April 30, 2009
art, myth and marketing
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My recent interview with Lateral Action got me thinking about “Myth”:
The way artists market themselves is by having a great story, by having a “Myth”. Telling anecdotal stories about Warhol, Pollack, Basquiat, Van Gogh is both (A) fun and (B) has a mythical dimension… if they didn’t, they wouldn’t have had movies made about them. The art feeds the myth. The myth feeds the art.
We all know how mythologies build up around art and artists, that over time informs the artist’s work itself.
Warhol’s weirdly destructive social scene at The Factory in the 1960s. Pollack’s excessive drinking. Van Gough’s descent into madness. Keith Haring’s wild party times in the New York gay scene…
Let’s say you spent a sizable chunk of money on a work by an artist you love. Let’s just say you couldn’t really justify it financially, you probably couldn’t afford it, but dammit, you just HAD to have it.
Let’s say you’re showing off the work to a friend, which is now proudly hanging in your office. Let’s say your friend never heard of the artist before.
“What???” your friend says, “You spent HOW MUCH on that? But it’s only some green and blue blotches!“
So you give your friend some background information. You tell him how famous the guy was back in New York in the 1970s, how “Breakthrough” his work was at the time, how he was influenced by Famous Artists A, B and C, and how he went on to influence Later Famous Artists X, Y and Z. You tell anecdotal stories about his tumultuous marriage to a famous, Japanese novelist [who’s work is also now making a comeback], and his up-and-down, booze-soaked relationship with Famous Artist K, his brief, heartbreaking love affair with Famously Tragic Socialite P, his battle with alcohol and drugs, and the old farm he retired to up in Woodstock, New York.
Hopefully by the time you are done with your story, though he may not end up being a collector of the artist himself, he at least will understand more clearly the work’s resonance, and why you made the purchase.
And of course, so will you. Because it wasn’t just your friend who needed to hear the story. You needed to hear the story, as well. You needed to be able to tell yourself that story, that story NEEDED TO EXIST, or else you simply would have not bought the painting in the first place. Without the story, without the “Myth”, you could not have justified purchasing the work to yourself [let alone your wife].
We don’t just do this for $40K works of art, we use the some mythological techniques when we buy computers, breakfast cereal, or bars of soap. Our lives are only as meaningful as the myths we can create for ourselves. And we like to create myths around the objects that fill up our lives. That’s what “Branding” is all about.
The more I think about marketing art, the more I think how what I’m learning applies to marketing everything else. Because art is not particularly utilitarian, the myth is key.
And unless you can understand the myth that informs whatever product you’re trying to sell, the harder your job will be. The more you can TRULY understand the myth, the bigger an edge you will have over your competition. I am right on this one.
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Seems ironic that when it comes to detailing the myths of various artists, you go straight for the destructive ones.
Surely it’s possible to build up a mythos without crucifying yourself, yes?
Hugh, you are so wrong about this. Did Leonardo need a myth to go with the Mona Lisa? Did Michelangelo need a myth? Myth followed the art not the other way around. Even Van Gough and even Andy created outrageous ‘Purple Cows’ and myth followed (OK may be not with Andy).
Don’t get me wrong Hugh, I am a huge fan and I love your prints (but I love your thinking behind the prints even more). But seriously if you sell doodles on the back of the business cards you might need a myth indeed.
You might think of yourself as an artist but you are writer, a myth monger first.
yeah,
you’re right. the word i’ve used for that is “personality” (people tend to like my work to the extent that they like ME), but “myth” probably works even better.
“Did Leonardo need a myth to go with the Mona Lisa? Did Michelangelo need a myth?“
Ben, it seems that you may have proved my point, unknowingly.
The “Artists don’t need their own Myth” Myth. I know it well.
Delighted I touched a nerve. Rock on.
Hugh Ok, you got me with Mona Lisa, indeed there is a lot of myth there (after the fact). But lets get real. Does this needs a myth?
http://mentalblog.com/hello/374971/1024/Leonardobattle-2005.03.06 – 16.53.25.jpg
This is the myth!
For Real!
Does it need a myth? Too late, it already has one
YOUR QUESTION
“What???” your friend says, “You spent HOW MUCH on that? But it’s only some green and blue blotches!“
MY ANSWER
Yeah. I get to live with it and dialogue with it for years to come in my home. And I only paid $10 for it at a second hand store in Austin. Who cares who the artist is. It’s awesome.
Sometimes buyers by art because they LIKE it and who the artist becomes irrelevant. I sell art, for myselves and others. And my marketing revolves around “Do you like it? Want to live with it? You’re investing in a long term dialogue… Here’s the artist’s bio. It may or may not be interesting, but keep it for your records.“
Every once in a while I’ll sell an artist with a REALLY cool story. But more more often than not, good art is a joy to sell.
Hugh, you surely understand that the content here created the myth and the value not the other way around. Michael Jordan is a myth because he was genius player. He got to sell his Nikes, even after he started to suck as an athlete. Van Gough introduced color people never imagined before. Leonardo was a an unmatched craftsmen, that’s why the Medici clan supported him. The Last Supper was an innovation in the art of perceptive drawing (forget about mythology with that one). Rembrandt could draw the light and emotion like no one before or after him.
Artists do art because they can’t help themselves. Myth MIGHT follow.
You are totally right, Hugh (as you know already).
I’m very interested that people are misreading this as a myth VERSUS art issue, when the whole post is about marketing– myth– NOT what makes art good.
Hugh isn’t saying “people are all morons, so they will buy mythology and not give a toss whether the art is any good or not”. He’s telling people who to sell art (that presumably they believe in, or they wouldn’t be making/ selling it in the first place) to a bigger audience/more users/ “tribe”/whatever.
Not interested in arguing about this though really– just thanks for another great post, Hugh. I’ve personally been learning a lot from your recent stuff, and am hoping to start using it a lot more soon. Cheers.
“Artists do art because they can’t help themselves. Myth MIGHT follow.” Agreed. And if it doesn’t follow, the artist [or his heirs] has a much bigger marketing problem.
Also, I did write, “We all know how mythologies build up around art and artists, that over time informs the artist’s work itself.” That would imply the art preceding the myth
John Coltrane was a perfect example of a “positive myth”.
His late “post drug” work his most experimental and critically panned work of his life.
But because he was on a “spiritual journey” to find GOD thru his horn — and you can actually hear his yearning in every note — the myth lifts the works to another level.
Trane fans can start the hate now — but if you take away the “myth” of Trane’s spiritual quest — it’s just some guy making really annoying noises on a tenor sax.
I submit “Interstellar Space” into evidence.
The many myths about Banksy worked on al viral level.
Great post Hugh.
I’ve been thinking about this idea for a while — that we are the stories we tell about ourselves.
Some stories we deliberately create — the kinds of stories used in small talk — and some are more unconscious, reflected in what we own, how we dress, or who we chose to be with with.
It’s these stories that we latch on to when we think about a person — and it’s not just artists, either. Bill Gates has a myth. Warren Buffett has a myth. Barack Obama has a myth. One’s reactions to them (and what they’re selling) depends very much on how the mythology surrounding them interacts with your own stories about yourself.
So what do you do as an artist if you don’t have a “mythological” story about yourself? I’m still working on that one.
“Our lives are only as meaningful as the myths we can create for ourselves.“
Perhaps for some. Hence religion?
Hugh,
You’ve just articulated the central point of an anthropological approach to economics better than most economists can. To paraphrase Rob Horning: We use an object for 3 things:
1. To use it,
2. To signal something to other people, then
3. To signal something to ourselves.
That signalling happens through stories and associations that you could sensibly call “myths”. We curate relationships, pictures, and objects to narrate our own stories to ourselves.
Any discussion in the comments of whether or not we ‘should’ think like that is secondary to acknowledging that it appears that people ‘do’ think like that.
Whether $10 for an artwork, $100,000 or even a million, it seems that the provenance of the artwork itself and the myth of the artist don’t just add to the object. They are the object.
“Because art is not particularly utilitarian, the myth is key.“
So selling art = marketing stripped naked. I
Ben — Michelangelo and Leonardo were indeed marvellous craftsmen, but there was a hell of a lot of myth involved.
In the Mona Lisa’s case, a lot of the mythologising was admittedly posthumous: http://lateralaction.com/articles/mona-lisa/
But Michelangelo deliberately cultivated the myth as a way of enhancing his ‘brand’: http://lateralaction.com/articles/you-dont-need-to-be-a-genius/
Anyone know where to find a myth monger? I may be in the market for one.
Hugh, I wrote a related post about this. It touches on Twitter but also on the phenomena of John Lennon as a artist. John was a mediocre artist with a monster global brand:
http://benatlas.com/2009/04/is-twitter-just-like-a-john-lennon-sketch/
So the question is who you want to be. An artist John Lennon or an Artist Van Gogh? Its like your wolf an ship poster, you have to think it through, both are legit but vastly different.
This goes both ways, prescriptive and descriptive, back and forth. Art creates the myth and the myth creates value. Applies to music as well. Sure, Amy Winehouse is good, but you can’t beat the self-destructive waif myth to sell tunes. I have a lot of music, some because I like the tunes more than the myth, some the other way around. Some equal. It’s not either-or.
“So the question is who you want to be. An artist John Lennon or an Artist Van Gogh?“
Ben, so the question really is, what myth do you want to go with?
Man, for someone who thinks “Art doesn’t need a myth”, you’re using a lot of mythology to back up your argument
Hugh has mastered the “Art of Marketing”.
Now what can an artist learn from “his print enterprise” ?
In the 1980s I built racing bicycle frames in California. I would not allow people to visit me at my workshop. Frame-building was so labor intensive I had no time to BS with customers. I even had an unlisted 800 phone number.
I sold all my product through bike dealers.
This created such a mystery and myth about me and my bike frames, it was the best thing I ever did.
I always said, if people came to see me they would have found there was no mystique, just some old fart, making bike frames.
But isn’t “myth” in this case simply another word for “narrative”? As in: we ALL construct a narrative of our lives so as to make sense of it.
Eg, someone in her fifties will explain her drug use during her twenties by constructing an entire narrative about how/why that drug use happened, AND, as important, how/why she decided to stop and so is, in her fifties, an upright citizen. (Not a great example, but you get my drift.)
Narrative is essential, not just for novelists but for all of us, every day of our lives.
Art is story. And it carries cultural currency. It is NOT produced in a vacuum. There is always context. And some of that context feeds deeply held needs for collectors… and for the artists too… along with the actual art piece itself. Otherwise there would be no need for expression… or for that matter, collection. So yes, there is a “mythology” surrounding it. And we LOVE the Power of Myth. ( see film box office returns on any given weekend )
Funny, I never thought there would be such a hue and cry when I read this yesterday… this myth thing… this is a given. I am musing over why anyone would rail against that. Is it the marketing thing? Marketing the myth, the context, that raises the response?
Hugh wrote: “so the question really is, what myth do you want to go with? Man, for someone who thinks “Art doesn’t need a myth”, you’re using a lot of mythology to back up your argument
“
Let me clarify. Everything around us is a myth, including our own thinking about ourselves. But with everything we do, and especially with real unstoppable art, we are not aware of the mythology that precedes it or follows it.
Do you think Jesus cared about marketing? That was the apostles job.
In other words, art is not marketing and art is not myth, but myth gets attached to everything we do.
@Renee, agree, it’s not either-or. Every true master genius type is also a myth master. Doesn’t mean their work is sub-par, just means they’re really good at telling a story about it (Bowie is an example to me.) Of course some do succeed solely on myth, and the rest of us curse their success. As long as the work is great I’m all for applying myth mastery in pursuit of artistic (or whatever) traction.
All art is myth, Ben.…
Hugh,
Great post and a fascinating discussion. Your own myth is why I’ve been reading you and recommending you for eons, proving your point perfectly.
You don’t have to have a story to paint or draw or compose or write poetry, but if you want to be more than a starving artist locked in a garret, it helps. *A lot.*
There are a few completely normal, boring, yet well-known artists with life stories that nobody cares about. But man, they are few and far between. Seizing on some aspect of the artist’s humanity is what drives interest in their work.
Regards,
Kelly
Hugh,
Great post and a fascinating discussion. Your own myth is why I’ve been reading you and recommending you for eons, proving your point perfectly.
You don’t have to have a story to paint or draw or compose or write poetry, but if you want to be more than a starving artist locked in a garret, it helps. *A lot.*
There are a few completely normal, boring, yet well-known artists with life stories that nobody cares about. But man, they are few and far between. Seizing on some aspect of the artist’s humanity is what drives interest in their work.
Regards,
Kelly
I totally agree with you Hugh.
I think it’s interesting to point out that Van Gogh and many other artists died with little or no money. You do not myth to make great art. But it helps if you want to make a living from your art.
~Graham
Hello again Hugh,
I agree that we buy and participate in things based on the stories we hear and tell. But, I am wary of using the word ‘myth’ in this context.
I love mythology, and I’ve spent a good bit of time studying it. Myths fascinate me for the universal truths they convey in ways that scientific reasoning cannot, but myth making can also have connotations of fabrication.
When marketing devolves into myth making based on lies, it does get attention initially, but in the long-term it erodes trust and makes the world worse. When I discover that artists or companies I admire have made things up about themselves, I lose respect for them, and that means I’m less likely to spend money on their stuff.
So … why not emphasize the importance of discovering and communicating authentic stories about artists and products? Perhaps this is what you meant, but I did not notice a distinction between authenticity and dishonesty in your discussion.
I hope that you as an artist will aim to captivate my interest by living a genuinely interesting life of depth while acting with courage, virtue and personality. Otherwise, if you plan to fabricate a grand persona for yourself, I’m not really interested in what you have to offer.
But … I’m still a fan for now.
Hello again Hugh,
I agree that we buy and participate in things based on the stories we hear and tell. But, I am wary of using the word ‘myth’ in this context.
I love mythology, and I’ve spent a good bit of time studying it. Myths fascinate me for the universal truths they convey in ways that scientific reasoning cannot, but myth making can also have connotations of fabrication.
When marketing devolves into myth making based on lies, it does get attention initially, but in the long-term it erodes trust and makes the world worse. When I discover that artists or companies I admire have made things up about themselves, I lose respect for them, and that means I’m less likely to spend money on their stuff.
So … why not emphasize the importance of discovering and communicating authentic stories about artists and products? Perhaps this is what you meant, but I did not notice a distinction between authenticity and dishonesty in your discussion.
I hope that you as an artist will aim to captivate my interest by living a genuinely interesting life of depth while acting with courage, virtue and personality. Otherwise, if you plan to fabricate a grand persona for yourself, I’m not really interested in what you have to offer.
But … I’m still a fan for now.
Hey Nick,
Yeah, I agree, that whole “creating a grand persona” is tiresome. Dali tried hard at it, and ended up looking ridiculous.
Picasso, however, just kept doing his thing i.e. creating fantastic work at a voracious speed till he was well into his nineties, and the myth grew around him, of its own accord.
From a marketing standpoint, it’s wonderful to have a “great story”. The hard part is realizing, you actually get to decide what this great story is. “Random Acts of Traction” etc.
People can get squeamish about using the word “Myth” all they want. Just because they’re squeamish doesn’t mean I’ll be proved wrong anytime soon.