barometer of a buzz that your work is touching people.

Because for all my work my answer to #1 above is the same: to start conversation: for or against, agree or disagree. The one thing that I'm terrified of is indifference, and if people are showing up and paying 12 bucks because someone told them it was worth it, my job, and my intent as an artist, is half way accomplished.

The most important thing to me is to have someone in my forest to hear my tree falling. The second most important thing is their 12 bucks, so I can buy a new saw.

[The Director]

Ultimately, it comes down to how we measure art. You can measure a lawyer's record. You can measure a politician's votes.

How do you measure art? By ticket sales? By audience members? By lives changed? By stages built and struck, canvases smothered in paint, tears shed or laughs laughed?

Once you've answered the question of how we measure art, then you can answer your own question.

[Chris Casquilho]

Set aside concerns of money and number attending to your work. Ask any artist if they would do it anyway, because they have to. Art is like a fetish - can't stop thinking about it, doesn't seem to matter to the people doing it whether anyone likes it. It seems like a slow pitch, but think about the case of any artist who died unknown only to accrue fame and fortune long after death.

Theatre is funny to compare to other forms, because people don't seem to consider an oil painting entertainment. Theatre is a bastard of the art world, like movies: some theatre is art (some movies are art) - some is just an entertaining pastime. C'est la Guerre.