Paper for the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing. Kjell Varvin, 16. April 1998.
As an artist you encounter many dangers and frustrations. The worst thing that can happen to an artist, except for becoming blind or paralyzed, is to have no working-material, because then you cannot work, and if you cannot work you are no artist. You are an artist only when you work! And you function as an artist only when you can show your work to somebody. And you even need that somebody confirms that you are an artist, because this profession is a very social profession, you are supposed to have a function in the society as an artist. You don’t sit alone on an island and make art for yourself all your life. The society recognizes that artists are important for the culture of the people. Else there would never be Art Academies. The society wants art, and the society wants to use art. In buildings, in books, in television, in newspaper, in homes and in parks. Artists are wanted and needed. But the society does not want to pay for the use and need of artists. Not until the single artist becomes very famous. This is the same all over the world. Nobody cares for the unknown artist. He or she can suffer, nobody cares. In the meantime, as an unknown artist, you must work very hard. First you must work for your life: food, drink, house, clothes, and health. And this is very important. Because without these primary factors you cannot be an artist. You must have resistance and health to endure a hard work life. Please take care of yourselves! With your good health you will have energy enough to work for your living and still have some energy to work for your art afterwards. In the evenings you come home to your room where you can draw and paint and sculpt without thinking of what to eat tomorrow. Your spirit is free to make art after you have done your daily work for living. This is the only solution for perhaps more than 90% of the young artists all over the world. The other ten percent have rich families or wives or something. The problem is to find work for a person who has only art schools. The unemployment in Europe is also becoming very high. It is difficult to find work for the unspecialized worker. It would therefore be safer to have some other education than only art schools, so that you can take a better paid job when you need it. Do not think of starting a family unless your partner is rich and can support you. There are many academies and art schools in the western world and older artists often teach for a living. That is a good solution. You can live from teaching, but teaching is big work and you may not have much time for your own. The more famous artists teach in Academies, and the less famous artists teach in evening schools for amateurs and hobby painters. That becomes very boring in the long run. There are few artists who really want to teach for a long time, they do it for a living and it is hard work if you take it seriously. Famous artists in famous Academies come seldom to classes, they have assistant teachers and they are making their own exhibitions so they do not have much time for students. My own professor at the École Superieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris came once a week and gave me perhaps altogether seven minutes of correction during one year. But everybody has a different experience from schools. Some students learn a lot at school, others don’t. Some professors are good, some are not very good. It is a question of luck. I tried different Academies in Europe, and had little luck. But Cézanne said you learn painting in the museums. So I went to the museums. There I searched out the best teachers like Velazquez, Vermeer, Tiziano, and Giotto. The schools may teach you techniques, but they never tell you how difficult it is to live from your work. Even to find a reasonably good studio is very difficult and expensive. You must be able to work under poor conditions. You do not learn how to present yourself and your work to people and how to contact galleries and arrange an exhibit, or how to evaluate your own work. All this is difficult, especially if you are a timid person. I travelled a lot and sold my paintings and drawings in the streets for some years. Many painters do that. You don’t need to become commercial, you can sell serious studies in the streets of big cities like Paris and London and some collector or gallery man may discover you, but that is very, very rare. There are thousands of art-galleries in Europe, and they all want to live from the work of artists. If they sell your work they take 35- 50% of the price. If you want to make an exhibition of your work, you often have to pay all the costs yourself. I have known painters who have exposed in good galleries where they have sold all their works. But the gallery took 50% and the painter had to pay for posters and advertising, invitations and stamps, wine and snacks for the guests and all other costs for frames and transport and insurance. So in the end he had no profit at all except the honor and perhaps some critic in the newspaper. Most galleries close down after a short time because they don’t sell enough, but new galleries come up. Some art-lovers are idealists and start galleries, but when they have lost their illusions and their money they become commercial and sell easy, pretty things and are no longer interesting for artists who search for exposing in serious galleries. Beside the private galleries there are established ART-Associations in many countries in Europe. They often have good galleries and a non-profit administration so that it is advantageous for artists to expose there. But it is difficult to get in there. You have to be very good and wanted. They will invite you if you are already famous. But sometimes they will show your work even if you are not famous. Many connections are made through people who know somebody who is important. You can play the game, but you absolutely have to be able to show many good photos of good works sooner or later. You have to be a hard-working artist. Much of the big art-game on a high level is played by associated capitalists. That means that much is controlled by money-interests. Artists are taken care of and their works are being promoted very efficiently through a network of relations of new, splendid museums and galleries, journalists, art-critics so that you can say that the preferences of the power people and their money is , to some extent, creating the new aesthetics and new trends like on the stock-market. There are journalists and art-critics and art-historians and gallerists and curators and collectors and editors and writers and a lot of other people who want to profit from art and artists. They are supposed to be your collaborators, but most often they are only your parasites. The art-critic and the art-philosopher often thinks he is more important than the artist and the art-historian is often more interested in History than in Art and the art-theorist is constructing «significance» and «higher meaning» where there is none. The curators consider themselves to be creators; they «create» large exhibits that travel to museums all over the world. They put the art-works into thematic situations that may disturb or change their original intentions. Sponsorship is becoming more normal. You may get some company to pay for your catalogue, but money is also hard to find. They must trust that you are good and that you don’t destroy the company-image. They want to have some profit from their investment. A big part of your job, if you want to become famous, is to convince important people, and that is very difficult. If you want to expose in a good gallery, you often have to wait a year or two after you are accepted as good enough. In the meantime you cannot sell what you plan to expose, your best works. So maybe you sell nothing while you are waiting. Norway is a small, but very rich country. We started to sell oil in 1970. So the artists in Norway also wanted to improve their living conditions which were rather bad. We started a revolt and organized and claimed our rights. We put strong arguments on the table and managed to come into negotiations with the government administration. We wanted:1)That the society make more use of our work, 2) that the society pay for the use of our work and where this does not give a living, 3) that the society give a security-income to the artists. These 3 points include the principle of paying for showing (for instance: the state pays you for showing your works in official exhibitions) and became the fundament of a change in the living-conditions for artists in my country. The government saw the logic in our arguments, because we keep art-schools and educate artists without giving them a decent living afterwards. This also started a great recruitation to the professions of artists. In twenty years, the number of artists in Norway has more than doubled. Private galleries have perhaps 10-doubled and people depending on the art-market may have 20-doubled, including museums, art-historians and all the other professions that I have mentioned. Certainly the living-conditions have bettered for the artists in Norway, but compared to the general wages we still belong to the bottom classes, which mean that we most often have to sacrifice living-standard and have other professions beside, even after thirty and more years as artists. This means obviously that the market is not big enough for so many artists, but still it is a better use of energy to do art-work than to do as many unemployed do:-absolutely nothing. As for the point No. 3, the State of Norway gives a relatively small grant for active artists over fifty, who have passed a severe selection, as a security-income, if they don’t sell enough. (A worker in the industry has twice our income.) This is often the first economical freedom we have ever had in our lives as artists, and gives the opportunity to do full-time experimental work if we want to. For students there are certain scholarships, but materials are very expensive. Scholarships are eaten up by everyday costs, rent and heating also being very expensive. A lot of factories and apartment-houses are empty and some are being occupied illegally by artists and other «non-conforming elements». Police come and throw them out after some time. There are riots and demonstrations against the governments. And the situation in Europe seems to become worse from year to year due to hard competition in a free market, unemployment, drugs, criminality, and corruption, inefficiency in government administration, autocracy, pollution, publicity, and lack of solidarity, low moral standards, liberalism and everything. The way of art seems to take a different direction now, away from the art-object that you can collect and put in a private home. Young artists have realized that they cannot live from selling traditional art-objects. Instead they do performances and installations and trash-art and self-biographical documentaries in video and photography and give harsh comments on daily life in the consumer's-society. The Academies do not teach much classic figure-painting or sculpting. It is supposed that the students know all about proportions and anatomy from the preparatory schools. They study today’s art and experiment with all the new methods, including computer- and video-art. Already as students they contact galleries and make exhibits. They are very active and promotive of themselves. Artists, with their capacities for creative and abstract thinking, and for their faculties of imagination and intuition, can be very useful in the commercial world. Concepts like «content-provider» and «symbol-analyst» are coming into the language. We can create images and slogans and decode social trends and see things that others don’t. We can give meaning to things and make them attractive for consumers, we can charm and convince. We can put colors to products and shape them so that they will sell better. We can start trends. So we can be very useful and earn a lot of money in this game. But we have to know what we are doing. All the time. Why do you make art? Are you fighting for the freedom of your spirit or are you just producing pretty things to please the consumers? Now, all we want is to be able to do our work as artists and maybe have a quiet, normal healthy life with a family. That is nothing special, we don’t want to be very rich, just have enough to not be afraid of what to eat the next day, plenty material and time for work. This is a dream. It is very difficult to obtain, and it will usually take you many years to come to this point where you can concentrate fully and quietly on your real work and personal development.
As an artist you encounter many dangers and frustrations. The worst thing that can happen to an artist, except for becoming blind or paralyzed, is to have no working-material, because then you cannot work, and if you cannot work you are no artist. You are an artist only when you work! And you function as an artist only when you can show your work to somebody. And you even need that somebody confirms that you are an artist, because this profession is a very social profession, you are supposed to have a function in the society as an artist. You don’t sit alone on an island and make art for yourself all your life. The society recognizes that artists are important for the culture of the people. Else there would never be Art Academies. The society wants art, and the society wants to use art. In buildings, in books, in television, in newspaper, in homes and in parks. Artists are wanted and needed. But the society does not want to pay for the use and need of artists. Not until the single artist becomes very famous. This is the same all over the world. Nobody cares for the unknown artist. He or she can suffer, nobody cares. In the meantime, as an unknown artist, you must work very hard. First you must work for your life: food, drink, house, clothes, and health. And this is very important. Because without these primary factors you cannot be an artist. You must have resistance and health to endure a hard work life. Please take care of yourselves! With your good health you will have energy enough to work for your living and still have some energy to work for your art afterwards. In the evenings you come home to your room where you can draw and paint and sculpt without thinking of what to eat tomorrow. Your spirit is free to make art after you have done your daily work for living. This is the only solution for perhaps more than 90% of the young artists all over the world. The other ten percent have rich families or wives or something. The problem is to find work for a person who has only art schools. The unemployment in Europe is also becoming very high. It is difficult to find work for the unspecialized worker. It would therefore be safer to have some other education than only art schools, so that you can take a better paid job when you need it. Do not think of starting a family unless your partner is rich and can support you. There are many academies and art schools in the western world and older artists often teach for a living. That is a good solution. You can live from teaching, but teaching is big work and you may not have much time for your own. The more famous artists teach in Academies, and the less famous artists teach in evening schools for amateurs and hobby painters. That becomes very boring in the long run. There are few artists who really want to teach for a long time, they do it for a living and it is hard work if you take it seriously. Famous artists in famous Academies come seldom to classes, they have assistant teachers and they are making their own exhibitions so they do not have much time for students. My own professor at the École Superieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris came once a week and gave me perhaps altogether seven minutes of correction during one year. But everybody has a different experience from schools. Some students learn a lot at school, others don’t. Some professors are good, some are not very good. It is a question of luck. I tried different Academies in Europe, and had little luck. But Cézanne said you learn painting in the museums. So I went to the museums. There I searched out the best teachers like Velazquez, Vermeer, Tiziano, and Giotto. The schools may teach you techniques, but they never tell you how difficult it is to live from your work. Even to find a reasonably good studio is very difficult and expensive. You must be able to work under poor conditions. You do not learn how to present yourself and your work to people and how to contact galleries and arrange an exhibit, or how to evaluate your own work. All this is difficult, especially if you are a timid person. I travelled a lot and sold my paintings and drawings in the streets for some years. Many painters do that. You don’t need to become commercial, you can sell serious studies in the streets of big cities like Paris and London and some collector or gallery man may discover you, but that is very, very rare. There are thousands of art-galleries in Europe, and they all want to live from the work of artists. If they sell your work they take 35- 50% of the price. If you want to make an exhibition of your work, you often have to pay all the costs yourself. I have known painters who have exposed in good galleries where they have sold all their works. But the gallery took 50% and the painter had to pay for posters and advertising, invitations and stamps, wine and snacks for the guests and all other costs for frames and transport and insurance. So in the end he had no profit at all except the honor and perhaps some critic in the newspaper. Most galleries close down after a short time because they don’t sell enough, but new galleries come up. Some art-lovers are idealists and start galleries, but when they have lost their illusions and their money they become commercial and sell easy, pretty things and are no longer interesting for artists who search for exposing in serious galleries. Beside the private galleries there are established ART-Associations in many countries in Europe. They often have good galleries and a non-profit administration so that it is advantageous for artists to expose there. But it is difficult to get in there. You have to be very good and wanted. They will invite you if you are already famous. But sometimes they will show your work even if you are not famous. Many connections are made through people who know somebody who is important. You can play the game, but you absolutely have to be able to show many good photos of good works sooner or later. You have to be a hard-working artist. Much of the big art-game on a high level is played by associated capitalists. That means that much is controlled by money-interests. Artists are taken care of and their works are being promoted very efficiently through a network of relations of new, splendid museums and galleries, journalists, art-critics so that you can say that the preferences of the power people and their money is , to some extent, creating the new aesthetics and new trends like on the stock-market. There are journalists and art-critics and art-historians and gallerists and curators and collectors and editors and writers and a lot of other people who want to profit from art and artists. They are supposed to be your collaborators, but most often they are only your parasites. The art-critic and the art-philosopher often thinks he is more important than the artist and the art-historian is often more interested in History than in Art and the art-theorist is constructing «significance» and «higher meaning» where there is none. The curators consider themselves to be creators; they «create» large exhibits that travel to museums all over the world. They put the art-works into thematic situations that may disturb or change their original intentions. Sponsorship is becoming more normal. You may get some company to pay for your catalogue, but money is also hard to find. They must trust that you are good and that you don’t destroy the company-image. They want to have some profit from their investment. A big part of your job, if you want to become famous, is to convince important people, and that is very difficult. If you want to expose in a good gallery, you often have to wait a year or two after you are accepted as good enough. In the meantime you cannot sell what you plan to expose, your best works. So maybe you sell nothing while you are waiting. Norway is a small, but very rich country. We started to sell oil in 1970. So the artists in Norway also wanted to improve their living conditions which were rather bad. We started a revolt and organized and claimed our rights. We put strong arguments on the table and managed to come into negotiations with the government administration. We wanted:1)That the society make more use of our work, 2) that the society pay for the use of our work and where this does not give a living, 3) that the society give a security-income to the artists. These 3 points include the principle of paying for showing (for instance: the state pays you for showing your works in official exhibitions) and became the fundament of a change in the living-conditions for artists in my country. The government saw the logic in our arguments, because we keep art-schools and educate artists without giving them a decent living afterwards. This also started a great recruitation to the professions of artists. In twenty years, the number of artists in Norway has more than doubled. Private galleries have perhaps 10-doubled and people depending on the art-market may have 20-doubled, including museums, art-historians and all the other professions that I have mentioned. Certainly the living-conditions have bettered for the artists in Norway, but compared to the general wages we still belong to the bottom classes, which mean that we most often have to sacrifice living-standard and have other professions beside, even after thirty and more years as artists. This means obviously that the market is not big enough for so many artists, but still it is a better use of energy to do art-work than to do as many unemployed do:-absolutely nothing. As for the point No. 3, the State of Norway gives a relatively small grant for active artists over fifty, who have passed a severe selection, as a security-income, if they don’t sell enough. (A worker in the industry has twice our income.) This is often the first economical freedom we have ever had in our lives as artists, and gives the opportunity to do full-time experimental work if we want to. For students there are certain scholarships, but materials are very expensive. Scholarships are eaten up by everyday costs, rent and heating also being very expensive. A lot of factories and apartment-houses are empty and some are being occupied illegally by artists and other «non-conforming elements». Police come and throw them out after some time. There are riots and demonstrations against the governments. And the situation in Europe seems to become worse from year to year due to hard competition in a free market, unemployment, drugs, criminality, and corruption, inefficiency in government administration, autocracy, pollution, publicity, and lack of solidarity, low moral standards, liberalism and everything. The way of art seems to take a different direction now, away from the art-object that you can collect and put in a private home. Young artists have realized that they cannot live from selling traditional art-objects. Instead they do performances and installations and trash-art and self-biographical documentaries in video and photography and give harsh comments on daily life in the consumer's-society. The Academies do not teach much classic figure-painting or sculpting. It is supposed that the students know all about proportions and anatomy from the preparatory schools. They study today’s art and experiment with all the new methods, including computer- and video-art. Already as students they contact galleries and make exhibits. They are very active and promotive of themselves. Artists, with their capacities for creative and abstract thinking, and for their faculties of imagination and intuition, can be very useful in the commercial world. Concepts like «content-provider» and «symbol-analyst» are coming into the language. We can create images and slogans and decode social trends and see things that others don’t. We can give meaning to things and make them attractive for consumers, we can charm and convince. We can put colors to products and shape them so that they will sell better. We can start trends. So we can be very useful and earn a lot of money in this game. But we have to know what we are doing. All the time. Why do you make art? Are you fighting for the freedom of your spirit or are you just producing pretty things to please the consumers? Now, all we want is to be able to do our work as artists and maybe have a quiet, normal healthy life with a family. That is nothing special, we don’t want to be very rich, just have enough to not be afraid of what to eat the next day, plenty material and time for work. This is a dream. It is very difficult to obtain, and it will usually take you many years to come to this point where you can concentrate fully and quietly on your real work and personal development.
