Tuesday, July 31, 2012

why most artists' blogs do not fail

some time ago in march, i read a blog post on gapingvoid about why most artists´ blogs fail.

The gist of the post (please read it for better understanding) is that most artists’ blogs fail because they fail to unders­tand why people would want to rea­d an artist´s blog. which, the post claims, is not because of the art.

i replied to this post in the comments section, but haven't had a reply so far. i repeat my comment below:
well. i’m an artist and i blog about art as well. per­so­nally, i think wri­ting and crea­ting visual art are very dif­fe­rent forms of expres­sion. pri­ma­rily, a visual artist might be expec­ted to be a lea­der in the visual expres­sion forms, i’d say.

so pos­ting her or his ima­ges isn’t quite a fai­lure. not in itself. it’s what artists do, after all, put­ting ima­ges in the world.

the fai­lure starts when peo­ple don’t take the trou­ble to appre­ciate what a visual artist has to offer.

if someone would tell you: hey i’ve found this terri­fic band, you should read their blog…wouldn’t you scratch your head and say: why don’t you give me a you­tube link??

i’m serious here.

it’s sad to see the VISUAL aspect of art being rele­ga­ted to the back­seat by … artists themselves.

so, although i recog­nize the good inten­tion behind this post, i have to disa­gree as well. all this tal­king about art cer­tainly helps many peo­ple to appre­ciate the art and the artist more. but this doesn’t neces­sa­rily make the art itself any better.

if as an artist you are faced with the choice: to blog beau­ti­fully about your mediocre art or to write a mediocre blog about your beau­ti­ful art…i hope you make the right choice.