You want to learn something about Failure, ask an artist. We been there, we done that, we\u2019ll probably do it again. Some folks think failure is an excuse to quit, chalk it up to hard knocks, move on to something else. Artists, we have ourselves on the line. We\u2019re painting, we\u2019re writing, we\u2019re singing something, integral to ourselves. We can\u2019t sell it, we can\u2019t get approval; we can\u2019t make others see what it is we see, the beauty of it, the truth of it, we can\u2019t just walk away, shrug it off, pick up a hammer and become a carpenter. If we do, the house we\u2019re building becomes the art. And I bet you dollars to Degas we aren\u2019t going to become bond traders next.<\/p>\n
The trouble with failure for us artists is we\u2019re forced to make sense of it. It\u2019s not really external, some quirk of bad luck, even if, for awhile, we rationalize it. We live in a market place society, for good or bad. We live and die by the cash register. And that society doesn\u2019t much care about any art other than Mass Commercial Art. Odds are pretty certain, you\u2019ll fail. So you have to ask yourself, why go on?<\/p>\n
I had two gallery owners on the island tell me their definition of art was simple: it\u2019s what sells. The Van Gogh earlobe \u2018myth\u2019 of a guy killing himself with only one sale to his name, then becoming discovered, was hogwash, they said. Sales, that\u2019s the measure, darling, that\u2019s the bar to reach if you want to be a success.<\/p>\n
I know too many South Enders who are fine artists who don\u2019t rack up sales. A couple are great artists and they make the least money. I would cry out loud and flush my credit card if they quit because revenues were paltry. We do what we do out of a need to recreate the world, to make it over to resemble ourselves, to make manifest that inchoate yearning we feel and need to express in some way or other. On the South End this is fairly normal — most other places, this a definition of failure. No need to tell you, but \u2026. I sure don\u2019t plan to move any time soon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
You want to learn something about Failure, ask an artist. We been there, we done that, we\u2019ll probably do it again. Some folks think failure is an excuse to quit, chalk it up to hard knocks, move on to something else. Artists, we have ourselves on the line. We\u2019re painting, we\u2019re writing, we\u2019re singing something, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4757","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rantings-and-ravings"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4757","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4757"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4757\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4758,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4757\/revisions\/4758"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}