In the 2.0 era, the artist's visibility no longer passes only through galleries and exhibitions, but also through the Internet.
But what does the artist show?
He does not only show his works but also himself in all his humanity, his creative process, and his ideas.
Nowadays many artists refuse the fact they need marketing, they see the commercial spirit of advertising as something that pollutes their higher valuable skills to make art, to make something beautiful for society, and saying beautiful we don’t speak about “aesthetics”, we speak about an artwork capable to touch the spirit of the society and to make a change by waking consciousness.
At Education InProgress SPAIN, we are making efforts to support young artists by exploiting their careers and since we know they reject the word “marketing”, we prefer to use “self-promotion”. Through our activities, we invite artists to use marketing tools to empower their visibility, to go over labels, and to use these commercial tools for their purposes.
If Advertising uses art to make their messages more interesting, why artists shouldn’t use these business tools as well?
Many companies have used art as a source of inspiration for their commercials that recreated some prominent artworks in a business context, i.e. Leonardo Da Vinci, Hokusai, Dali, Picasso, René Magritte, M.C. Escher, etc.
Well, what artists should change is their paradigm. To start any marketing action, doesn’t mean you have to become commercial. On the contrary, it depends on you, your values and style, and what kind of self-promotion actions to activate.
As art has nothing in common with business, become smart and use only what you need to increase your visibility and spread your talent.
Of course, there is another detail to take into consideration, and that is your target audience. If your potential buyers are a niche target, if you become too commercial you won’t reach them. Therefore, to address your self-promotion initiatives have to be in line with your goals and trustful to your artistic essence.
In summary, making some marketing then has nothing to do with overturning your unique image as an artist.