Quote:
Originally Posted by doubleshuffle
Nope.
Nothing wrong with show business; I like being entertained.
Nothing wrong with commercially successful art either; great if someone manages to make money with art.
Everything wrong with "first and foremost you have to find an audience"; without artists who follow their vision no matter if they have a big audience or not, we would be missing the art that really matters. Think Kafka, think van Gogh.
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100, 50 or even 30 years ago this certainly was true.
And you're right: Many artists, nowadays considered genius and ahead of their time, in their era did suffer.
But nowadays, in the age of self-publishing, web commercials and the likes, it should be way easier to find an audience.
There are hundreds of success stories of self-published authors, making >$ 1 million, basically on their own. Is it art? Maybe not. But on the other hand, not having found an audience doesn't make anything art per-se either.
If in this age someone doesn't find an audience, he's got hundreds of options to adjust. And for obvious reasons should do so.
Just think of Monet, Renoir, Cézanne and their invention of modern art in the cafe Guerbois.
And of course, Van Gogh and the likes didn't intentionally fail to succeed. In retrospect, their suffering makes it all seem more glorious and heroic. But would it be less artful, if Van Gogh would have been successful in his lifetime?