Art and artists are very much misunderstood in our culture… Because we have this ethic of purpose and utility, and art is not useful in a very direct way. And I think that, also, our concept of artists is that they’re lazy somehow and that they don’t want to work hard… In fact, what I discovered in working with artists is that most artists, by and large, are not doing it because they want to be the next Andy Warhol — they’re doing it at huge personal expense and struggling to keep a practice going while trying to figure out how to make ends meet. They’re not making art because they want to make money, they make art because they have something to say that they want to share with the world.
That is a quote from Jen Bekman.
This is a photo of Joseph Beuys.
When I was studying and then living in Germany, this is the early 90s, my mentor was Thomas B., who had studied with Joseph Beuys. Thomas often spoke in slightly cryptic aphorisms, more like a wise uncle than like Obi-Wan Kenobi, and I learned so much from him. There was this one thing he would say frequently, attributed to Beuys: “The artist is the smallest possible undertaker.”
I used to think about that, wondering just what to do with that little piece of news, what was dead, what the artist was doing with dead things. It wasn’t until I learned German that I understood what it meant. What Beuys said to Thomas must have been: Der Kunstler ist die kleinste moegliche Unternehmer.
Translated literally, Unter-nehmer is under-taker. But really, Unternehmer is just German for entrepreneur. What Beuys said would best be translated as:
The artist is the smallest possible entrepreneur.
And I think this is true, and important, and that Beuys meant every part of it — including being small — in all the most noble senses.
I’m third generation on this little piece of wisdom, and I don’t think it will be any less true in 1000 years.
None of which is to say that artists can’t, and shouldn’t, make it big. But not every one of them will. Which is, in the ultimate balance of the thing, alright. Because that’s true of all entrepreneurs, not just the smallest possible ones. The important thing is that they are under-taking the thing that is important, whatever that is, whatever important means.
explore blog:
20×200 founder Jen Bekman, one of the Internet’s pioneering creative entrepreneurs, on Design Matters – the entire interview is very much worth a listen. (via explore-blog)
kthread:
Take a moment and imagine what it would be like to be an entrepreneur if the goal wasn’t to make a 10x return for your investors. That you just want this thing to be in the world so badly that you have to make it.
(via kthread)