“Study Finds Artists Become Famous through Their Friends, Not the Originality of Their Work” is the title of an interesting article, published on Artsy a few days ago. While a bit of an overstatement, it has a lot of truth to it. 

Skill isn’t enough to make one an artist. Since the rise of conceptualism, and to be honest even long before that, making art has been less and less about craftsmanship and more about weird icky stuff that shocked people, or at least tried to do so. And with the barrier to entry of having a master skill level removed, a new way of differentiating among good and bad art and even art and non-art had to be invented.

Connections in the art world was the next best thing and soon your patrons, investors, friends and even acquaintances got to decide if what you produced was indeed viable to be called art. In other words, if they were in a position to decide, be it as a gallerist or owner or producer, and they liked what you created and your personality, you had the chance to become an artist.

And while this was in the past, it wasn’t really in the distant past — more like a few decades ago — the point to take home is this: We are still living in the age where our connections decide the quality of our art. At least, if our aim is to play in the big leagues. Obviously any sane person with eyes could judge a realistic portrait of their uncle or the quality of a still life with a bunch of flowers and a vase.

So, it isn’t for us to judge those artists that act and create inside the confines of the upper levels of the art world, because the rules of the game are clear and they do make sense — even though it pains me a bit to write this. 

Aesthetics and craftsmanship was and always will be a good and logical way to decide between good and bad art, but we have to understand that what people higher up wish art would be, isn’t what we would like.

For them, art is a chessboard whereon power, social standing and respect is earned and eventually lost and ideas of beauty just don’t possess enough leeway to be interpreted as freely as concepts or questions of morality and ethics. And you need a large and overly-complex playing field to be able to separate the wheat from the chaff.

Therefore beauty is no longer the ruler of the upper levels of society, because plain and simple, beauty is boring and any peasant could at least attempt to define it. But the sacred teachings of Greenberg, when juxtaposed with the Jungian school of thought — that’s where the big boys play. That’s where the real money is made.