The Misfortune of a Coherent Art Vision

In recent years, I’ve received some comments or critiques about the need to adjust my creative work to my income situation. I won’t deny it, it's pretty much hard to get capitalization from art when you are not famous, and don’t have connections in the art game, when you aren’t the ‘golden boy/girl’ of gallerists, dealers, collectors, curators, editors, or CEOs of important and bigshot art fairs, among others. But what happens when you compromise your art vision and proposal to get their attention, when as an artist you don't have a coherent art vision, and please the market’s dynamics and selling requirements? All that you have actually sold was your artist’s soul, to survive, not to mention have a ‘regular’ income that lets you go on with your creation.

‘Haughtiness of wealth,’ ca. 1901–ca. 1907; pencil on brown paper; 18.4 × 21.1 cm. Drawings by Franz Kafka. The Literary Estate of Max Brod, National Library of Israel, Jerusalem. Photos: Ardon Bar Hama.

The luckiest who have a ‘godfather’ succeed; the rest die in the darkness of time and forget. When I talk about artists, I’m referring to all the art expressions, including film art. You wouldn’t have today a Bach, a Schubert, Vermeer, a Van Gogh -I hate that common place-, a Kafka, a Kubrick, a Le Corbusier, a Federico García Lorca, and the list is long.

All this, most of you surely know, to give a ‘huge tinny’ example with one great writer and, unexpectedly, a strong visual artist: Franz Kafka. So, if you want to know more, I leave you with an illuminating article about it: https://granta.com/kafkas-drawings/

The Misfortune of a Coherent Art Vision