Too Much Too Soon

The quandaries of early success in an art career.

From the comic strip Las Aventuras de Olmeco Beuys, 2010

Last week I had the privilege to receive an honorary degree, which is customarily accepted in the form of a commencement speech. In my remarks I tried to follow the expected conventions of commencements, which are meant be inspiring and energizing. Nonetheless, I cautioned the new graduates to not only aim to have a successful practice, but to also prepare to know what to do the day they have a successful breakthrough, which brings with itself its own set of challenges.  I did not elaborate too much on that point then, but I have decided to do it here.

I often think of two artist friends of my generation with career stories which present interesting questions around the subject of early success.

The first one— I will call him John— had an art career on the rise when I first met him in the late 90s. In the lapse of two or three years, John had been included in three major international biennials, his work was prominently featured in important collections and was becoming increasingly visible in the art market. He was around 27 years old when all  this happened, and the attention was merited: his work was compelling, smart, elegant.

At that point, while he was receiving that significant international attention, he made the decision to move from his hometown to New York City. He was a regular at openings and other art events.  However, soon after moving to the Big Apple he had to confront the challenge of making a living and paying rent. The money he was making from the sales of his work was clearly not enough, as he soon had to start working odd jobs to make ends meet. The city was not kind to him.  Financial pressures consumed him and were followed by other personal problems.  Gradually he seemed increasingly embittered to me;  he often spoke against the frivolity of the art world with great contempt. A decade later, he had practically stopped exhibiting altogether. Today he has all but vanished from the art scene.

I don’t believe that John’s art career has necessarily ended: I see him occasionally posting images  on social media that retain his original and unique sensibility and character. I know he is still a good artist.  Yet I am acutely aware of the  unfortunate arch that the last 20 years of his practice has followed, and I believe there are lessons to draw from it,  because his case is not unique.

The second friend — this one I will call Mark— was someone I met when I arrived in New York, and we both were also in our late 20s. He was a very talented draftsman, with work that I felt was delicate, innovative and with a unique sensibility. He was intelligent and fun to be with, although he had what seemed to me an almost unhealthy obsession with celebrities. Because of my museum work, he looked at every opportunity to attend events that I organized that featured important artists or art world figures and would have no qualms in approaching and trying to befriend them. The strategy worked: combined with his natural talent and charm, an influential curator he got to know and invite to his studio included him in a major biennial, which then led to solo museum exhibitions, public art commissions, and more.  As his reputation grew, he became increasingly dismissive and judgmental of other artists who were not as fashion-savvy as he was. His interest in entering the jet set grew more and more— and with that, the less we saw of each other, as I definitely was not interested in that world, and he knew that (and he likewise was no longer interested in me as I had nothing to offer him in regard to his pursuits). He then gravitated toward fashion and design, his primary focus in staying featured in magazines and maintaining the image of infant-terrible (which is something that becomes rather untenable especially after you turn 40). He is still a practicing artist, although the heavily commercial nature of his work, which veers closely to commercial illustration, caters to an audience that usually exists outside of the usual preoccupations that characterize discussions around aesthetics, culture and politics in contemporary art practice, and his name is no longer in the lips of top curators. The last time I saw Mark —at an art fair opening— he was nearly unrecognizable, with dyed hair, silver chunky sneakers and a Justin Bieber-esque attire.

While keeping in mind that these are just two anecdotal cases, I still wonder whether something can be gleaned from them to gain a better understanding of the impact of early success in an art career. During those early years,  artists generally do not yet have the experience to deal with the challenges posed by high institutional or market demand and can soon be overwhelmed by it. It is a point of development where the artist has yet not been able to fully form the larger ideas or principles that might inform their work and might thus have a harder time resisting the suggestions or influence of others who might want to commodify or adapt their work for their own curatorial or market ends. In addition, the artist usually faces a supply and demand problem: they can get a deluge of invitations and opportunities and before they know it, they are scrambling to keep up with deadlines and coming up with new ideas for exhibitions that become bigger and bigger, and as a result the work begins to suffer. Yet another artist friend of mine who experienced his own wave of success early in his career shared with me once: “I started finding myself sitting in hotel rooms in weird foreign cities, scrambling to figure out ideas for shows and projects. It was depressing.” And last but least, there is an aspect about career success that is seldom discussed, and which newcomer artists are not usually prepared to confront: the loneliness that comes with it.

It is not surprising that mid-career or even late career artists are usually better positioned to respond to a sudden rise of attention in their work. In contrast to emerging artists, they often thrive when that time comes because of their past professional experience in dealing with the art world and the fact that they are better positioned to deal with commitments without compromising their practice or their integrity. Artists who have been around for a while also have a more nuanced understanding of the ebbs and flows of the profession — where an artist might be highly desirable for a year or two and then forgotten for a decade. Most of the seasoned artists I know are in for the long game, often preferring to “fly”, as one of them told me once, “slightly below the radar.”

That said, the self-perception of artistic success can be highly subjective, to the point that we might not fully appreciate our own achievements especially when we compare ourselves to others (and there will always be, of course, someone who did things better than us). I learned this the day when I met Jim Dine, on an occasion where I organized a lecture of his. I was surprised to see how in his talk Dine seemed to constantly go back to discuss how he was not as recognized as other artists of his generation such as Johns or Rauschenberg. The grass is always greener on the other side regardless of one’s station. And while sometimes we can get too much too early, as much as we might get later might never feel enough.