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| Photo by Bill Vaccaro |
I have just finished writing my first book, which took five years, and I find myself in the uneasy position that many emerging artists find themselves in. Now that the hard creative work is done, the far more daunting task of self-promotion looms. At this time in our cultural history, when publicity is so integral to success, it is no longer enough to make good work. It’s not even enough to make good work and to have a website where people can find out more about it. In order to cut through the supersaturated media barrage, artists must take advantage of every networking opportunity possible.
Last week I signed up for an account on Pinterest, the newest darling in the world of social media. The site allows users to collect and share digital images, to become curators of their own online galleries. By putting together collections of images that communicate something about you, the idea is that you will attract like-minded folks, aesthetic kindred spirits who will be more inclined to follow you on Twitter or Facebook, read your blog, visit your Etsy shop, browse your portfolio, or sign up for your newsletter, so that when you have something to sell, they will be there.
It used to be that creative people found an audience by publishing a book, by exhibiting their work in a gallery, on a stage, or in the cinema. Now, it is nearly impossible to do any of those things unless you already have an audience. In the world of publishing, which I am currently trying to penetrate, it’s called a “platform,” a built-in following that is waiting for you to release your next book, thus guaranteeing sales and reducing the publisher’s financial risk. In many cases, an agent won’t agree to represent you without one.
A platform is why the Kardashians can get a book contract, but my friend, who has won national creative writing awards and is immensely talented, cannot. Anne Lamott alluded to the phenomenon in a recent tweet:
Snooki's in labor! It's great to realize that even if you wrote the most profound, lovely book of last 10 years, she'll still be more famous
Platforms are so important, in fact, that, according to The New York Times, up-and-comers in the fields of art and entertainment have resorted to buying them. There are now Internet companies “that sell Twitter followers by the thousands (and often Facebook likes and YouTube views)” for as little as a penny each. For a meager investment, anyone can create the illusion of a following.
Three years ago, in an attempt to get a head start on building my platform, before purchasing one was an option, I became active on various social networking sites with the goal of increasing traffic to my website. I read up on the most sophisticated search engine optimization techniques, I joined Flickr, Digg, Technorati, updated my Facebook and Twitter accounts regularly with links to new blog posts, magazine articles, and academic writings. The most satisfying days were those when, through the magic of social media, a complete stranger shared one of my essays on Facebook or Twitter and, for a moment, the traffic to my website increased by orders of magnitude.
My platform grew steadily, but it never grew in proportion to the amount of time I was devoting to it, which was more than I was devoting to my manuscript, the reason for the promotional siege in the first place. After posting a new piece of writing, I would compulsively check my Twitter account to see if anyone had retweeted it, I would look for comments on my website, I would log in to Google Analytics to see which social networking site had yielded the most click-throughs. The more I focused on the reaction to my writing, the more uninspired and disconnected from the process of writing I became.
During this period of social media frenzy, I attended a 10-day silent meditation retreat. I sat for ten hours a day without the clamor of the world banging in my ear, and as the noise receded, my mind became clearer and clearer. I heard a phrase repeat itself inside my head. Delete all of your social media accounts. Delete all of your social media accounts. Delete all of your social media accounts.
It was the first thing I did when I got home, and I immediately felt unchained. Finally, the luxury to devote myself entirely to my book, to the writing, the work, the thing in the world I most cared about. The years I spent in a social media blackout were peaceful, disciplined, and content.
As soon as I finished the manuscript, though, I could hear the voices again, the voices shouting at me about my non-existent platform, about how impossible it is to make a name for yourself without already having a name for yourself. That’s how I found myself on the sign up page for Pinterest the other day.
A few hours after I created the account, an envelope came in the mail from my mother, containing a letter of congratulations she received following my birth. It was from one of my grandfather’s colleagues in the art world. My grandfather was an artist and an art conservator, and the woman who sent the letter was someone very dear to him who knew how deep his love for art ran. She said that if I were my grandfather’s child, his legacy to me would surely be one of “guts and joy.”
Guts and joy. These strike me as the two qualities all artists must possess. Guts, because the artist’s life is one of crushing uncertainty. You must sit down at your typewriter or potter’s wheel or stand in front of your easel or pick up your welding torch every day, not knowing if anyone will ever see or appreciate what you are about to pour your heart into, what some unnamed and mysterious force compels you to make. You need guts to shut out the voices in your head telling you you’ll never amount to anything, you’re wasting your time, that it’s time to get a real job. You need guts to reveal parts of yourself in a screenplay or a painting or a sculpture or a piece of choreography that are so secret even the people closest to you don’t know about them. It takes guts to do a job that is less and less valued by our society, a job that is actually more difficult than most, but which looks to many like nothing much at all.
And being an artist requires a boundless capacity for joy because it is the responsibility of the artist to drink in as much life as he or she can, to keep an open heart, to transform even the most destructive forces into creative ones. It is the artist’s job to filter the world through the lens of their own experiences and to create something that can be held up as a mirror to the rest of us.
But that mirror is changing. Technology has dramatically affected the way artists function in society, for better and for worse, and we are still sorting out what the final verdict will be. The Internet’s ability to democratize art is remarkable. Anyone can make art and share it with the world. And because of the sheer number of people consuming content online, even an artist who lacks craftsmanship or skill can still find plenty of people to hit the Like button on Facebook for them. In this great democratization of art, the voices of the curatorial bodies that were once so powerful—the legacy publishers, galleries, museums, movie studios, academic institutions—are being drowned out, and in some cases rendered irrelevant.
Charlie Kaufman, the Academy Award-winning screenwriter, has struggled in recent years to find funding for his latest project, an animated adaptation of his play Anomalisa. Instead of remaining within the confines of the studio system, he teamed up with a production company that raised over $400,000 for the project on Kickstarter, a crowd funding website. This gives them full creative control and the ability to stay faithful to Kaufman’s vision.
There are countless other examples of internet success stories, like first-time author Amanda Hocking, who self published her work and went on to make millions, or of artists who support themselves with virtual storefronts on Etsy, something which might be impossible, or less lucrative, in the brick-and-mortar world. There is no denying that the Internet has brought art to the masses and created more working artists than ever before.
But the disadvantages of art in the 21st century are as significant as the benefits. Because of the number of aspiring artists putting their work online, it is exponentially more difficult for the people who have the ability to change the trajectory of an artist’s career—whether through connections, financial resources, or clout within the industry—to find the true talent in an endless sea of content. And as artists we desperately need to be found by the people who can introduce our work to the greatest possible audience. It used to be the job of the curatorial bodies to do this, to find the most gifted artists in their field and to build a platform for them. But as the influence of these institutions is diminishing, artists must now go to heroic lengths to make our voices heard over the deafening clamor.
And just as anyone can share their work online, so too can anyone share their opinion of that work, whether their opinion is fueled by a genuine interest in and a knowledge of art or by a fight they had with their spouse and the subsequent desire to unleash some pent up vitriol. The great democratization of art has lead to the great anonymization of art criticism. It is for this reason that artists today are told they must develop a thick skin in order to show their work online. But this, I believe, is where the movement has failed us.
Artists, by our nature, are sensitive and receptive creatures. In order to serve our role in society, in order to live out our legacy, we must keep a thin skin so that life can pass through it and into our blood. Criticism is the most damning force for an artist because often in the face of it we feel we cannot go on. It takes as much guts as we can muster to handle criticism from the curatorial bodies, institutions filled with people whose opinions are backed by knowledge and study and passion for the arts and who are willing to take ownership of their opinions. It asks far more than we can bear to subject ourselves to the anonymous non-constructive criticism of anyone with a computer and an Internet connection.
I haven’t done anything with my Pinterest account since I signed up for it. Every time I go to the site with the intention of writing a profile or starting to compile images, I feel a knot in my stomach, a loss of joy, a thickening of the skin. After a certain point, self-promotion seems like little more than distraction. I’d rather spend this uncertain life doing what I love, making work that will lead to more work that, if I’m lucky, will lead to some recognition. Art isn’t about followers or platforms or Like buttons. It’s about the mysterious force that compels us to make things. It’s about sharing what’s in our blood, hoping it will make a difference in someone else’s life the way the work of other artists has made such a difference in ours.
