Welcome to Help Desk, where I answer your queries about making, exhibiting, finding, marketing, buying, selling — or any other activity related to — contemporary art. Together, we’ll sort through some of art’s thornier issues. Email helpdesk@dailyserving.com with your questions. All submissions remain strictly anonymous and become the property of Daily Serving.
I have been a semi-successful studio artist for almost 30 years. For about the last 10 of these I have been able to support myself financially with my work. I consider this a fortunate situation, but recently I have had to admit to myself that I’m getting tired and that the satisfaction of being an artist no longer seems worth the hustle of maintaining a viable studio practice. However, I am still an ambitious person (possibly out of habit) and I feel very acutely the pressure to produce work in a certain quantity. Being an artist has been the central part of my identity for so long, and I still romanticize it, but I’m just not sure I can do it any longer. If I did stop making my work, I think there’s plenty I could do to make a living in the city where I live, but the thought of giving up a national reputation is frightening. Not that I think that there’s an adoring public who would be devastated, but I can’t deny that my studio practice is externally motivated at this point. Is there a way to gracefully wrap up an art career without dying? Is there a way to turn down opportunities and quell the beast of the “artist’s ego” in order to lead a more sane and relaxing existence?
Of the many possible dilemmas to have, let’s admit that this one is rather attractive. Selling work steadily enough to provide a livable income is something that many artists yearn for, a marker of capital-S Success — at least on the commercial market. And for the past ten years you’ve had it, but now it has lost its luster.
Thomas Demand, Copyshop, 1999.