After a (too) long hiatus, we're back with a conversation with performance and conceptual artist Oreet Ashrey, and we chatted about the art world, not being boxed up as an artist and how there actually was a time when being an artist was considered as being an affluent individual! Her website: http://oreetashery.net

Welcome to another very special episode at Surviving Art. We’re doing market research in London as part of a cultural residency, provided by Slovenia’s Ministry of Culture and will be conducting a series of interviews and talks about the art market in London. In the series, I’ll be chatting with book publishers, both emerging and well-established artists, gallerists and other art world professionals and today I have the immense pleasure to introduce the wonderful Denis Maksimov: Denis is an...

Welcome to a very special series of episodes at Surviving Art. We’re doing market research in London as part of a cultural residency, provided by Slovenia’s Ministry of Culture and will be conducting a series of interviews and talks about the art market in London. In the series, I’ll be chatting with book publishers, both emerging and well-established artists, gallerists and other art world professionals. And to kick it all off, today’s run-and-gun podcast (meaning, please excuse the London...

Art is obviously emotional and as such its value is determined absolutely subjectively. The big question though is how, because even though ambivalent, subjectivity can still give us a lot of various starting points to think about our target audience. How people recognise a good story in objects and experiences differs from person to person — that’s why it’s subjective — but usually we can find basic guidelines that can help us define this perception. The main idea behind this exercise is to...

Artist statements, even though they might appear like a load of pretentious art-talk (which many of them sadly are), serve a very important purpose: presenting your passion in a bite-sized package, to be easily consumed and understood by the reader or listener (you can, and should know how to pitch them too). But what many of us present as an artist statement is usually exactly the opposite of what it should be; we focus on intellectually sounding words and sentences like this: “As wavering...

Be it online or in person, there’s a lot of competition in the arts. And the fact that the art world is much smaller compared to the world of business, law or medicine, only makes it harder for any one artist to succeed. While everybody online is telling us to “niche down”, and explaining why it’s so important, usually no specific tactics are disclosed, and the how is left for us to figure out for ourselves. This blunder is intended for anyone who wishes to find their focus and stand out in...

In the last two blunders we discussed the importance of calculating ones base expenses and all-around financial needs on a monthly basis and the concept of added value. Today, I’d like to combine the two and take a deeper look into how various models can help us to set fair and consistent prices for our work. First of all, we need to acknowledge a very important fact; the pricing model we use to determine our value shouldn’t necessarily be the same one we use to communicate that value to...

Oscar Wilde once wrote: “A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything but the value of nothing.” A true artist therefore should be the exact opposite, but not due to ignorance towards the ever-present concept of money; the real truth of the matter is that putting a price tag on an embodiment of love, hate, reminiscence or longing (and all the other messages that art can communicate) just isn’t as easy as adding up ones material and overhead costs and slapping a 20% markup on the sum.

Creating a beautiful work of art is hard by itself, but when it comes to putting a price tag on whatever we made, it does tend to get even harder for most of us artistic types. The question for today (and a few future blunders) is therefore: How much is creativity even worth? And today I’d like to share the method that works best for me; and please don’t worry, there’s minimal maths involved, and the few equations that we will mention are of the sweet, money-generating variety, that — in my...

Just as with sweeteners and coffee, you have natural and artificial options to spice up your art, too. Both sweeteners and symbols are created by moulding reality to our will, but unlike aspartame and the like, artificial symbols don’t have negative health side effects (unless we count war and propaganda, of course).  It does though open up your work to the possibility of being misinterpreted, and in today’s blunder, we’re going to take a peek at how we can at least guide our audiences into...

More and more you see art shows being coupled with support programs that, to an art goer from a couple of decades ago, would resemble more a visit to the local club than an actually gallery — albeit a club that, for whatever reason, seems to also have some “art” on the walls. But why is that?!

An interesting sentence, uttered by a friend of mine while we were chatting over drinks, was that “Art has no purpose, only consequences.” and these six words really struck a chord with me. In today’s blunder therefore, I’d like to explore this statement, because I think a lot of us may posses a misconstrued understanding about our artistic production that could (and probably does) influence our ability to reach the right audience and consequently grow as artists.

Welcome to a very special episode of Surviving Art (done for the 33rd Biennial of Graphic Arts in Ljubljana! What makes this one so special are the interests of my guest: Amy Whitaker. She is an assistant professor at NYU with a Masters degree in business as well as a masters in Fine Art. An incredible mix of interests and one of the reasons why I’m so excited for this interview. She’s also the author of two incredibly interesting books.  Museum Legs, which is a wonderful collection of...

Creating art is a two step process; first you obviously have to make it, but then you also have to show it and present it to the public, and hopefully leave an impact on the world (preferably for the better). But these two steps could not be further apart in both their methodology and all-around nature. The real problem is that making art is a predominantly personal and intimate experience, but showing and presenting it requires an entirely different skillset. So, in today’s blunder I would...

A few days ago I had the great pleasure to interview Amy Whitaker (she has an MBA from Yale and an MFA in Painting from Slade University — an incredible mix!).She is also an associate professor at NYU and the author of two very interesting books: Museum Legs and Art Thinking. Our conversations and her writing got me thinking about my own exploration of both worlds and the ever-present question of economics in art. Amy speaks of two inherently different but incredibly interconnected ways of...

A wonderful quote of which the author eludes me even after 5 min of thorough Google searching goes like this: “Life is a game. You can be a player or a toy.” And the question I’d like to pose today is: How does making your own rules, and sometimes even completely rejecting the already established ones, that our environment proposes, impact our perspective on life and place in society?

When we think about creativity and inspiration, we might picture an image of a spirit, a muse, that comes forth from the heavens and touches us in funny places at the most random of times imaginable. But these moments aren’t random, and there really is no extraterrestrial or divine power fondling our brains. It’s all an illusion, a misunderstanding of causality and how our perception and thinking work. While the idea of inspiration coming from outside of us isn’t that far from the truth —...

To be frank, all comments on either the meaning or purpose of anything are irrelevant in the grander scheme of things, because all are but a form of ideology, a kind of software that runs in our minds if you will, and contrary to common belief that humans are nothing more than complex Turing machines, no programs are actually alike. What I believe my purpose is, could not be further from what you or your friends might think your goals in life should be; while we might all resemble each other...

Countless figures throughout history have tried to explain this incredibly complex question: What is art? And more importantly, what isn’t art? But still the institutions have no real answer, no common ground upon which they could define a normative of what defines art. Brut art is a problem, so are other outsider artists, and home schooled creatives that defy or just never become part of the institutional system.  It’s the carpenters that put more than the usual love and attention to...

People have two intrinsic desires; to know themselves and to find a place in their environment. We constantly search for better ways, a clearer image of who we are and continuously try to place that projection of ourselves into society and our environment at large. But a lot of us make a grave mistake when conducting our search. A mistake we might not even recognise, but that defines and ultimately controls our inability to find our true way in life.

They say we are born as empty slates, pure white canvases onto which life leaves its marks and in the end produces a singular, unique imprint of colours, shapes and forms. While this may or may not be true, today I would like to think about the process itself. Also, I would like to inform all of you, that the daily blog will go through a few changes:  The coming episodes will now be much longer, and published only once a week (Tuesday at 16:00 CET), with random episodes thrown in from time...

Let's stop with this romantic preposition that one hears all to often when talking with artists in academia. We go through a list of 8 steps to keep in mind when creating a commissioned work.

Art is emotional and as such its value is determined absolutely subjectively. The big question though is how, because even though ambivalent, subjectivity can still give us a lot of various starting points to calculate value from. It’s all about perceived value though — not that the actual value of materials in a work or the hours we spend aren’t important, but the tag word for this topic is perceived. Because let’s face it, unless your art is made out of pure gold, the materials should...

I have struggled with this question for years. Not only with figuring out the value that I can provide to society, but the value I have for myself. But, even though you can find blueprints of how to build an atomic bomb online, answers to the question: “How do I fit in with society?” remained elusive, almost non-existent. The problem wasn’t that no answers to this question were out there though, it was that I did not know where to look.