The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

I listened to a report recently on public radio extolling the virtues of using Instagram to further an artist’s career. As an artist with a career in definite need of a jumpstart, I paid close attention, figuring maybe a tutorial in social media might be just my ticket to fame and fortune. They featured two artists, the first being some guy I’d never heard of (no surprise since I don’t subscribe to Instagram) who painted colorful murals but apparently didn’t make enough money to quit his day job. So, using the power of a photographic platform, he marketed his art on T-shirts and coffee mugs. Sometimes he tried out new mural designs, see what folks bought and what folks wished he’d never drawn. Democratic art, I guess, vote for the winning design.

The other artist was a painter and she was doing okay on Instagram but complained how it sucked up all her time trying to stay current, keep posting, respond to her fans and adoring public. She admitted she was thinking of dropping off the social media rat race, maybe spend some time making art instead. She mentioned how her fanbase would almost always respond negatively to about anything new or different she was trying out — they only wanted the tried and true.

There are folks I’ve been unfortunate enough to meet who think good art is defined by its sales potential. If it sells, it’s good. If it doesn’t, probably bad art. Nice, I guess, to have a quantifiable definition. Jeff Koons’ stainless steel rabbit just sold for 91 million dollars to the dad of our current Secretary of the Treasury, Steve Mnuchin, making Koons the greatest living artist of our time. Give me a break. The guy’s a PR guy who couldn’t, as one critic once said, carve his name on a tree, the kind of putz who photographed himself having anal sex with his Italian porn star wife and calling it art. Jeff would have loved Instagram.

I don’t pretend to be the final arbiter of what good art is. I just know it isn’t what sells the most. Otherwise I’d probably be printing T-shirts and coffee cups with stained glass designs, probably only the ones my clamoring fans bought multiples of. The danger, at least to me, of being an artist is falling into the trap of following the money. I’d rather have a crappy day job if money was the goal. Which, I guess, is why I was a graveyard shift orderly for 10 lousy years. Okay, a crappy night job. Beats boxing up those T-shirt orders, if nothing else.

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