No matter what an individual does or desires to do for a living, it’s rarely a bad idea to engage in at least a little marketing – meaning that it’s generally smart to try to get the word out about you and your work. This includes informing audiences or potential customers about how your product or service is unique and why they should be interested. Varying professionals tend to command an array of traditions vis-à-vis where and how their particular kind of commodity should be marketed. However, the basic need for some level of public announcement seems fairly universal, whether one is engaged in mass commerce or experimental art.
Words like “marketing” sometimes come shaded with mistakenly negative connotation, and various sectors of non-commercial art can consequently tend to consider themselves above the need for self-promotion. However, it is not wrong to look for improved mechanisms of honestly informing others regarding one's work, and it is unfortunate when good craftsmen let their goods go unnoticed. When a problem with marketing does exist, it is due only to the intention and product behind the particular campaign, and the honesty with which the message is delivered.
So I would certainly not begrudge artists or musicians their various marketing strategies. In a world composed principally of mediocrity, lovers of great quality indeed need to work hard to get the word out. However, a tremendous danger continues to exist in the righteous maintenance of this balance for those professions that fundamentally claim art before profit. Much of modern marketing seems concerned with the regular maintenance of attention, which consequently tends to incentivize an environment in which more is synonymous with successful. Unfortunately, this is not particular to the commercial sector. Strong reasons exit for those we unquestioningly believe are engaging in pure art to create works with the principal goal of marketing themselves, as opposed to marketing themselves in order to promote their good artistic work. And while it’s not bad to be smart about the jobs one takes, it seems that a fundamental principal of true art would that it be inspired first by a good idea, and not by the cash or popularity it promises to garner.
The ubiquity of this threat among the true arts was illustrated for me recently in the context of a theatrical production in Los Angeles. My wife just finished the run of a small show at a local independent theater, where she energetically helped support a fairly esoteric script. Unfamiliar with the inner workings of theater, I was surprised when she informed me that one of the principal actors in this black box production would suddenly be missing two nights out of an already fairly short run. With no understudy, the rest of the cast was simply excused for the evenings. It turned out that the protagonist in question had simply been offered better opportunities, and when I expressed my naive exasperation at such disrespect for his fellow actors, let alone the art, my wife (who was involved for free and for the love of it) explained that it is in fact not uncommon for actors to engage in art house productions principally for the purposes of self-marketing. With the priority centered on collecting attention instead of the art work at hand, artistic integrity ceases to be a motivating force, and consequently nothing can ever be depended on to keep the work alive in the event of a more exciting opportunity.
And with a wink, the once true artist transforms himself eagerly into a dancing monkey, his art now merely a shrink-wrap display case for agents, managers, producers ...(...Gould must be rolling in his grave). If art is indeed the soul of a culture, what hope do we have when even the independents won’t hesitate to put cash and career ahead of a previous commitment to some simple, good work?
