Over the past month or so, I’ve been seeing a lot of Quentin Tarantino clips pop up in my YouTube feed because about a month ago, I clicked on a video of Quentin being interviewed by Charlie Rose. When it finished, the algorithm showed me another, which I also clicked on. Since the algorithm got what it wanted, it started showing me more clips and occasionally I would click, and here we are a month or so later with me having watched about a dozen clips and interviews with Quentin Tarantino. Full disclosure, I like some of Tarantino’s movies, but it’s his approach to making movies that I find fascinating. Recently he was quoted as saying that Once Upon a Time in Hollywood was his best movie, to which someone on Twitter almost immediately replied “He’s wrong. It was Pulp Fiction.” I can’t say I disagree. But regardless of what you or I think of any of his movies, he makes exactly what he wants to see and if we don’t like it, that’s on us, not him. He was very clear about that fact in one of the interviews I watched. The interviewer asked him whether he had an audience in mind when he made his movies. Almost without skipping a beat, Quentin responded, “Yeah, me. I’m the audience.”
I’ve been struggling with the role that an audience plays in my own art-making for a long time. Intellectually I know that as artists what we make should be for us first, but when commerce gets involved, the line between art and product goes dim and frankly, it all gets a little muddy for me. A recent text message from a friend included an article unpacking the Warhol Foundation vs. Lynne Goldsmith court case. The message read simply, “money ruins art.” On a lot of levels I completely agree. For example, I have more than a hundred paintings in my basement, most of which have never seen the light of day—and maybe never will—mostly because I don’t know whether an audience will like them. Actually, that’s not true. It’s because I don’t know whether an audience will buy them. As much as I don’t like capitalism, that’s the difference, and if I’m being honest, that’s where I get hung up. I spend an enormous amount of time thinking about my work, both on a thematic level and from the perspective of process, so if the work is rejected, in some way so am I. In the back of my head, I still hear the old tapes of my father saying artists are a dime a dozen. His value was always on the commerce, not the creativity. Don’t get me wrong, seeing likes and reading positive comments on something I’ve created and occasionally share on Twitter or Instagram is terrific, but it can also be pretty empty if it misses the expectation that I’ve placed on the work. Also, in the case of likes, I have no idea what that like means. Do you like the what I’ve shared, or simply that I’ve shared it? Are we friends and liking everything I share is just what you do? On the flip side, sharing to social media rather than adding a store to my website is also safe because I avoid the potentially crushing disappointment of an unclicked “Buy Now” button.
I thinks it’s become an act of creative self-preservation to keep my work and the processes behind it to myself. And what’s worse, by not making the work available for purchase, I’m not even giving you the chance to like it or reject it. I have decided for you that you aren’t going to like it, and certainly not enough to buy it, which gets us back to the “artists are a dime a dozen” thing.
When I was a kid, I drew all the time, for no other reason than I loved to draw. The same goes for photography. When I built my darkroom my freshman year in high school, that’s where I spent most nights for the next four years. Terms like monetization or personal branding had no meaning for me—I burned through film, chemistry, and paper simply because I was learning and photography made me happy. Even when I first picked up a paint brush again in 2008 after a nearly 20-year hiatus, it was because I was exploring ways to bridge digital and analog making. It was fun. Despite the fact that I was still trying to figure a bunch of stuff out and most of the work I was making at the time was more or less a reflection of that, it got terrific feedback and even landed me in a few group shows. But over the past dozen or so years, I’ve spent so much time and energy second guessing myself and doing what I thought would get more views or likes or grow my following—which really sounds kind of desperate—that I’ve lost track of my why and what it is about making that I get joy from in the first place. I’ve tried everything I can think of except taking a step back. Not from the making itself, but from the often paralyzing monetization guilt/shame spiral that I’ve attached to it. I need to give myself permission to play again and to really try to answer questions like “what am I trying to say with this work?” or “what do I want to see in the world that I am capable of making?” I’ve said over and over that I’m happiest when my hands are in motion, and I really do believe that, but purpose and intent have to be in there too. It shouldn’t just be about process or profit.
In addition to stepping back from the monetization side, I’m starting to explore processes and materials that I have never used before, just to try to get back to that place of being excited and curious and seeing where that takes me. While some of the new processes are similar to what I’ve been doing, they’re different enough that I don’t really know what to expect, and I think I need that. I need to be surprised and I think I need to get back to being my own audience, because if I don’t believe in the work, how can I expect anyone else to?
Questions
Where and how does monetization fit into your creative practice? Is it a motivator or an obstacle?
When I was ten years old, I went to the movies by myself for the first time. It was the summer of 1977 and the movie was Star Wars. It was and still is one of the great movie-going experiences of my life. From the opening fanfare to the closing credits, the experience was singular in how it affected me, and much of it was down to the incredible visual effects created by Industrial Light & Magic. A few months ago, Disney+ released Light & Magic, a six-part documentary directed by Lawrence Kasdan (who co-wrote The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi, and Raiders of the Lost Ark) that tells the story of the special effects company founded by George Lucas in 1975.
Fascinating read Jefferey. I've been helping my 16-year-old autistic son navigate these same waters lately. When he was younger he published a lot on YouTube and built a channel of over 25k subscribers. This was when he cared not a jot about numbers or earnings or any of that. Now he'd like to make it more of a career and he's overthinking everything so much that he's frozen in the headlights. So we've decided that he's going to ditch his channel and start again.
Me? I'm okay. I publish very personal things and, in those things, I explore what my motivation might be. It's all to do with cultivating positive mental health and sobriety while trying not to care about how what I make is received. My wish is that it makes me feel well and leads to others learning how they might feel well, too. A British pound or two would certainly help, but I'm trying not to make that too much of a motivator.
I take inspiration from what you and Sean talk about. I'm definitely one of your 1000 true fans. I guess that's what I'm looking for too.
Good stuff here. Primarily the issue of the audience role.
As a part-time photographer (not my day job, but a side business) I can make money doing portrait and event photography. But when it comes to passion, I wholeheartedly embrace the "amateur" label (even while I pursue exhibits and the hope of actually selling something). Everything I do now is for me, primarily focused on curation. I want to be the best me I can be, so self-assessment is about how I can improve in any and every way.
As you can see, the audience becomes irrelevant. And therefore, so does monetization. History is full of fantastic creators that had great trouble making ends meet. Even Bach looked for jobs, and Van Gogh only sold one painting during his (too short) life. My take-away is that the money is never guaranteed, no matter what you do or how good you are. Eleven years into my photography journey, I'm happy (an incredibly fortunate) that I get to do it all for fun, and any income is frosting.