That’s a great perspective 🤔
Discussion
For some reason people just expect new musicians and athletes to always be greater than anyone in history, but with visual artists it’s like, “Oh we’ll never be better than the Old Masters so we just do what we can.”
Some insight there.
I understand that it’s not easy (at all) to find these artists, but I know it’s possible and I’m trying to demonstrate it one commission after the other.
It’s a kind of defeatism both in artists and collectors/patrons that I just do not see as being the reality of the situation. I think there are possibly hundreds or thousands of visual artists alive right now who can be at the top of their field/medium given sufficient patronage. I have no idea who most of them are, but I believe they must be out there and can be found 😂
But I do think specifically with athletes and musicians there are much better support systems in place for scouting talent and rewarding them early. Once they have a big enough stage they can usually make a living because their audience scales up. But for visual artists that are working in physical mediums, it probably takes a small number of extremely devoted patrons to provide that same level of support, because the objects of art don’t really scale in digital formats. What makes a visual artist great seems to be lost in translation digitally compared to music or athletic performance. Or the audience is not really there that would appreciate it at a large enough scale.
Athletes, yes because their achievements are measurable, quantifiable.
Musicians, not so much. And that’s why new music is rarely impressive.
I think people with formal musical training will recognize quality music immediately, but that’s a small percentage of the total audience
People know their own limitations as athletes, but then you often hear things like this is a drummer’s drummer or this is a painter’s painter or this is a goldsmith’s goldsmith. And what do they mean by that? I would say that it’s because it would take years of study or practice or appreciation to understand why what those exceptional people are doing is exceptional.