We are back for another great interview on our podcast on how to unlock your world of creativity. Our guest today joins us on our around-the-world journey where we talk to creative practitioners about how they get inspired and how they organize ideas. And most of all, how they gain the confidence and the connections to launch their work out into the world. Our guest Michaell Magrutsche is an Austrian/Californian multimedia artist (painting, writing, music, film) and art adviser. Who recognizes many similarities that showed up in each art form. His passion is to discover patterns that reveal hidden functions in art. He is known to specialize in using his findings to elevate the exposure of art and foster clearer communication between all involved in the Arts.
Today we have a conversation about the starving artist, a topic that is well illuminated in his last book, The Smart of Art: A New Art Consciousness To Awaken Our Enthusiasm For Art. A book he wrote because of the insane phenomenon that 95% of all artists worldwide exist around the poverty line. We talk about reclaiming artists’ value and their passion and how a lot of creatives undervalue themselves and their work as well.
In our conversation, we discover that artists have never defined their value. When you go to other professionals, they can tell you exactly why you're paying $3,000 for their work but an artist has no idea how to value his masterpiece. Because the value of art is ultimately mostly assessed through the foreign system of capitalism and economy where other values are the rule. There is little incentive for the economy to make art a tangible system.
The market decides the value of an art piece when an artist creates a piece of art. In our talk, we realize that we know the art market, but we don't know art itself. As art is perceived today, it can no longer reveal its properties and true values because its ultimate evaluation is always tied to success, money, and fame. This is a huge misunderstanding since the art itself is where the value is. That's the purity of creativity is in art
His top tips to artists so that they are not categorized as starving artists are:
- Artists have to compartmentalize the magical process of creating. Because this is where they grow and get instant feedback on their creations.
- An artist has to disengage when they are done with their creation. Although that is a hard thing for artists. They can't disengage because the experience of creation was so magical
- They need to learn to detach after being done with the magic of creation. After they have milked the moment and they are now saturated. They can give the painting to the market so that their art can be pieced accordingly.
- If they cannot detach themselves then they need to get an expert, a businessman gallerist, or a manager is usually the best because they are detached. Because your attachment to your creation as an artist blinds and blurs, the sales.
If we knew more about creativity and art, we would know that as a creator one can abide but never submit to the creation of ourselves such as economy or technology. It always and only can lead to self-destruction if we try to submit to a system we created. Nature and humans are the most advanced systems on this planet.
Therefore, AI is ultimately nothing more than human frailty on steroids because the data stems from human imperfection. And therefore what the observation of art does is it pushes you into humanity and that's magic.
In conclusion, agree that we shouldn't be able to name art & poverty in the same breath.Michaell educates us that art is the language of wisdom and that we should get in touch with our wisdom. He invites artists to create art without bothering about the market. And he reminds them to milk the process because there is not a spiritual discipline stronger than the one experienced during the creation of art. Which is a way to keep in touch with your wisdom. That's why he calls art the language of wisdom. Lastly he urges artists to have this systems approach to have the business side and the valuation side of their work and to keep their egos a little bit more neutral so that they don't undervalue their work.
More on all Michaell’s work: Michaellm.com
Michaell Magrutsche
I am a multimedia artist, educator, author of 5 art-related books, and creator of the bi-weekly podcast THE SMART OF ART - The Power of Art and Creativity. I am a passionate creativity/art researcher that looks for art/creativity's true values for humans outside of any system. I am raising the awareness of our human potential, contrarily to man-made systems like technology and economy. I point to our untapped human abilities. Especially our truth compass and super-powers of humans’ inherent tools of creativity and healthy discourse. I try to plant seeds of awareness without selling something to STOP humanity from pondering problems to create more systems that humans have to deal with. We can heal the world and others by everyone “being the best YOU that you can be for YOURSELF." Humans need to understand non-man-made systems like nature and be the stewards of OUR habitat instead of man-made system like technology. #TheSmartofArt #MichaellArt
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaellart/