There’s a lot of buzz in the art-o-sphere lately surrounding the death of the artist’s statement. Rumors of its death however, are widely exaggerated! The artist statement as I have described it in an earlier post is the traditional form, and one that I personally stick with. But everything, even writing, evolves. Evolution opens up possibilities at the same time respecting what has come before.
Experts’ reasons for ditching the artist’s statement include:
- it’s stuffy, not genuine
- it doesn’t work to sell your emotion
- it doesn’t work to create a solution to your collector’s problem
We can’t really have this conversation without addressing audience. For artists targeting galleries, museums, grant making foundations and residencies, the audience is very different from the one for the artist who sells only online to a particular demographic. Artists who want to reach both audiences fall into a third category. The writing can but does not have to be very different. Another alternative is to have different statements for different audiences.
If the statement is stuffy or not genuine – that’s just poor writing. And if you write your statement right, it definitely conveys your emotion. I mean, art is emotion, right? Otherwise it’s just a technical exercise.
As for solving a collector’s problem, I hesitate to comment much, other than I don’t believe that that kind of copywriting and marketing tactic always works well in the field of art. If it’s about connecting to an audience, it’s more of a positive exchange, in my opinion, than an exploitive one in which we try to find a weakness and agitate the pain in order to get someone to buy, a tried and true copywriting technique which preys on people’s insecurities.
When you get down to it, whether you add some zing, pile on the emotion or even use the timeworn copywriting technique you still come up with…an artist’s statement.
Here’s an article (a good one I think) about writing artist statements. Have I shared it here before? It might sound a bit daunting because the explaining is technical, but the more statements you write the easier it becomes for you to be able to convey your purpose and what your art means.
Give five artists a crayon. They will all use it differently – none is right or wrong. Keep in mind that as with art, your writing should reflect your own personal style or it’s not going to ring true. So always, feel free to throw out the rules as long as the finished product serves its original purpose.
Questions? Comments? Leave ’em here! Or get in touch.
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