Not too long ago, accusing an artist of selling out could silence a room, although, in recent years, this accusations seems to have lost its power to wound. Few people are bothered about a criticism that sounds passé, antiquated, as a remnant from another century. Few people in our contemporary culture of commerce would even recognize the criticism of selling out—because those caustic words are most associated with the culture of punk rock and indie rock, and because most early fans of those genres are now less worried about getting the latest tickets and more worried about filling their latest prescriptions.
What was once a violent, hostile accusation about an artist—creating art that’s popular, that’s intended to be popular—is now deemed a reasonable goal. And it isn’t too much of a leap, once you have this mindset, once you consider popularity the artist’s goal, to measure artistic merit by the audience: the best musicians have the largest tours, the best films sell the most tickets, the best actors are the most famous, the best paintings are the most expensive, the best novels sell the most copies, as goes the commonplace but unspoken opinion.
Of course the old accusation of selling out follows the exact same principle but in reverse: rather than considering sales as a mark of quality, quality is determined by a lack of sales. What’s popular can’t be artistic, what’s celebrated isn’t important, what the audience demands must be wrong. And from this point it doesn’t take long to start believing that the only measurement for art is whether it is undiscovered. Only unheard bands are worth hearing, only unseen paintings are worth seeing—and the true connoisseurs of art live with the paradox of only wanting art that hasn’t been created. Yet the mentality of disliking some art merely because it is popular still uses the audience to determine what’s artistic, albeit by a peculiar, and upsidedown, test. To value art by commercial success is obviously trite and simplistic and clumsy but that doesn’t make the reverse any more true: if you’ve decided, instead, to value art by its failure to achieve commercial success, to not sell out by definition, that is banal and boorish and nothing less than juvenile. Crucially, ridiculously, in both extremes, it also means that the audience is the arbiter of your taste.
To be magnanimous—but only for a moment before my true sensibility returns—valuing art isn’t exactly easy. Bridge builders have clear measurements for quality, but that’s not true for artists, as there aren’t any rubrics or checklists when it comes to valuing art. Nearly everyone outsources the task at least a little, even those who determine what’s canonized and what’s dismissed in the art world. To be lionized as groundbreaking, as innovative, to create work that’s at the vanguard, must almost by definition mean that you’ve displeased or confused or bored the typical person—meaning that the typical person can actually determine where the vanguard begins. Even in the presumed centers of culture, the audience still lurks, its presence felt in reverse, with its tastes the negative that creates the culture. If a large group of people gather outside a contemporary art auction, dressing in unstylish clothes, affecting uncultured accents, raving about the utter beauty of the art that’s inside—the market will collapse.
And even though some successful artists do declare an aversion to commerce, to selling out, to the market, they’ve usually just surreptitiously transferred those messy jobs to someone else. Your band might be against the market and never touch money, yes, but the venue sells tickets and pays the electric bill and advertises the show; the successful but supposedly rebellious artist doesn’t really remove themselves from the market, they’ve just let other people handle those jobs—which, incidentally, is a rather capitalist choice of specialization for a rebellious artist.
Perhaps the most understandable claim of not selling out comes from failure. If you happen to find yourself hunched over a drink, disheveled, disgruntled, without an agent or deal or show to sell, then you’ve got to make a choice: either you missed the mark in your art or you’ve decided not to sell out. And it does sound much better to say that you didn’t sell out rather than to say that you didn’t get what you wanted. Much like a man who criticizes the appearance of a woman who refuses to date him, it is so much easier and more psychologically satisfying to claim that you don’t want something than to admit that you can’t achieve your goal.
If you’ve heard of the artist, then someone is doing the selling, whether it’s a small town gallery owner or a film production studio or even a streaming service company, while the artist can spend the day claiming to avoid market incentives. Although that last portion might come close to a standard. The fault isn’t popularity, nor is it even allowing an audience to influence the work; there’s nothing wrong with a bit of testing and learning and recalibrating based on audience reactions. What does seem misguided, however, is the creation of art that distorts your sensibility, that goes against your instincts, that’s exclusively designed to conform to its audience. If you struggle to understand this distinction, or find the concept of selling out too antiquated for today’s world, if the idea of contorting what you want to create for an audience sounds just fine, imagine walking into a crowded room and stating with confidence several opinions that you don’t believe: that’s what it feels like to create art that’s supposedly intrinsic to you but that doesn’t align with your sensibilities. And if you do that for too long, you end up forgetting what you do believe.
Creating art that’s popular is just fine—that’s a brilliant outcome. Creating art that’s intended to be popular is just fine too—although it is probably a foolhardy career choice. The audience is pleased to receive something worthwhile. The artist, shockingly, can afford to pay the rent. And there’s nothing regrettable in these steps, unless, underneath the veneer of success, the artist has calculated a bit more than it seems, they’ve adjusted the art a bit more than they wanted, seeking the desired response.
This is the person who memorizes all the right lines to impress a date. The date may like those practiced lines, the date may dislike them, but it doesn’t really matter if the lines are dishonest—in the best possible outcome, the date ends up liking a facade, a simulacrum, which doesn’t exactly help anyone. Because you can’t predict in advance what a date may prefer, and everyone ends up wasting time if a date prefers a feigned persona, the general principle is to at least attempt sincerity. Either that does or doesn’t work, but both outcomes are good results, if the goal is conveying a sensibility that’s true. And that just happens to be pretty close, I believe, to a good principle for creating art.
My sense has always been that you’ve got to create the kind of work that excites you. Otherwise, if you chase the audience, you might land on success but never feel truly fulfilled creatively. Rick Rubin argues that the audience comes last. That the audience doesn’t necessarily know what it wants, because you haven’t shown them yet. So audiences default to what’s familiar until something authentic and new comes along. Art is tough. What excites you may bore others. Van Gogh didn’t sell much. Ahead of his time. And no doubt other artists never find an audience, despite their authenticity and passion. But even then, if the work doesn’t quicken your heart, it’ll never satisfy.
I agree and yet not all creative mediums play by those same rules. Making visual work that one knows will not be seen for at least for two years, until it is released, one must develop a uncanny sense for visual anticipation. Fashion anticipation. What has the audience not seen before, what is novel. This involves extensive research to broaden the range for the viewer. The research driven by story that enhances character and arc development. I am referencing feature films, my former career which was primarily visual world creation, so benchmark films like Brazil and Road Warrior are good examples of world creation that were emulated by many films for years after. (Before Marvel and DC dominated and stultified that market.) That was then.
Speculative fiction when I was young and now that I am writing, it is historical narratives I find compelling. The fish out of water, no ancient stone left unturned kind. Fresh eyes on overlooked treasure, and a new set of conventions to play with. Subvert. I try to accept that new audiences may never find me, or my work again, possibly because I stopped looking for them. I often worry about that, now working alone and not collaborating. No longer fame adjacent, and adverse to the seemingly necessary self marketing, I find there are different signposts, different clues, and an unfamiliar kind of existential way finding. A new novelty.
“The Wiwa View”, and “The Love Beads” are years away from completion, and may never be read in my lifetime. In the meantime… Substack?